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| Messages - lauland | |
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1
Emulation / Re: Mendelson's Classic emulators.
February 28, 2026, 20:17 |
I haven't looked into those emulators, but it sounds like I really need to! I wonder what the problem with OCLP technically? And what exactly the patcher does that works around it? Maybe a missing library or different version or something? As far as CPU's go, unless you're talking about older 8 bit ones, anything 32 bit is complicated. In a perfect world RISC chips WOULD be easier to emulate, as the S stands for "Simplified"...CISC chips should have more Complex instructions (and more of them). But, PPC is pretty complex for a RISC chip! None of the various architectures are even close to each other, so emulating speed can be more factored on how well the CPU is known by coders, or if there are known tricks, or just time and experience. There's probably a lot newer PPC emulation code than m68k, which has probably stagnated. (Except in the Amiga PiStorm world where some amazing JIT exists...similar to the m68k on ppc JIT apple had in powermacs). That's strange that you're seeing SheepShaver beat Basilisk...that may be something to do with the binaries or how they were compiled (Optimized?). On my Apple Silicon Macs and Intel Linux, this is NOT the case. (But I'm using stock versions of the emulators). |
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2
Development / Re: VesperNet question
February 28, 2026, 19:54 |
VesperNet is pure magic! And it looks like getting even more magical! AppleTalk AppleTalk AppleTalk! I can't wait! Because VesperNet provides its own "DNS world" any address (of any kind) used while you are connected to it are resolved by it. So they aren't (necessarily) "real". They could be, or at least the packets could end up routed there, but that's up to Vesper. It is like an Internet of its own, that happens to link to the rest of the world, indirectly. This is why you can pick your own email address on all those domains, without having an account on them...as long as you're connected to it. |
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3
Development / Re: Experiments with Realbasic
February 12, 2026, 16:47 |
Definitely knezzen is your man for RealBasic. He did HotStuff the Hotline client in it, and has been known to hang out there. That involved a lot of...plugin? addons?...whatever they are called for RealBasic. There are tons out there that might do what you need. |
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4
Development / Re: The "I've been programming lately and ..." thread
February 12, 2026, 16:44 |
I'm not working on anything right now, but am itching do something, but not sure what. Definitely love to chat about programming! The last thing I worked on was SDL2 for 7/8/9. I started with CodeWarrior 6 pro, since that's the last one that builds m68k apps, but ran into all sorts of limitations due to the C/C++ language support being so behind the times. It was also a huge pain dealing with giant project files! So I switched to Retro68, and was able to cross build on Linux and modern MacOS X...a huge bonus was being able to use Makefiles and the speedier compiles on modern machines. The 2d graphics subsystem includes a giant offscreen PixMap for the window, and CopyBits for blits to update each frame. Everything is 32 bit pixels right now, although I've tried doing 15/16. I'd love to do 256 colors (and even B+W), but then you need to handle palettes which are a major pain to keep track of. (SDL1 has a bug there that I've never figured out). In theory the 3d part would use OpenGL and just render into the same buffer, and would "just work", but OpenGL on 7/8/9 is a huge can of worms I've yet to open. I did a HUGE amount of work with threads and semaphores, which even worked well on m68k to my shock and surprise. The sound subsystem required threads. I set up a skeleton sound driver but never put the real code in there. Anyway, love to chat about anything involving classic coding. |
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5
Development / Re: I'm ready to start learning Classic Mac OS programming
January 27, 2026, 16:22 |
Awesome you're trying this out! I'm sending you encouraging brain waves! I've tortured and been tortured by CodeWarrior quite a bit, so will be more than happy to give hints or help if you get stuck. The libraries are pretty confusing, it would've been lovely if they were "fat" and the same ones could be used for both m68k and ppc. They (and the linker) are radically different because ppc uses "code fragments" while standard m68k uses "code segments", but usually you don't have to worry about the difference. |
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6
Software / Re: Tristam Island (new interactive fiction) box release
December 22, 2025, 15:51 |
