AuthorCobb ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Old Mac Emulator10/8/2021
This is often referred to as “Classic” Mac OS. The Vintage Mac Museum is a private, working collection of the pre-Intel Apple Macintosh.Before macOS, and before OS X, there was just Mac OS. This is a handy way to keep the formatting of old documents you can’t otherwise convert. Get online with your vintage Mac PrintToPDF a free utility to create PDF files on classic Macs running System 7 through Mac OS 9.This got me thinking that it might be interesting to spend some time re-learning “Classic” Mac OS app development.PCE.js emulates classic computers in the browser. While System 6 was the first Mac OS version I used, I didn’t start really writing Mac apps until the Mac OS 8 era. I was recently having a conversation with another developer who grew up using Macintosh computers and we were both reminiscing about some of our early development experiences on Mac. Finally, after the PowerPC transition, I used a Power Macintosh 8500 which ran all of the later versions of “Classic” Mac OS. Then I moved up to a Macintosh IIsi running System 7. I started using a Mac with System 6 on a Macintosh Classic.I chose to only look for tools that were available for Mac prior to the 1990s. I decided for this exploration that I wanted to stick to early Mac software as much as possible. It enables you to run classic games on a wide range of computers and consoles through.As I mentioned previously I didn’t really start programming until Mac OS 8 and by then CodeWarrior had solidly cemented itself as the IDE of choice for Mac developers. RetroArch is a frontend for emulators, game engines and media players. Game Soundtracks (MP3) High Quality Soundtracks. GBA Emulators (19) NDS Emulators (22) PSX Emulators (33) PSP Emulators (9) PS2 Emulators (14) N64 Emulators (14) GCN Emulators (16) SNES Emulators (29) MAME Emulators (71) NES Emulators (17) View all Emulators Gamer Goodies Gaming Music.Since then, it has become an open source project. It was originally created for BeOS back in 1998. SheepShaverSheepShaver emulates a Power PC Macintosh. I’ll go over some of the more populator emulators and why I chose the one I did.
Old Emulator Mac Museum IsBasilisk IIBasilisk II emulates a 68k Macintosh. Mac OS 7.5.2 was released in 1995 and in turn SheepShaver doesn’t fit my criteria of sticking to software and tools available prior to the 1990s. If you’re interested in running the more recent versions of “Classic” Mac OS this is probably the emulator you should choose. It is also open source, however it is no longer being maintained. This is another very popular emulator and a lot of people looking to emulate 68k Macintoshes choose this one. It’s capable of running up to Mac OS 8.1. Mini vMac is capable of emulating up to Mac OS 7.5.5. It has a focus on the early Macs with the default build emulating a Macintosh Plus. It also emulates a 68k Macintosh. So Mini vMac only has compile time preferences, where as Basilisk II has many run time preferences. For software that will run in either, the emulation in Mini vMac can be more accurate, while Basilisk II offers many more features (including color, larger screen, more memory, network access, and more host integration).Mini vMac aims to stay simple and maintainable. The fundamental technical difference is that Basilisk II doesn’t emulate hardware, but patches the drivers in ROM, while Mini vMac emulates the hardware (with the exception of the floppy drive).The consequences are that some of the earliest Mac software will run in Mini vMac and not Basilisk II, while much of the later software will run in Basilisk II and not Mini vMac. The following sites have been some of the most helpful in terms of finding old software:I mentioned earlier that CodeWarrior was the IDE of choice when I started Mac development but since it came out in the 90s it didn’t fit my criteria for early Mac development. Luckily, there are a few sites that host repositories of software for old Mac OS versions. I went through all of the tutorials and now have a working emulated Mac Plus running System 6.0.8.With an emulator up and running I next needed to find software. It has a good Getting Started page as well as a collection of other Tutorials to help you get system software and get up and running. In the 80s it was quite expensive. MPW was the development environment provided by Apple. THINK Pascal seemed to be fairly popular during the era.An alternative, that I had used a handful of times before CodeWarrior, was the Macintosh Programmer’s Workshop (MPW). They had versions that came out in the late 80s and supported System 6. Both seemed like good potential candidates. I also needed an IDE that supported System 6.While looking for Pascal compilers I came across two main contenders: Borland Turbo Pascal and THINK Pascal. I found a wonderful resource in the Vintage Apple website.Here’s a list of the books I’ve found most useful so far: After downloading MPW 2.0 from the software links above I had a working development environment.The last thing I needed were some good programming books from the time period. This seemed like a fun choice because of the range of languages supported but also because it was the official offerring provided by Apple. ![]() I’ve also started to search out some old Mac viruses from the 80s to take a look at how they worked. While I’ve never written a Mac program in Pascal, I have written many Delphi applications on Windows. What’s Next?With an emulated Mac configured and an IDE chosen I’ve started to write some little test programs in Pascal.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |