Mac titles for CD32 via Shapeshifter?

[Retro1234]

Toni the master

Is this Config file ok?

Small Problem HDF's not showing up - Go to early boot menu nothing?-Forget that

[Nobby_UK]

For me either gives normal CD32 boot screen (IDE)
or Purple + Cycling Black Screens (UAE)

[Retro1234]

@Nobby_Uk thanks for the feedback

Ok I just booted Mac OS with Above config - booted without Startup-Sequence - "MuMove4k"

Just "MuMove4k"

No PrepareEmul/MuMove4k PrepareEmul etc also Exec.library gave purple screen.

[wairnair]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Just "MuMove4k"

That did it!

Works on real CD32, full ClassicWB. On first boot it restarts then boots into WB. PoP is playable.

Also Joymouse & MacJoypad work at the same time so you can mouse around and control the Prince as well. Since both mouse and game use the same joypad you control both the prince and the cursor at the same time, it's a bit funny. Luckily the cursor disappears quick.

Thanks everyone involved! I'll try to make a bootable iso that runs PoP straight.

[Retro1234]

That's great I have an idea if loading is slow or Read only is a problem

Create small HFV files of Mac OS and POP then Zip/Lha them so file size is smaller and copy to Ram then uncompress(should be fast in Ram), then boot ShapeShifter.

[AmigaHope]

Wouldn't need an 030 for monochrome Mac games. xD Of course probably more than half of those games are "32-bit dirty" so they def won't run on an 030-equpped CD32. I actually wonder if they'd run okay on a stock CD32 or A1200 since they have the 24-bit EC020, but I don't know if the EC020 behaves "dirty" like the 68000 does.

I'll never understand why most Amiga software, even back in 1985, was 32-bit clean, but Mac developers loved making their software 32-bit dirty, to the point that Apple crippled their early 68020 and 68030 Mac motherboards to behave 32-bit dirty (ignored upper 8 address lines).

Fun bit of trivia: Like half the old classic Mac software you find online is infected with the nVIR virus or a variant thereof.

EDIT: Of course it didn't help that MacOS itself wasn't 32-bit clean until version 7. =P

[wairnair]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

That's great I have an idea if loading is slow or Read only is a problem

Create small HFV files of Mac OS and POP then Zip/Lha them so file size is smaller and copy to Ram then uncompress(should be fast in Ram), then boot ShapeShifter.

Good idea. I've made a small POP HFV and started gathering stuff. I think I'll base it on your hdf.

Edit: anyone know if ShapeShifter can be started from the Shell without its prefs window popping up first?

[Retro1234]

I thank it's Shapeshifter Quick.

[nogginthenog]

Originally Posted by AmigaHope

I'll never understand why most Amiga software, even back in 1985, was 32-bit clean, but Mac developers loved making their software 32-bit dirty, to the point that Apple crippled their early 68020 and 68030 Mac motherboards to behave 32-bit dirty (ignored upper 8 address lines).

AmigaBasic wasn't but I can't think of any others. Were 030 Macs limited to 16Mb?

[AmigaHope]

Originally Posted by nogginthenog

AmigaBasic wasn't but I can't think of any others. Were 030 Macs limited to 16Mb?

Yup, even if you had a 68020 or 68030 you were by default limited to 24-bit addressing, up until the Mac IIci, and only after you installed MacOS 7. Really they were limited to 8Mb RAM because only half the Mac's memory map was reserved for RAM. (no equivalent to Amiga Ranger mem).

All 030 macs from the IIci onward had a software toggle that disconnected the upper 8 address lines so you could run MacOS 6 and dirty apps, and earlier versions of MacOS 7 had the ability to flip to 24-bit mode so you could run dirty apps.

The earlier 68020/030 Macs had the same toggle, but defaulted to dirty mode and had dirty firmware. You could run a program in MacOS 7 called Mode32 that would flip the system to 32-bit mode and hack around the dirty ROMs, or you could get hacked clean ROMs for it that would boot it in 32-bit on poweron.

Even early 68040 Macs featured a 24-bit mode, it was only partway through the Centris and Quadra lines and MacOS 7.6 that Apple completely disabled support for dirty code.

Incidentally, dirty code running on 68030s and especially 68040s was notorious for running slow because it constantly caused your data cache to flush (the CPU had no idea about dirty code, so it just assumed you were accessing wildly random memory addresses). It wasn't that big a deal since dirty code was almost always written assuming it would be run on slow 68000s or 68020s, but a few CPU-bound applications would cause people to clamor for a 32-bit clean version because the clean version would usually run significantly faster.

[wairnair]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

I thank it's Shapeshifter Quick.

That's correct, thanks. Though I still have trouble auto-starting SS from startup-sequence. I've put a work in progress hdf in the Zone.
It has everything in it, including SS itself, POP & MacOS vhd's, joymouse and macjoypad.
Issues:
- can't auto-start ShapeShifter
- can't auto-start POP inside mac os. It should be as easy as making an alias of the executable and dragging it into Startup Items (which is on the system disk). But it says "error type -127" and refuses to put it there.