Sounds intriguing! And we all know white houses in interactive fiction should always be explored... Hmm...includes a "rock sample", wonder what the significance is... I love your tradition, and am going to try and start following it myself. The holidays are perfect for adventuring! There's one or two Infocom I've never quite gotten around to, pretty sure I never played Spellbreaker. I also bought "The Queen's Footsteps" from Poly Play meaning to do it on my powerbook 180, but haven't yet. Got a pad of graph paper handy for mapping... |
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7
Hardware / Re: Formatting an external drive
December 18, 2025, 15:35 |
I believe I used Drive Setup (or whatever it is called) in 7.6 on my mini, but used it to create two partitions on the internal drive, and installed 7.6 on the first. I then rebooted into Tiger off a firewire drive, reformatted the second partition to HFS+ and restored Tiger to it, so I can dual boot either 7.6 or Tiger. Since you're talking about an external drive, you'd probably have trouble formatting it in 7.6, so OS9 would be the best way to go. |
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8
Hardware / Re: Formatting an external drive
December 15, 2025, 22:10 |
If you are going to boot a Mac from it, it should (mostly) not be MBR. For PowerPC it must be Apple Partition Map. If MacOS 7-9, you must use a formater that installs the "drivers". For Intel, I've been able to boot off of all three. (Originally, Intel required GUID, very old firmware). If you aren't going to boot from it, it depends on the OS version. Classic ie 7-9 won't understand GUID (although maybe MBR "wrappper"?) Older MacOS X PPC won't understand it either (again...maybe?) Newer MacOS X or Intel should understand all three. (I think?) GUID will create a "fake MBR" that, usually, is read by older OS's, but I wouldn't trust it. |
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9
Off Topic Discussion / Re: Burning OS 9
December 08, 2025, 15:41 |
Some old optical drives seem to have trouble reading disks burned at too high speeds made on modern machines. I've heard this a lot, so I never burn at the highest speeds. |
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10
Hardware / Re: Trying out System 7.6.1 on a Mac mini
December 08, 2025, 15:34 |
I noticed the same thing with FAT drives. Unsure why it doesn't work, but probably ancient PC Exchange doesn't work with the USB shim magic in the enabler/rom. I can't remember how I formatted by my thumb drive HFS (non plus). I thought I DID actually use tiger. Be sure you totally reformat it, and are using the Master Boot Record format for the drive. I'm pretty sure hfsutils can handle non-plus hfs, but if not, and you have access to a windows machine, this works very well: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/hfvexplorer (Don't remember if it can format, but it can definitely read...maybe write?) I copied stuffit files to the HFS disk, unstuffed them in Tiger, because I didn't even have stuffit for 7.6, but was then able to run things in 7.6. Or you might be able to use drive formatters in 7.6.1. I'm thinking a possible way to get some stuff to work might be to copy some extensions from the 8.1 that came with the first imac. (Which was a "modern" new world machine with usb, etc, and maybe sound and networking hardware closer to the mini). |
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11
Hardware / Re: Trying out System 7.6.1 on a Mac mini
December 07, 2025, 18:27 |
I'm doing the same, so we can compare notes. USB mass storage WILL work, if it is plugged in before boot. Hot swapping doesn't work. USB working AT ALL is amazing because the entire 8.1+ infrastructure to handle it just isn't there, or is missing. I've been using HFS (non-plus) to copy stuff over to the mini. 7.6 doesn't have a clue what USB is, and its all driver level magic. Networking defaults to the "printer port"...which doesn't exist EITHER! You'll need SOME sort of driver for built in ethernet. I first set it up using a single partition, but quickly switched to have two, the second has tiger. And, of course, hardly anything other than the basics works in 7.6...but...if you think about it, we have enough trouble getting MacOS 9 working on the same machine. So 7.6 working AT ALL, is a minor miracle. If someone has ANY trouble with 9 on a mini, you are going to have FAR far worse with 7.6. Some things MIGHT be made to work, but I'm having my doubts how much. Many extensions and drivers needed for the mini will be 8.5/9.0 and getting them to work on 7.6 may or may not be possible due to all the missing other libs and managers that 8.5+ has. (For example, anything that expects even basic things like the Unicode libs being present will fail on 7.6). Then again, if you'd asked me if 7.6 was possible at ALL on a mini a year ago I would've sat and expounded, thinking I was wise, for a long time on how it wasn't possible due to all the missing drivers, etc...and look where we are! I think a triple boot with 7.6, 9, and tiger is my next step. And getting things like sound or video acceleration or networking in 9 would give clues to how to get it to work in 7.6. |
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12
Operating System / Re: System 7 natively boots on the Mac mini G4!
