MAME 2023 Mac emulation updates

About Mini vMac and all other 68k emulators, including SoftMac, Executor, and MESS.

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Arbee
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MAME 2023 Mac emulation updates

Post by Arbee »

Lots of stuff happened this past year! MAME now supports all desktop 680x0 Macs with the correct ASICS emulated and show the correct Gestalt IDs except for the IIfx, Quadra 900/950, Macintosh TV, and the AV Quadras. (Quadra 700, 800, 610, 630, 650 all work and can run Mac OS 8.1). AppleSC CD-ROM support is improved and CD audio tracks now play for apps and games that use them.

On the PowerPC side, the 6100 now can boot a floppy into the installer and the keyboard and mouse work, but bugs remain before I can call it usable. The beige G3 can boot into Open Firmware and you can type commands to it and it responds. And the Bondi blue iMac chimes and turns on the screen, but then gets hung up in bugs. So consider those things future attractions.

Here are blog posts covering everything that happened, starting from last year's review:
https://rbelmont.mameworld.info/?p=1505
https://rbelmont.mameworld.info/?p=1542
https://rbelmont.mameworld.info/?p=1555
https://rbelmont.mameworld.info/?p=1594

And a few YouTube videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoBqL8evwIY shows the Quadra 700 playing some music in Sound Trecker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t26j8pcFdt8 shows the Mac SE running the Apple CD-ROM Explorer and playing CD audio tracks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH7GR-e8hq0 shows the Quadra 800 and the Mac OS 8.1 CD player playing CD audio tracks

If you're on a modern Mac, MAME now has an easy to use Mac-and-Apple-emulation focused GUI called Ample: https://github.com/ksherlock/ample/releases

And the Mac version of Disk Jockey can convert mini vMac and Basilisk hard drive images into real hardware format that MAME (and BlueSCSI, ZuluSCSI, SCSI2SD, etc) require on real Macs: https://diskjockey.onegeekarmy.eu/

As always our Mac-on-MAME documentation wiki is up to date: https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/Driver:Mac_68K
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adespoton
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Re: MAME 2023 Mac emulation updates

Post by adespoton »

Arbee wrote: Sun Dec 17, 2023 3:01 pm Lots of stuff happened this past year! MAME now supports all desktop 680x0 Macs with the correct ASICS emulated and show the correct Gestalt IDs except for the IIfx, Quadra 900/950, Macintosh TV, and the AV Quadras. (Quadra 700, 800, 610, 630, 650 all work and can run Mac OS 8.1). AppleSC CD-ROM support is improved and CD audio tracks now play for apps and games that use them.

On the PowerPC side, the 6100 now can boot a floppy into the installer and the keyboard and mouse work, but bugs remain before I can call it usable. The beige G3 can boot into Open Firmware and you can type commands to it and it responds. And the Bondi blue iMac chimes and turns on the screen, but then gets hung up in bugs. So consider those things future attractions.

Here are blog posts covering everything that happened, starting from last year's review:
https://rbelmont.mameworld.info/?p=1505
https://rbelmont.mameworld.info/?p=1542
https://rbelmont.mameworld.info/?p=1555
https://rbelmont.mameworld.info/?p=1594

And a few YouTube videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoBqL8evwIY shows the Quadra 700 playing some music in Sound Trecker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t26j8pcFdt8 shows the Mac SE running the Apple CD-ROM Explorer and playing CD audio tracks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH7GR-e8hq0 shows the Quadra 800 and the Mac OS 8.1 CD player playing CD audio tracks

If you're on a modern Mac, MAME now has an easy to use Mac-and-Apple-emulation focused GUI called Ample: https://github.com/ksherlock/ample/releases

And the Mac version of Disk Jockey can convert mini vMac and Basilisk hard drive images into real hardware format that MAME (and BlueSCSI, ZuluSCSI, SCSI2SD, etc) require on real Macs: https://diskjockey.onegeekarmy.eu/

As always our Mac-on-MAME documentation wiki is up to date: https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/Driver:Mac_68K
Wow! That's great progress, Richard! And somewhat amazing to have all 68000, 68020 and 68030 Macs emulating smoothly with correct ASICS AND CD audio!

And for others, a great benefit of the MAME implementation is that hardware debugging works.

Looks like it may be time for me to update https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 2nWC9_t2w/ with a few more supported OS versions under MAME, too!
RichCini
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Re: MAME 2023 Mac emulation updates

Post by RichCini »

I just saw this and it's awesome! I downloaded it and so far it works great with some of my old disk images that I had made for vMac. I'm going to try various disks/hard drives and see what happens.

I know MAME uses a rom list which ties to the zip files, and the ROM files look to be split like the real ROMs rather than linear as used in vMac and other emulators. If I wanted to take some images I had and split them/zip them up (like an SE/30 ROM), how would you recommend I do that?

Keep up the great work!
Rich
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adespoton
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Re: MAME 2023 Mac emulation updates

Post by adespoton »

Arbee wrote: Sun Dec 17, 2023 3:01 pm Lots of stuff happened this past year! MAME now supports all desktop 680x0 Macs with the correct ASICS emulated and show the correct Gestalt IDs except for the IIfx, Quadra 900/950, Macintosh TV, and the AV Quadras. (Quadra 700, 800, 610, 630, 650 all work and can run Mac OS 8.1). AppleSC CD-ROM support is improved and CD audio tracks now play for apps and games that use them.

On the PowerPC side, the 6100 now can boot a floppy into the installer and the keyboard and mouse work, but bugs remain before I can call it usable. The beige G3 can boot into Open Firmware and you can type commands to it and it responds. And the Bondi blue iMac chimes and turns on the screen, but then gets hung up in bugs. So consider those things future attractions.
...
As always our Mac-on-MAME documentation wiki is up to date: https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/Driver:Mac_68K
I notice the wiki doesn't mention PDS slots for the Color Classic or Color Classic II? Actually, it doesn't mention the CCII at all....

Are the hardware profiles with no details listed just undocumented, or are the slots unusable?

Makes me wish I still had my PDS Macs and various cards, so I could dump and document them :) It'd be awesome to be able to load the various PDS expansion and accelerator cards, as well as the PDS Ethernet cards that were out there.

Also, my Color Classic had a VRAM socketed upgrade and I was among the first people to re-wire the board to support 640x480 resolution. I always planned to get around to soldering in a second audio controller and speaker into the available slots, but never did that before I sold the thing. I'll have to investigate what's involved in making my own MAME hardware profile with these modifications :)
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