Help me choose the best emulator

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blarg
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Help me choose the best emulator

Post by blarg »

Hi, everyone. It's fantastic to see a thriving Mac emulation community. I'm looking for some advice to help out my dad. He has kept all of his business records on Mac machines since the early 90s. He continued this practice until recently when he started to have some hardware issues. I'm hoping we can meet his needs through emulation. He currently has a relatively modern pc running Windows 10. All of his business records were created on his old mac using a program called Filemaker II. He also says he has some documents made with MacWrite II he would like to keep. My hope is be able to run these programs on a Windows-based emulator. Print capability would be fantastic. Is this possible? If so, which emulator is best equipped for this?

His current mac is running OS 8.0 (Power Mac 7100/80)
Filemaker II 1.0
MacWrite II 1.1v1

Thanks for reading!
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24bit
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by 24bit »

Your dad or you do have the choice. Both apps run fine with MiniVMac II, Basilisk II and SheepShaver.
If you should need Mac HD floppy support, Basilisk II Build 142 may be worth considering.
Build 142 would also allow using the PPC 7100/80 HDD, given you could add a SCSI HBA to the W10 rig.
Setting up ASPI in W10 may be a challenge though, especially with 64bit Windows.
Otherwise, I would go with SheepShaver and MacOS 8.6.
Printing from SheepShaver or Basilisk II is possible, alas I never felt the need for it.
blarg
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by blarg »

Thanks for your reply. From reading through the forums and setup guides, it looks like SheepShaver is more stable. We don't necessarily need SCSI for mac hard disk or floppy disks as long as we have a way to initially get the files containing his business records transferred from the Power Mac onto the Windows 10 machine running the emulator, which is our biggest concern. He has a bunch of old AppleTalk accessories, but I'm not sure if the Power Mac has been online since the 90's when he used to connect through a 56k modem. He also said the Power Mac has a cd drive, but we don't think it has write capabilities.

What do you think would be the most headache-free way to get the files transferred?
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mabam
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by mabam »

If the Win 10 machine has an SCSI adapter, it should be possible to use HFVExplorer to copy the disk’s contents to an HFS disk image which can then be mounted by SheepShaver.
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by blarg »

Thanks for the reply. We would be able to buy a SCSI adapter if it helps the process. I'm not sure what the method you're describing involves. If I make an image of my files on the old mac, they're still on the old mac. How can I get them onto the Windows machine running the emulator?
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24bit
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by 24bit »

mabam has the how-to for setting up an Apple file server, if needed. ;)

Do you have an adapter for the AAUI-15 port to twisted pair CAT-5 or so?
In that case, I would create disk images with DisKCopy 6 on the 7100/80 of all needed files.
Upload the .img files to some free storage service via Classilla and download them again to your W10 rig.
There are more elegant solutions, but if you just want to backup once, it should do.

The downloaded .img files may be added to the SheepShaver Volumes GUI,
lost resource forks of the .img files should not matter when mounting them via Volumes.
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mabam
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by mabam »

blarg wrote:Print capability would be fantastic.
If this means that your dad is printing from his Mac to a LocalTalk printer and he would like to keep doing that (but I very much doubt that’s what you mean), then this:
24bit wrote:mabam has the how-to for setting up an Apple file server, if needed. ;)
would, merely as a side-effect, be a solution to keep using the printer. (But there should be an easier way to do that – provided there’s still a way to make Basilisk II or SheepShaver using AppleTalk under Windows 10).
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by blarg »

I apologize for my ignorance. I'm not very knowledgeable about macs and my dad is of an older generation and we're still social distancing so I haven't been able to take a look at his machine myself. Here's what I found out:

He thinks he still has his 56k dial-up modem, but he's not sure if he has a provider to dial into.
According to the internet, his machine has a aaui-15 port.
He also said he has an external hard drive. I'm assuming it's SCSI. Maybe this would be the best way to move the files?

I tried looking into some of the recommendations for adapters you all have mentioned to buy but I'm not really sure what's what. Does it violate the forum rules to link a couple things on ebay or amazon that might work for us? Like a SCSI to USB adapter that an emulator running on windows would be able to access? Or a way to get the aaui-15 port connected to his current router for internet or LAN options to move the files? Sorry I'm such a novice with all of this.
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24bit
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by 24bit »

Don´t worry, your question is not that easy to answer.
Even worse, all adapter gadgets for the PowerMac 7100/80 became rare and expensive meanwhile.
I was using these kind of adapters back in the days:
https://www.ebay.de/itm/Dayna-EasyNet-T ... SweHtePAUW
Unfortunately you will need a network card with a BNC port on the PC side to receive data.
Such PCI cards are available second hand, but drivers for Windows 10 will be hard to find.