December 03, 2025, 15:53 |
If you don't have any machines that can run older os installers, I'd think a good idea would be to take one of the disk images on MG for emulators like SheepShaver (or Basilisk, if the install is FAT). I've got personal 7.5.3 through 8.1 images I regularly use for Basilisk and SheepShaver, so I know they work well...when/if I get around to trying to get 7.x/8.x to boot on one of my "New World" machines, I'll be using one of those, rather than a clean install. (I "daily drive" HotStuff for HotLine on System 7.6 in Basilisk this way) If you needed to pull Control Panels and Extensions out of an installer (like one you need that a particular image didn't have), you could use Tome Viewer: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/tomeviewer These look like a good starting place: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macos-753-emulators http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/emulator-harddrive-images (esp Download #3 above, as it, I think has 7.5.3 through 9.0.4. You should test the images in SheepShaver to make sure they are PowerPC. Alternately, run the 7.x/8.x installer in SheepShaver on your own machine and you can thus get a clean install. ---- You can mount the disk image in the finder and then modify it (Enabler, MacOS ROM file, etc) that way, on your target machine. A good idea would be to have a separate partition for the hacked 7.x/8.x. The only trick would be making sure the System Folder was "blessed" if you were doing this in MacOS X... If you didn't have a separate partition you could play fast and loose and disable your current System Folder (move the System file into a folder and rename System Folder to System Folder.macos9 etc). This would, of course, depend on what os your target machine was running, etc. If your hack didn't work, you just reboot your machine off a bootable cd (or external drive) and try again until you get it right. ---- I think once more and more people get this running on their Mini's and G4's, they should share and upload a disk image to MG, to save everyone time! (Like: "This System 7.5.3 image runs on such-and-such G4 Mini") Now that I think about it...using QEMU to build the image on a target machine would be a good idea also...if you were running MacOS X. |
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13
Off Topic Discussion / Re: Rebecca Heinemann has passed away
November 26, 2025, 17:15 |
She popped up on one of the Mac related discord channels I'm on, and I got to chat with her a bit, which was a minor thrill, as she was a personal hero. This was a few months back. She was trying to get powerpc cross compilers to work on intel XServes, but running too new an os, so no Rosetta. I suggested macports, but she was having some sort of odd trouble and don't think ever resolved. But she was still, even relatively recently, planning SOMETHING for our beloved platform. ---- For the record, here's my effort on PETSCII over at MG: Attack of the PETSCII Robots (unfinished source code) (http link) FYI I'm getting the same "it gets stuck" results even on MacOS X (with an "official" SDL) as on MacOS 7-9. I based it on the SDL version, but am now thinking maybe the Amiga one would've been better. I wish I'd talked to Burger Becky about it! (Hearing she'd gotten stuck at the same point would've been quite validating). |
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14
Emulation / Re: Emulating the Commodore64 on a 68k Macintosh
October 28, 2025, 15:00 |
(Warning, may contain nuts and modern links) There's no VICE for m68k? Hmm...I'd say that's the gold standard for commodore emulation. Then there's MESS...which emulates pretty much ANY home computer, and does ALL the commodores very well...but I guess none for m68k either...unless somebody got off their butt and worked on a port, eh? (But then even if it got finished who's to say it would run well enough to be useful...sigh). --- The speed of the 1 mhz cpu is deceptive. It was very efficient for what it was, and gave z80's at more than twice its speed a run for the money...the folks that designed the ARM cpu took inspiration from it, when they needed to move on fro the 6502 they didn't think ANY other design was worthy...unlike apple and atari and commodore they skipped past the 68000...and the rest is history. And you'd think a 320x200x16 color screen would be zero problem for a color mac...until you realize it would actually have to be a 640x480x256 screen 90% of the time, and having to move 8 times as much data per pixel... Heck...only 64k of memory?!? Any decent mac has multiples and multiples of that! 170 KILOBYTE floppies?!? 8-16k roms?!? Teeny tiny! But unless you're running on a fast machine the experience is...not good... ---- And then it eventually dawns on you...maybe even after you've gone crazy and written an emulator yourself (it helps!)...cough...something in my throat...what?!?...that emulation is one of the hardest most computational intensive things a computer can run...maybe even harder than games, which are hard enough! Anyway, it could be done on an '030, and you might find a version of something...HAS been done...looks like you already found a few possibilities. (I remember running one on my 8mhz 68000 amiga, but it was pretty horrible....memories!) But don't expect miracles, or even, maybe a great time. Running retro on retro itself... I'm not wanting to rain on any parades, and obviously I love retro and emulation, but there are good technical reasons emulation on older machines is very difficult to run well. I speak from some experience. ---- I did an m68k port of UAE (Amiga emulator) 0.8.6 because the source code was there and I couldn't see any reason it didn't exist. It... worked... perfectly... but... oh so slow! And its a bit apples and oranges, but you can extrapolate to how the average commodore 64 emulation would go. Even 8 times faster, it would still lag the real machine. result discussion So, obviously I'm not against TRYING...cough...Attempts to build m68k MacMESS...but you hit a point of diminishing returns unfortunately. The amount of hard (human) work vs the end results on m68k have been disappointing...I love the cpu dearly...but it can only push so many numbers. Even hand written assembly could promise a x2 or x4 improvement MAYBE...but you'd be talking about a HEROIC lonely effort for a vanishingly small audience...and how many folk are writing hand m68k these days?!? Now...get me a TEAM so I'm not just sitting alone coding...and who knows? And where IS my PiStorm for Mac?!? (Or a 68060 board? OMG...no...) |
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15
Development / Re: Knezzen programs a new Hotline client
October 14, 2025, 15:59 |
Knez, "GetFileComment" is not a Mac toolbox call, so you are probably getting it from a plugin of some sort. That would explain why it only causes problems on m68k...could be another one of the ones that isn't available and needs to be replaced. |
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