Mounting audio CDs in Classic Mac OS using QEMU

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Xermald'Oh
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Joined: Fri Jul 11, 2014 1:46 am

Mounting audio CDs in Classic Mac OS using QEMU

Post by Xermald'Oh »

Is it possible to mount any of the following types of CDs in Mac OS 9.2 (or in any Classic Mac OS) running on QEMU?

-Audio CDs
-Audio CDs with added data tracks
-Hybrid discs with multiple file systems (Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows)

I use Windows 7 & 10 and Linux Mint as my host operating systems.

I have already installed Mac OS 9.2.1 on an experimental build of QEMU that can be found at this link on your website. I set up QEMU and the OS by following these steps (that's a lot of words, and by no means do you have to read through the whole thing). I was able to run the CD version of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (1996) on the OS, as the OS can mount TOAST files (either via 'qemu.bat' at startup or with Mac OS 9.2-compatible disc authoring applications like Roxio Toast). You can check out this YouTube video for proof. (The audio CD tracks that can be heard during gameplay were added after recording the video.) The problem, however, was that I was not able to find any way of mounting audio CDs or hybrid CDs in Mac OS 9.2.1 running on QEMU. I tried to mount various audio CD images with the following Mac OS 9.2-compatible applications without success: Toast 5 Titanium, Toast Deluxe v4.1.3, Toast v3.5.7, ShrinkWrap v3.5.1, Disk Copy (pre-installed), Disk Copy v6.3.3, Virtual CD/DVD-ROM Utility v1.0d3, and DVDExtractor v0.9b. Note that the images I tried to mount were created with modern applications released around 2017. Those images can be incompatible with old optical disc authoring applications that can be used on Mac OS 9.2.

There are no restrictions as to how any of the images should be mounted. For example, any of the following ways of mounting audio CD images is perfectly okay:

-Making an audio CD image mounted in the host OS (or a real audio/hybrid CD inserted into CD-ROM drive) appear in the OS running on QEMU.
-Mounting audio CD images in the actual OS that is running on QEMU.
-Tricking the OS running on QEMU into believing that it is playing an audio CD even though it is doing something else (e.g. playing audio files). :)

The CD version of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans can be installed using TOAST files that don't contain any audio CD tracks (they contain everything except for the audio CD tracks). There are three different options for installing the game: 'minimal', 'standard', and 'full'. If you select the 'full' installation option, everything except for the audio CD tracks will be installed onto your hard disk. The 'full' installation makes the CD unnecessary for everything except for the CD audio. Mind you, the audio CD tracks are on a hybrid CD that contains the Macintosh version of the game along with its MS-DOS counterpart (the audio CD tracks are only for the Mac version). My rough guess is that the real hybrid CD is not even necessary for getting the CD audio to work during gameplay. What I'm getting at is that it might be possible to use an ordinary audio CD with no data track in order to get the CD audio to work during gameplay.
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