Otherwise it's working, you can manually start the OS and then the game.
The Mac hd's are copied to RAM instead of LHA-ing, turns out it's a lot faster.

Would be glad if you could take a look, I'm not very great with Amiga CLI..

[Retro1234]

Works Great

I just changed LoadWb for ShapeShifterPOP:ShapeShifter/ShapeShifter Quick

The error 127 not sure? Was there a way to create shortcuts? or it might be possible to copy it with HFV explorer for Windows , there maybe a way


Edit:What I've always wanted to do is in Mac OS have a Batch file in the startup folder that points to the Second game partition and starts a second Batch called Game.bat this then starts whatever the game is POP, Blackthorn whatever.

[wairnair]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Works Great

I just changed LoadWb for ShapeShifterPOP:ShapeShifter/ShapeShifter Quick

The error 127 not sure? Was there a way to create shortcuts? or it might be possible to copy it with HFV explorer for Windows , there maybe a way


Edit:What I've always wanted to do is in Mac OS have a Batch file in the startup folder that points to the Second game partition and starts a second Batch called Game.bat this then starts whatever the game is POP, Blackthorn whatever.

Should be doable, I'll give it a try. All game 'clients' (volumes) should have the same name then, e. g. GameHDD.

Any terminal app and/or totalcmd alternative for these old os's? (I guess mc can be compiled but that goes far)
HFV Explorer sounds good too.

[Retro1234]

There's AppleScipt but I can't get to grips with that or Terminal

[wairnair]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

There's AppleScipt but I can't get to grips with that or Terminal

Turns out my main OS image file was broken. Got a fresh 7.5.5 image and I could easily put POP in Startup Items. No terminal / whatsoever was needed.
Changed LoadWB to load Shapeshifter as you suggested.
Working ISO is in the Zone, tested on real CD32 with a burnt CD. Takes a good 3 mins for the game to start but then it never loads anymore.

Of course there's room to improve, but I think I'll leave it at that for now. Possible improvements:
- Test LHA extraction vs copying on real hardware. Maybe LHA is faster.
- Get rid of the ugly white border in ShapeShifter. Not sure what's doing it - if I run the same thing from ClassicWB it's all nice and black.
- Decrease HDD image sizes, e.g. there's 3+ MB free space on POP disk.
- Use BlazeWCP / whatever hack to speed up emulation. Although I think it would be marginal - it runs OK already.
- Your bat file idea. I have no idea about how to create scripts on this thing.

[Retro1234]

Great work dude

Maybe using a older system like 7.1 but for now yes great, if there's any interest I think a CD packed with Mac games could be really good.

I am curious how fast it would work without the copying of the HFV to Ram/ Is it needed.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by wairnair

Turns out my main OS image file was broken. Got a fresh 7.5.5 image and I could easily put POP in Startup Items. No terminal / whatsoever was needed.
Changed LoadWB to load Shapeshifter as you suggested.
Working ISO is in the Zone, tested on real CD32 with a burnt CD. Takes a good 3 mins for the game to start but then it never loads anymore.

Of course there's room to improve, but I think I'll leave it at that for now. Possible improvements:
- Test LHA extraction vs copying on real hardware. Maybe LHA is faster.
- Get rid of the ugly white border in ShapeShifter. Not sure what's doing it - if I run the same thing from ClassicWB it's all nice and black.
- Decrease HDD image sizes, e.g. there's 3+ MB free space on POP disk.
- Use BlazeWCP / whatever hack to speed up emulation. Although I think it would be marginal - it runs OK already.
- Your bat file idea. I have no idea about how to create scripts on this thing.

Wow, just took a look at your .ISO and had a play... pretty cool indeed, well done!!!

I have POP2 here, upload it into The Zone! in case you want to play with this also

[wairnair]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Great work dude

Maybe using a older system like 7.1 but for now yes great, if there's any interest I think a CD packed with Mac games could be really good.

I am curious how fast it would work without the copying of the HFV to Ram/ Is it needed.

Thanks
Maybe copy just the game, it's relatively small and then it plays like a whdload game, fully preloaded.
A selector screen could be done on the Amiga side which then copies 1 gamehdd to ram, which is auto-started by MacOS.

Yeah you could have one big CD with many games, but you probably need separate joypad configs for each. That can only be done on the Amiga side.

[wairnair]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Wow, just took a look at your .ISO and had a play... pretty cool indeed, well done!!!

I have POP2 here, upload it into The Zone! in case you want to play with this also

Glad you liked it.
Okay, I might play around with pop2 too, though no promises made

[Retro1234]

Originally Posted by wairnair

Thanks
Maybe copy just the game, it's relatively small and then it plays like a whdload game, fully preloaded.
A selector screen could be done on the Amiga side which then copies 1 gamehdd to ram, which is auto-started by MacOS.

Yeah you could have one big CD with many games, but you probably need separate joypad configs for each. That can only be done on the Amiga side.

Some separate ShapeShifter configs would be good as-well I can't quite remember but for some games like Alone in the dark it's better to set ShapeShifter to LowRes as that way you get full screen.