:
Sent: Sat Apr 15 13:29:40 2017
How do I make a disk image from the 6.0.8 files I downloaded? Stuffit expander doesn't know what to do with them (in Sierra). I can unstuff them and open the files in Basilisk II, but I have no way of getting the disk images from Basilisk into Mini vMac...
Help! - Jessica email is: [... email address ...]
(And thanks)
The Stuffit Expander page on the Gryphel Project tells about a trick for using it in System 6.
Disk images for Mini vMac can also be used by Basilisk II. (I don't recall offhand if Basilisk II also uses other formats that Mini vMac doesn’t.)
Sent: Wed Apr 12 04:29:52 2017
Hi Paul,
Is there a way folk can contribute to this project? The Fool's Errand brought back very good memories and I would like to chip in a few bucks to whatever costs there are.
Sandy [... last name ...]
[... email address ...]
Thanks. Some ways are listed in the helping the Gryphel Project page.
Sent: Wed Apr 5 18:37:34 2017
Hello Paul and many thanks for the Gryphel Project.
I wonder if there is a way in Gryphel to create a disk image of a copy-protected floppy disk, mount it and have the related software believe it is in the floppy drive.
Thanks in advance.
My e-mail address is [... email address ...]
See this similar previous question.
Sent: Wed Apr 5 00:14:43 2017
Hi Paul,
I recently wanted to try out using mini vMac on an old 68k Mac and it seems that there is some sort of video output bug in the 68k build. All that ever displays is a solid black screen although it does produce sound and might be doing something. Hard to tell without video output. I tried it on a couple different 68k machines under system 7.1.1p & 7.5.5 and inside Basilisk II under system 8.1. Also started a thread on 68kMLA and a couple other people tried it out with similar results. I tried out a couple custom builds too. Any idea how much machine is needed to get full speed Mac plus emulation? a fast 68040?
Thanks for reporting it. I'll look into fixing it in 3.5. Apparently Mini vMac for 68k Mac has been broken in 3.4 all along, and no one has reported it before.
Sent: Mon Apr 3 17:54:55 2017
Hi Paul,
Is there a way we can contribute to this effort? I like (actually, I love) what you did with Fool's Errand and would like to see more games, such as Dungeon of Doom. Either way, is there a way we can send a few bucks your way as a thank you/statement of support?
Thanks. Some ways are listed in the helping the Gryphel Project page.
Since you requested it, I have just added Dungeon of Doom to the software hosted by the Gryphel Project.
Sent: Mon Apr 3 16:50:59 2017
Thanks to your magnificent product, my 1987 Mac game, The Fool's Errand, is reborn in 2017 as well as two others, At the Carnival and 3 in Three. I cannot thank you enough for resurrecting my three classic Mac games for both Macintosh and Windows. I am forever grateful.
Cliff Johnson
[... email address ...]
You are very welcome. I am honored.
And anyone who finds Mini vMac useful is welcome. (Generally, policy is to only respond to contents of feedback, and ignore who it is from, since that can't be verified.)
Sent: Tue Mar 28 10:50:48 2017
(Follow-up to http://www.gryphel.com/c/mail/v4.html#m37)
I was thinking of placing a text "... or browse existing custom variations" (or similar) next to the button "Request custom Variation" with a link to http://www.gryphel.com/c/minivmac/var_serv.html (and the 3.5 Alpha equivalent). But your reasoning makes perfect sense, of course. Thanks again! Have a great day, Karl
Sent: Fri Mar 24 19:17:09 2017
Hi Paul,
might it make sense to provide a link to the Latest Custom Variations somewhere on these pages - that way, we'll be able to browse the latest variations without having to create one on the Custom Variations form page.
If there is such a link then please ignore this message, I've just not been able to find the link.
Thanks for the great software!
Kind regards,
Karl Geiger
There is a link from the Variations Service Directions page. Where else would you suggest?
I don’t particulary wish to encourage people to find an old variation. It is intended that everyone can get exactly the variation they want. Of 7013 variations requested so far, 4140 were unique.
Currently it is faster to get an old variation, but I hope to eventually speed up the Variations Service with further automation. A disadvantage of people looking for old variations is that people may find one close to what they want, and then be surprised by the effect of some of the other options, and might even send a bug report.
