SheepShaver Wrapper on macOS Big Sur

About unsupported SheepShaver configurations, like COI (Chubby Bunny), SheepShaver Wrapper, etc.

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StephenBEinbinder
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Re: SheepShaver Wrapper on macOS Big Sur

Post by StephenBEinbinder »

Eureka, everybody. We can now close this case. In order to be able to save my game using the disk image from my E-bay bought CD, I must have only that volume added. If I have more than one, the games will save only on the earlier one I added. In other words, if both RTZ_MPG_CD.cdr and Return To Zork.cdr (or .dmg in the read-write format) are up, the games will only save in the RTZ_MPG_CD.cdr version. And the reason my .cdr master image didn't work earlier was because I encrypted it. I learned from that mistake.
Let this be a tutorial for anybody else who runs into a similar conundrum. I log in as root, put the CD in the drive, open the Disk Utility, go to the menu, create a new image from the disk in the drive, select the Sheepshaver directory as the destination, leave "none" as the encryption option, and make either a read/write image or a .cdr master image. Then I pull up the info on the new image and lock it. Then when I go back and log in as myself, and open Sheepshaver, I add the disk image I made, and select "Is CD ROM".
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: SheepShaver Wrapper on macOS Big Sur

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

The way to create a disk image with Disk Utility is described in the SheepShaver setup manual: Choose format DVD/CD master (or read/write not encrypted).

The interesting part here is that apparently one can create a working disk image from a HFS (not HFS+) CD-ROM in Disk Utility in Big Sur when logged in as root user.
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adespoton
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Re: SheepShaver Wrapper on macOS Big Sur

Post by adespoton »

That's definitely interesting... possibly it's a case of root having disk-level access, so it can do a raw copy of the drive instead of just reading off the partition and re-creating it?

That indicates to me that anyone wanting to create images for archival purposes should not use the modern Disk Utility in user mode for the task, only hdiutil in sudo mode.
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: SheepShaver Wrapper on macOS Big Sur

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

Will hdiutil in sudo mode work to create a CD image file in Catalina and later?

I am not very knowledgeable with Terminal commands.
Exactly which would be the commands to use?
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adespoton
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Re: SheepShaver Wrapper on macOS Big Sur

Post by adespoton »

Ronald P. Regensburg wrote: Fri Jun 18, 2021 6:56 pm Will hdiutil in sudo mode work to create a CD image file in Catalina and later?

I am not very knowledgeable with Terminal commands.
Exactly which would be the commands to use?
Recent versions of hdiutil will let you do image the entire device, older versions won't. So to image an HFS volume, you'd do:
sudo hdiutil create -srcdevice <disk1 or whatever> <path/to/saved/image.iso>

dd will also let you image an entire device, doing
sudo dd if=/dev/<cd drive> of='image.iso'
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: SheepShaver Wrapper on macOS Big Sur

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

Have you tried this yourself in Catalina or Big Sur and used the images with SheepShaver or BasiliskII?

For imaging the HFS volume, sudo dd works fine. I posted that here earlier: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10709
(I also linked to that post from the SheepShaver setup manual)

I tried again the same procedure, this time with the "Return to Zork" CD, now on M1 Mac with Big Sur.

Code: Select all

sudo dd if=/dev/disk4s1s2 of=~/Desktop/"Disk 1.iso"
sudo dd still works in Big Sur for imaging the volume. The CD image mounts fine in SheepShaver and the game plays fine.

Note that dd must be used with bash, it will not work with the default zsh (default shell in Catalina and later)

Imaging the device with dd results in a file that SheepShaver cannot use.

Code: Select all

sudo dd if=/dev/disk4 of=~/Desktop/"Disk 2.iso"
When this file is added as a regular volume, the guest MacOS wants to initialize it and when added as a CD-ROM it shows up on the desktop as an Audio CD that cannot be played.

Tried imaging the device with hdiutil (hdiutil works with the default zsh)

Code: Select all

sudo hdiutil create -srcdevice disk4 ~/Desktop/"Disk 3.iso"
This created a file with the name "Disk 3.iso.dmg" (a .dmg extension was added).
Again, this file cannot be used with SheepShaver.

Then tried imaging the volume with hdiutil

Code: Select all

sudo hdiutil create -srcdevice disk4s1s2 ~/Desktop/"Disk 4"
Also the resulting "Disk 4.dmg" file cannot be used with SheepShaver. Same as the image files created from the device with dd or hdiutil.

So far, if you do not want to login as root user, it seems that the way I described earlier is the only way to create an image from a CD (volume) in Catalina or later that will work in SheepShaver and BasiliskII.
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adespoton
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Re: SheepShaver Wrapper on macOS Big Sur

Post by adespoton »

Strange; I haven't tried with Zork, but I've tried with folders of data and it worked. Seems like something odd is going on with recent hdiutils and disk structure imaging.

Personally, I just use dd via bash anyway; useful to know that it's bash-only. I've stuck with bash after resisting moving from csh to bash for years... now with a decade of bash under my belt, I don't really want to switch again.
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: SheepShaver Wrapper on macOS Big Sur

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

Creating images from folders will probably get you HFS+ images. The older CDs use HFS and macOS Catalina and Big Sur no longer read HFS disks.
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