Null-Modem
As you do have a cable connecting the Mac to a modem, maybe a Null-Modem is the one for you.
Yo want a Null-Modem Adapter like one of these:
https://www.ebay.de/itm/Delock-Nullmode ... SwqDheZdYJ
https://www.ebay.de/itm/D-SUB-Nullmodem ... a7d4b7e181
Which one to choose, depends on your dads modem cable.

With the adapter you may connect to any PC that still has a COM port.
Best use ZTerm on the Mac and HyperTerminal on the PC to send files.
Files to transfer should be inside of a .img container at least.

Please look here for the apps: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/null-modem
Do not expect a fast connection, a 700K file will take a bout 5 minutes to travel over serial.
______________________________________________________________________________________
SCSI

Your external HDD may be a perfect solution too, if you can manage to plug in a SCSI HBA into your Windows machine.
Best look for a AHA 2940U like this one:
https://www.ebay.de/itm/Adaptec-Control ... xyUrZS2paK

The main problem with SCSI is the lack of drivers.
If you can set up a Windows 2000 machine, all should be well. But you will need a vintage PC for that.
Luckily there seem to be working Adaptec drivers for Windows 10:
https://www.savagetaylor.com/2018/02/11 ... ptec-78xx/
At last you need a matching SCSI cable to connect your external HDD.
PCI SCSI HBA usually will have HD SCSI-2 connectors.

As said above, Basilisk II Build 142 does support SCSI devices, given that the HBA is working with Windows.
My setup was with a Windows 98SE and Windows 2000 rig, never tried SCSI with Windows 10 64bit.

___________________________________________________________________________________________
Floppy

While thinking of Basilisk II Build 142, I would consider file transfer over Mac HD floppies.
If you have only few or small files to transfer, a 1.4MB floppy may do.
You may move all files without further procedures on Mac formatted floppies to the PC running Basilisk II - B142.
Ctrl-Shift-F11 mounts a floppy from the PC floppy in Basilsisk II - B142.
That way you can move all needed stuff to a disk image, which may be mounted with SheepShaver finally.
Note that USB-2 floppy drives on the PC side will work just as good as the old internal floppy drives.
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by darthnvader »

You don't really have any easy options.

SCSI to USB is expensive, seem some Ebay seller has cornered the market on these, and the 50pin is not quite the same as the 50pin on the 7100's HD, so you'd also need and adapter and a way to power the drive. Also, who knows what driver issues you'd have with Windows.

AAUI-15 to Ethernet Transceivers look to be cheap, but you are going to need another computer to do Appletalk to get the files off. Windows 2000 had this ability and it could be hacked into XP, but I don't think it works at all in Win XP+.

Get a cheap iBook and a AAUI-15 to Ethernet Transceivers and do Appletalk to transfer the files. Once you have the files on the iBook create a CD or image file you can share with SheepShaver or just let your dad use the iBook to run his Mac OS stuff.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-iBook-G4 ... SwKrte5sPH
http://www.applerescueofdenver.com/prod ... ansceiver/

What type of printer is it?
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mabam
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by mabam »

darthnvader wrote:Get a cheap iBook and a AAUI-15 to Ethernet Transceivers and do Appletalk to transfer the files. Once you have the files on the iBook create a CD or image file you can share with SheepShaver or just let your dad use the iBook to run his Mac OS stuff.
Get a pre-installed A2SERVER from here: http://ivanx.com/a2server/a2server_virtualbox.html and you have AppleTalk in a virtual machine on your Windows computer. If you have an AppleTalk printer you need to get running, let me know.
Jorpho
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by Jorpho »

blarg wrote:All of his business records were created on his old mac using a program called Filemaker II.
It might be worth pointing out that Filemaker is enormously popular and it may be worth looking into whether versions that can run natively in Windows 10 can still open those business records.
blarg
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by blarg »