Sent: Thu Mar 23 05:50:38 2017
Uh, variation 7202
Keyboard layout was PL PROGRAMIST
I see this variation has the “-akm” option. With this option, Mini vMac will start with many keys remapped. To type normally, you need to press the ‘m’ key (in the US English layout, otherwise, whatever key is at that position on the keyboard). Or you could request another variation without the “-akm” option.
Sent: Wed Mar 22 16:41:28 2017
I have MinivMac variaction 7502 on Windows 10 with MacOS 7.5.3 and my keyboard doesn't work popertry. For example G = =.
Thank you for the bug report. Could you double check the variation number? Variation 7502 was built for OS X.
Also, what keyboard layout are you using? (Something other than US English?)
Sent: Tue Mar 21 10:52:51 2017
Paul,
a follow-up to http://www.gryphel.com/c/mail/v4.html#m33:
Would it be feasible to offer a switch in the Variations Service by which the FPU Emulation can be turned off? Or would that result in an unsuable emulation? (It would also result in a Mac that never actually existed, as far as I know.)
Kind regards, Karl
If you just emulate a Macintosh II with no FPU, it will interestingly enough get to the flashing waiting for disk icon without problem. But when actually starting to boot from a disk, it will soon crash, for various operating system versions I have tried.
Which isn't so promising. If it didn't work because of the ROM, it might be possible to patch the ROM, which Mini vMac can do automatically at the start. (Nonstandard Mac Plus screen sizes are handled this way.) But if the problem is on the boot disk, you'd need to develop patches for each operating system version, and apply it to every boot disk image that anyone will use.
Sent: Mon Mar 13 22:25:26 2017
Hi Paul, thank you very much for your wonderful emulator. I've noted the Mac II is now reliably producing sound (apart from reliably working in all other respects as well). How marvellous!
A note:
When I try to run Claris Resolve on it (version 1.1) or Statview 4 (FPU version), the computer displays error messages (Resolve: 'Value not in range'. then: 'Line 1: ":" incomprehensible', then 'Line 1: "Dialogs:commandstr0" incomprehensible' which keeps being shown in subsequent dialogs after I hit the dialog box's "OK" window), or freezes (Statview FPU).
I run OS 7.5.3 on an 8 MB Mac II.
Running Resolve on a "regular" 68 k Mac (your Plus emulation) works fine, as does Statview 4 (Non-FPU version).
[ ... ]
Perhaps this is related to a discussion here: http://www.gryphel.com/c/mail/v2.html#m20
At least I haven't found any other reference to any issues involving Resolve and an FPU via Google (and none discussing Statview and the FPU).
Thank you again for your wonderful work.
Kind regards,
and have a great day,
Karl Geiger
The current incomplete state of the Macintosh II emulation absolutely should not be relied on for correct floating point arithmetic. The FPU emulation is the main way the Macintosh II emulation is incomplete. (For the Macintosh Plus, without an FPU, floating point is done on the much simpler main CPU, and the emulation should work fine.)
I hope to have opportunity to work on this. But it is a pretty big task.
Sent: Thu Mar 9 03:25:56 2017
Hey there. I tried loading both prograph classic and prograph CPX into minivmac; I have encountered some issues. My system is running 7.5.3. I can't unstuff the CPX sit file at all using Stuffit 4.5. And prograph classic is installed, but it doesn't run. It gives me the error "ILLEGAL INSTRUCTION" and crashes the emulator. If you could help me get it running, thay would be great. Look for prograph on the mac repo site. My email is [... email address ...]. thanks!
For Prograph Classic, you should try it on the Macintosh II emulation of Mini vMac, instead of the default Macintosh Plus emulation. For CPX, you should use a later version of Stuffit (which might require Macintosh II emulation), and then try it in the Macintosh II emulation.
Sent: Sun Mar 5 22:49:53 2017
The instructions were very confusing. Can you by chance make a video explaining how to do it?
How to do what? And which instructions? To get started with Mini vMac, please see the Getting Started page.
If you search on YouTube, you’ll find many videos that other people have made.
I notice that the user agent string of the web browser you used to post this message indicates you are using Android. If you are trying to use the Android port of Mini vMac, I’m not involved with it, and can’t really help you. You could first try out the OS X, Windows, or Linux ports, which I could help you with, and after figuring that out, try the Android port.
Sent: Sat Mar 4 17:10:37 2017
Re:
All right, is ok. And for the Question of Pinyin. That is not Commonly use in Chinese so that's may make somebody confuse. so Thank you for that.
Yours,
Michael
Sent: Sat Mar 4 12:01:24 2017
Is this possible to translate it to Chinese?
I can translate it.
But I Don't Know whether it can be display.
And can you reply me to my Email?
[... email address ...]
Michael
Thank you for offering to translate the Mini vMac user interface strings to Chinese. Unfortunately, as mentioned on the Mini vMac Localization page, displaying Chinese characters is not currently feasible for Mini vMac.
I wonder, would displaying a pinyin romanization of a Chinese translation be useful to anyone?
Sent: Sun Feb 26 13:08:13 2017
I believe the file
http://www.gryphel.com/d/sw/games/raysmaze/c/rays-maze-15.bin
on page
http://www.gryphel.com/c/sw/games/raysmaze/index.html.
should be called .sit rather .bin as it is the StuffIt archive which one obtains if one decodes the .bin file on the author's original page, rather than the .bin file itself. Either that or perhaps that file should be the original .bin file?
Thank you for pointing this out.
I have replaced the copy hosted on the Gryphel project with the version that is now at the original page. It has an earlier modification date, so I would guess that it is the more definitive version.
Sent: Sun Feb 19 09:27:03 2017
Hi Paul,
I have had a lot of success getting old (pre 1992) games to work with the Macintosh II emulation. However, I notice that LucasArts adventure games are prone to severe problems, such as freezing entirely on startup (Loom), or displaying corrupted color graphics (i.e. a 'psychedelic' color palette). The color issue affects Monkey Island 1 and 2 (256 colors) as well as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (16 colors).
Anyway, I just wanted to report this in case others are experiencing the same thing. I suppose the way these games were programmed does not sit well with the current state of the video emulation.
Appreciate all your efforts!
Regards,
Adam
I would guess that you are using Mini vMac 3.4.1, the stable version? The color issue may be fixed in the 3.5 alpha (because indexed SetEntries is implemented).
I have tried launching Loom 1.0 in System 7.1 using Mini vMac variation 7119, and didn't see a problem.
Sent: Wed Feb 15 11:12:31 2017
Hi Paul,
I'm trying to compile Mini vMac for Mac OS X using Xcode version 8.2.1 (8C1002). I just downloaded it from the AppStore. My problem is that when I try to compile it I get the following error message:
"The run destination My Mac is not valid for Running the scheme 'minivmac'"
I am not familiar with Xcode (or any other similar app) so I thought that maybe you can help me with this.
Thanks.
Jose
If you simply want a custom variation, rather than to examine and work on the source code, you can use the Variations Service. It is pretty automated, so that it is much faster for me to build dozens of variations than it is to answer a single question about how to compile Mini vMac.
As for compiling with Xcode 8, this previous message may help.
Sent: Tue Feb 14 08:05:40 2017
Is there any way to add the ability to run on Mac OS X in a full screen rootless environment that is rootless and integrates in a way to basically be like the classic environment that was in Mac OS X up to 10.4 on PPC that uses the Apple menu bar with menus from running classic 68k programs. It would be wonderful to be able to run old programs like FoxPro and Visual FoxPro again. I would almost do anything to see this again and work on my MacBook Air.
Anything is possible, not everything is feasible. VMWare Fusion’s Unity and Parallels Coherence show it can be done. But I expect it takes a lot more hacking of the host and guest operating systems than would be reasonable for “Mini” vMac. If someone wanted to pay me a standard senior programmer salary for a few years to work on it, I'd be willing to try. But I doubt that your “almost do anything” stretches that far. (I suspect that it would actually take significantly less time, but I couldn't commit to that. You never know for sure how big a programming project is until it is finished.)
By the way, presumably you should be able to run your old programs without such a feature, already.
Sent: Sat Feb 11 16:41:55 2017
It stays on a floppy disk with a question symbol
It is waiting for a disk image. See Getting Started with Mini vMac. Or do you mean you tried to use a disk image but nothing happened?
Sent: Fri Feb 10 22:14:40 2017
I requested a variation of mini vMac at about 5 PM today (-t imch -m II -fullscreen 1), but I found what I was looking for on the Latest Custom Variations page, so I'd like to cancel my request.
Stephen Jablon [... email address ...]
Thanks, but don’t worry about it. Producing variations is pretty automated, each additional one takes only a few extra seconds. Not making a requested variation is not automated and would take far longer.
Sent: Sun Feb 5 23:03:03 2017
I can't build Mini vMac 3.4.1 with Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition.I followed the instructions in the website,but i get this when i try to build it:
------ Build started: Project: minivmac, Configuration: Release Win32 ------ Compiling... PROGMAIN.c MOUSEMDV.c ASCEMDEV.c ADBEMDEV.c VIDEMDEV.c SCRNEMDV.c SONYEMDV.c SCSIEMDV.c ROMEMDEV.c RTCEMDEV.c SCCEMDEV.c IWMEMDEV.c VIA2EMDV.c VIAEMDEV.c MINEM68K.c M68KITAB.c GLOBGLUE.c MYOSGLUE.c c:\users\maxas\desktop\minivmac-3.4.1-wx86\src\CNFGRAPI.h(16) : fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'windows.h': No such file or directory Generating Code... Build log was saved at "file://c:\Users\Maxas\Desktop\minivmac-3.4.1-wx86\bld\BuildLog.htm" minivmac - 1 error(s), 0 warning(s) ========== Build: 0 succeeded, 1 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========
This are my build options:
-t wx86
-lang spa
-m II
-speed 3
I tried putting the -ev line,putting just the first line(maybe typing mistakes) but still the same.
Any help?
‘windows.h’ is a header file that should have been included with the development environment. So Visual C++ may not be completely installed. You could try installing a more recent Visual C++ version, and then use the appropriate ‘-ev’ option.
By the way, if you simply want a custom variation, rather than to examine and work on the source code, you can use the Variations Service. It is pretty automated, so that it is much faster for me to build dozens of variations than it is to answer a single question about how to compile Mini vMac.
Sent: Mon Feb 5 20:15:44 2017
Paul,
It's been a while, but I decided after years to try and build the latest 3.4.1 source on my Mac. I'm running macOS Sierra and I assumed there would be some hurdles. I was, unsurprisingly, correct. I wanted to share this with you so that it might help anyone else trying to build.
1) The Makefile generated by the -ci [‘-cl’?] option has paths that have long since vanished. When building on (probably!) MacOS X 10.10+ the SDK path has changed to this (it needed to be modified in two places).
mk_COptions = -c -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -Wno-uninitialized -Wundef -Wstrict-prototypes -mdynamic-no-pic -fpascal-strings -arch i386 -mmacosx-version-min=10.4 -isysroot /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/ -Os
It might be worth mentioning on the build (or developer options) page.
2) When building with the inexplicably obtuse Xcode 8, I was unable to massage the Xcode 2 (default) project file into something that would work. Instead I specified -ev 6400 and generated an Xcode 6 project file. When loaded Xcode graciously fixed various issues (clicking on the yellow warning box on the top left and applying all changes), but I needed to change two settings manually next:
a) Change Architectures to 32-bit Intel (i386)
b) Change Valid Architectures to i386
These same changes didn't help with the generated v2 project file - nothing I changed would stop it from saying: The run destination My Mac is not valid for Running the scheme 'minivmac'.
I'm not sure debugging for Xcode 2 is really worth your time, but at least there's a semi-sure fire method to building. Honestly, the cli method is vastly easier than wandering aimlessly in the Xcode UI; at least for those of us who are at home in unix.
Thanks as always for all of your hard work.
John
I should sometime find time to try out the latest Xcode and add support for it. Thanks for letting me know what needs to be updated. Until then, yes, you should definitely use the “-ev 6400” option with it, certainly not the default “-ev 2410”, which should only be used with Xcode 2.4.1. I should change the default to the latest version, since I’m no longer using Xcode tools for development.
Sent: Sun Feb 5 14:58:01 2017
http://gryphel.com/c/sw/arcade/glider/index.html
you might be pleased to know that the "last known URL" which is dead... is mirrored on archive.org, including the downloads.
I have been considering add links to archive.org, after a previous message.
Sent: Tue Jan 31 17:39:51 2017
Can this copy out the ROM of a 6805 CPU? I have an obsolete CPU that has died. I would like to copy the code out of a working CPU so that I can reprogram a new CPU.
Thanks for your time.
my enail is [... email address ...]
Are you asking about CopyRoms? No, it is for 680x0 Macintosh computers only, and only copies the main ROM of that computer.
Sent: Mon Jan 30 01:39:05 2017
Just wanted to say thanks for an excellent "product", I was able to get up and running quickly with little ramp-up and zero fuss.
I'm sure you get plenty of spam through this line and I hope this and other "thank you" messages are a frequent occurence.
Thank you!
- Lee O.
[... email address ...]
I’m glad you like Mini vMac.
Sent: Fri Jan 27 00:56:22 2017
Would love to see an option for a "blue screen" to emulate that classic Mac look!
That would be a reasonable compile time preference option. I think the tricky part is that the best exact shade of blue probably would depend on the exact monitor being used.
Sent: Wed Jan 25 14:22:54 2017
Is there a way to add a simulated hard drive to the vMac?
[... email address ...]
Cheers!
Not exactly. But Mini vMac can use disk images of any size for its emulated floppy drive. And it can automatically mount disks on launch. So the effect is much the same.
See the Floppy Drives section of the Mini vMac Emulated Hardware Reference.
Sent: Mon Jan 23 08:24:50 2017
Hi,
Will the -gkf 0 setting present on the current alpha version be available in the variations service? It doesn't seem to be available in the alpha variations service right now and I find this setting to be quite useful.
Any chance of including it?
Thanks!
Oops, that is an oversight. I'll add that to the Variations Service.
update - Actually it already is in the Alpha Variations Service, under “Grab Keys in Full Screen”. (The main Variations Service only has options in the stable version.) But the option was not marked as Alpha in the options documentation, which I've fixed now.
Sent: Tue Jan 23 08:07:34 2017
[previous message]
[from : Mauricio ... email address ...]
Hello Paul,
I program very little, but I can understand code in general very well. Not a full-fledged programmer. Let’s say I can read but not write that well. I am more of a designer. So I decided to make things as ready as possible, that was the aim.
The ê chars were a miss, sorry about that, I hate my language! It is unpractical... great for love letters, but awful to the day by day practices. There are mainly 2 branches of portuguese, pt_PT used by Portugal, Angola, etc, and pt_BR used only in Brazil. More or less english from S and UK, that have very feel changes and a lot of accent different pronunciations, so Brazilian Portuguese is the proper denomination. But as with UK/US english, all portuguese speaking peoples can read that with no effort, considering they know how to read.
Changes are usually little words to describe things. For instance, I’ve read somewhere that the word napkin in Australia means women's sanitary product. Here for instance we have the word “paneleiro” derived from “panela” (cooking pot) that means someone that cannot surf, there means homosexual in a derogatory way. Things like that that you cannot miss. But I’ve believe there are little to zero radically different words like that in the translation and any portuguese language speaking person can understand 100% of it.
Yes I’ve used the english localization as starting point, the comments were untouched aside from the name. And yes, please, you can put my website (www.mteam7.com). I apreciate that.
I love you app! Brought my Classic BACK! Little side story, [ ... ]
And now I have Mini vMac. Not as good as the beige old real Mac II I had, but AWESOME nevertheless. Thank you guys for this!
I also made a tutorial (in portuguese) teaching some of the tricks about emulation and the Mini vMac. I’ll make another one in english just to follow my Blog’s M.O. of having all the blogs translated, altho would be an overkill. There are tons of english tutos about Mini vMac out there, but very very VERY feel in PT.
PS: Sorry about the email/book. I talk too much. ;-)
Sent: Tue Jan 23 08:24:46 2017
I just noticed that you used *prb* as the flag for the language. Just a tip, I believe *ptb* (portuguese Brazil) or *bpt* (Brazilian portuguese) or simply *por* (portuguese) would be better.
Thanks again Paul.
I’ve added links to your website. I’ll change the name to ‘ptb’ in the next snapshot. Thanks again for your translation.
Sent: Sat Jan 21 17:52:59 2017
[previous message]
[from : Mauricio ... email address ...]
[file “STRCONST.h.zip” attached]
There you have it Paul.
Thank you for the little emulator. Really really cool!
Thanks! I have merged your translation in the latest Development source snapshot.
I see you are a programmer, and your translation is already in the encoding used by Mini vMac. That made merging easy. I did make a few changes: (1) You appear to have started from the English translation, which had the copyright “Paul C. Pratt, Pierre Lemieux” (I originally created this file, and later used suggestions made by Pierre Lemieux). For your translation I have changed this to “Mauricio, Paul C. Pratt”. (2) I updated the copyright date to 2017. (3) Removed a few spaces to change comment format back to Mini vMac style, which is enforced by some scripts of mine (so I can't easily make exceptions). (4) In five places, the character ê was not in the Mini vMac encoding (“;ie”). (5) Renamed the file to match the new style in the development branch. (6) Changed the comment to say that is Brazilian Portuguese, instead of just Portuguese. Which I'm not so sure about.
I gather from Wikipedia that the written form of Brazilian Portuguese is much closer to other Portuguese than the spoken form, but not identical. So I'm not clear, is your translation specifically Brazilian Portuguese, or would it be acceptable to speakers of all other forms of Portuguese?
Another question, do you prefer to only use your first name, or would like your last name to appear in the copyright notice, credits file, news, and such? (I'm assuming your first name is public, since “These strings were translated by Mauricio” appears in your file.) Also would you like a link to a website of yours?
update - follow-up message
Sent: Thu Jan 19 13:52:03 2017
Is this proj still active? I can translate it to Portuguese BR (pt_BR).
Let me know please --> [... email address ...]
Yes, it is active. The latest news can be found on the Gryphel Project main page.
Translations are most welcome. Some information is on the Mini vMac Localization page. Basically, you can just create a text file corresponding to existing translation files, and send it to me (or send me a link). I would then add it to the development version of Mini vMac, and compile a variation with it for you to test.
update - follow-up message
Sent: Sun Jan 15 14:17:29 2017
Do you know anyone who might be interested in a free Mach2 Forth 2.13 package. I can send a pic. Just have it in my house, figure that somebody into Retro might have fun with it.
Randal
[... email address ...]
One of the Mini vMac related forums may be a good place to ask.
Sent: Mon Jan 2 16:47:59 2017
Hi Paul,
Thanks for your excellent work on Mini vMac. The Mac II support seems to be almost perfect now .. I have a range of games working flawlessly in color in both Systems 6 and 7. It is amazing to see games like Vette working in 16 color mode, which I was never able to do with alternative software like Basilisk and SheepShaver.
My only problem is with how Mini vMac is functioning with QuickTime. Some games like Myst will tend to (randomly) crash during the QuickTime movie sequences, and other games will play the movies too quickly, or the sound will go out of sync with the video.
I have experimented with a range of builds (all Mac II) across various systems (7.1 to 7.5.5), speeds (x1 up to all out) and different QuickTime versions (1.6 up to 2.5 from memory), but nothing is really helping. It is erratic and unpredictable, and seems to be related to QuickTime itself, as the affected games will all work perfectly up to the point QuickTime is utilized.
Are you aware of any specific issues that affect Mini vMac's performance with the QuickTime software?
If so, do you know of any build options that I could use which might improve QuickTime performance or stability?
Thanks again for all your hard work on this excellent software.
Regards,
Adam Meath
Perth, Western Australia
It is good that much software works well in the incomplete Macintosh II emulation.
Currently, the biggest thing known to be incomplete is the FPU emulation (for floating point arithmetic). It wouldn’t be suprising if this affects QuickTime.
Sent: Mon Jan 2 15:31:37 2017
Thank you very much for your Variations Service! :-) Much appreciated!
Sent: Tue Dec 27 01:10:08 2016
Hello Paul,
I'd like to report a bug with the Macintosh II build on Windows (maybe other builds and platforms too; haven't tried) in somewhat specific circumstances.
With both SimCity 2000 v1.0 and with StuffIt Lite 4.6 I've noticed that the Mini vMac application will lockup completely while using these applications. The emulation stops and eventually Windows grays the vMac window and adds "Not Responding" to the window title. However, if you click the vMac window then after about ten to fifteen seconds the emulation resumes and Mini vMac and the Mac software again responds. This cycle quickly repeats again though so these particular titles are not really usable at this point.
I'm running System 7.1 within Mini vMac and I can provide samples of the system software and applications if it would assist with investigation. The specific Mini vMac build was created in September using the download service on the homepage. It's mnvm5993-3.4.1 using the following options: -t wx86 -m II -depth 2 -sss 4 -drives 8.
For StuffIt Lite the lockup occurs whenever an archive window is openeded with the application. With SimCity 2000 it happens whenever the simulation is actually running (not when paused). It doesn't seem to affect the upgraded 1.2 version of SimCity 2000 though.
Thanks!
Stephen Barbieri
Thank you for the detailed bug report. I was able to reproduce this issue in a different version of StuffIt. It appears that the SoftFloat code used by Mini vMac for FPU emulation doesn't cope well with invalid input. I put in another check in the divide function, the same place where I had put in a check a long time ago for a similar issue, and it seems to prevent the pause.
Sent: Thu Dec 22 21:08:50 2016
It might also be useful linking to the content on web.archive.org and ensuring all your own site gets regular backups there via an explicit robots.txt entry.
Links to web.archive.org could be a good idea, I’ll consider it.
Sent: Sat Dec 17 01:25:58 2016
Paul,
Can you send us a message at [... email address ...] when you make your updates so that we can cover them on our website and in our magazine.
Thanks Much
Bill Martens
A.P.P.L.E.
www.callapple.org
Thank you for your interest. Lately there has been a new development version each week. Official releases are much less frequent. I announce them on Twitter, I’ll try to remember to notify you also. (I wrote myself a note on a release checklist, I just have to remember to look at this list.)
Sent: Sun Dec 11 19:22:04 2016
How can I start using it?
See the Getting Started with Mini vMac instructions.
Sent: Sat Dec 10 02:35:05 2016
Wanted to ask about copy protection in Mini vMac. Pinball Construction Set always crashes with a system error of 03. Furthermore, the B&W Ultima III always crashes with a system error of 05. Any way to get around these crashes?
I don't know about these programs specifically, but generally copy protection would deal with the floppy hardware at a lower level than Mini vMac emulates. It would also tend to be at a lower level than the Finder and archiving software deal with, so it is likely that copies simply don't contain all the information needed. You would have to break the copy protection before copying it from the original disks.
Sent: Thu Dec 8 11:32:10 2016
Sending good wishes to John V. Holder - his site is hacked and he seems to be MIA. I hope he's all right. Feel free to pass on my best wishes if you have any communication with him. If not, well...
His site doesn't look to me to be hacked, just that it disappeared and the domain name was taken over by someone else. (That is common, which is why I'm gradually moving to hosting software at www.gryphel.com/c/sw instead of just linking.) Sorry, I don't have communication with him.
Sent: Sat Dec 3 18:24:21 2016
When I try to select Control Panel > Monitors > Colors > Millions I get "Abornal Situation" message and the screen change to yellow color.
I use variation service, Mini vMac 6427.exe.
Sory for bad english.
Are you using System 6? There seems to be some issue with using Millions of Colors in System 6, in the current incomplete state of Macintosh II emulation. It can be made to work by installing “32-Bit QuickDraw”, from the System Install disks using the “Customize” button.
Sent: Sat Dec 3 01:07:49 2016
This is fun to play around with. Thank you for taking the time to keep this updated.
I’m glad you like Mini vMac.
Sent: Fri Nov 25 08:30:14 2016
I'm using version 3.5 (I also tried earlier versions)... a custom built for emulating Mac II... installed System 7.5 in it and it seems to run well, but there seems to be an issue with those colorful "Desktop Patterns" in System 7.5 if you are using a build that supports more than 256 colors (it seems that you can only use black&white desktop patterns then in Mini vMac if you are using a version with more than 256 colors, but in BasiliskII colorful desktop patterns can be used even if you are using millions of colors)... Maybe it has something to do with builds that are made for more than 256 colors not supporting 256 color mode (I mean, in BasiliskII one version supports different color modes and you can choose under "Monitors" in MacOS do you want 256 colors, thousands of colors or millions colors... but with Mini vMac if you are using a build for "thousands of colors", then you don't get "256 colors" mode under "Monitors")... Please see if you can make one version that can support 256 colors, thousands of colors and millions of colors at the same time (so you can just choose under "Monitors" how many colors you want)... and could you also add support for more than just 4MB of RAM, if it's not too complicated? BTW... You don't have to reply... I'm just sending a suggestion that I think would improve Mini vMac :)
It seems unlikely that having 256 colors as an option would have effect on the Thousands or Millions of Colors modes, though I guess it isn't impossible.
The Macintosh II emulation supports 8MB of RAM. More than that is tricky since the ROM isn’t 32 bit clean.
I had looked into hacking the Macintosh Plus emulation to support more the 4MB of RAM, by moving the ROM image in the address space, and concluded it wasn’t feasible, because ROM patches in the operating system depend on the exact location of ROM routines.