Sorry to necro a dead thread, but I wanted to update you on where things stand and see what our options are. Dad's ImageWriter printer died a few days ago, so he asked me to look into this again for him. I set him up with Basilisk II and got his beloved Filemaker II program running. I set him up to print to a PostScript file to a directory that he can access from Windows. Adobe opens it and makes a pdf from it. No issues with any of that, but we still haven't been able to get his old files from the mac to the new virtual machine. I honestly didn't understand most of the advice that followed my original post (the jargon and acronyms were a bit over my head). It's not a problem for me to set up something like a Windows 2000 machine or a raspberry pi if those would help, but here's what I deem to be our current assets:

1) a working mac with a working floppy drive
2) a 50 pin scsi external hard drive that works when connected to the mac. I think the port it connects to on the mac is a parallel port
3) a windows 10 laptop with basilisk ii up and running
4) a usb floppy drive that may or may not work - Windows seems to detect it, but we could not read any of his disks (the mac reads them fine) and I don't know of any other way to test it.
5) an Apple LocalTalk Locking Connector Kit Din 8
6) misc scsi and parallel cables
7) one or more modems that probably still work

There's got to be a simple way to move the files, right?
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Cat_7
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by Cat_7 »

Hi,

How much data would you like to transfer? Are there any files bigger than what would fit on a floppy?
If the Windows machine has a floppy drive, you can use the HFV Explorer program to copy files from Mac floppies onto the image file Basilisk uses as its hard disk. This works with built-in floppy drives. I don't know whether it works with USB floppy drives. You might test that.

To have access to the whole hard disk in the old mac you can connect it to the your network.
You can get an aaui-15 to RJ45 ethernet adapter. By enabling file sharing on the old mac you should be able to download the required files directly into Basilisk.

The SCSI route is a no-go. Current Basilisk versions cannot read the SCSI disk and you need an adapter and software to read the content on Windows. If you do copy this way vital information can be lost and Basilisk will not be able to read the files.
blarg
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by blarg »

Thanks for the reply, Cat_7. None of the individual files are too big for a floppy, so that is definitely viable if we can get it to work. I have a new unbranded usb floppy drive here and HFV Explorer on my Windows 10 machine. The program appears to work and the floppy shows up as drive A, but I get a read error when I try to read any of the disks (we confirmed the mac can still read these disks and the data is intact). He has a few old DOS disks as well, and I haven't been able to read those via Windows either, and putting one of his blank floppy disks inside and attempting to format it gives an "error formatting disk" instead of "error reading disk". It's possible that the floppy drive just doesn't work (I haven't thought of a good way to test it since I don't have any "current" disks to try). Is it possible that I need some kind of Windows driver for it to work properly with HFV Explorer?

update: Windows Device Manager shows my USB Floppy under Floppy disk drives as: TEAC USB UF000x USB Device. It looks like there's other reports of this drive not playing nice with newer versions of Windows. I have a linux machine available, but I haven't found HFV Explorer for Linux. If nobody knows of some equivalent Linux program, it looks like my best path forward will be to get Windows 2000 running on something.
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by adespoton »

blarg wrote: Tue Feb 07, 2023 1:17 pm Thanks for the reply, Cat_7. None of the individual files are too big for a floppy, so that is definitely viable if we can get it to work. I have a new unbranded usb floppy drive here and HFV Explorer on my Windows 10 machine. The program appears to work and the floppy shows up as drive A, but I get a read error when I try to read any of the disks (we confirmed the mac can still read these disks and the data is intact). He has a few old DOS disks as well, and I haven't been able to read those via Windows either, and putting one of his blank floppy disks inside and attempting to format it gives an "error formatting disk" instead of "error reading disk". It's possible that the floppy drive just doesn't work (I haven't thought of a good way to test it since I don't have any "current" disks to try). Is it possible that I need some kind of Windows driver for it to work properly with HFV Explorer?

update: Windows Device Manager shows my USB Floppy under Floppy disk drives as: TEAC USB UF000x USB Device. It looks like there's other reports of this drive not playing nice with newer versions of Windows. I have a linux machine available, but I haven't found HFV Explorer for Linux. If nobody knows of some equivalent Linux program, it looks like my best path forward will be to get Windows 2000 running on something.
Does his old Mac happen to have a CD-R drive (external or internal)?

That's how I eventually did a similar migration -- burn everything to CD, then image the CD and mount it in BII.
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by blarg »

No CD-R drive, the cd drive only reads discs.
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by adespoton »

Can you get the PowerMac and your BII computer on the same physical Ethernet network? You could share over AppleShare in that case.
blarg
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by blarg »

adespoton wrote: Tue Feb 07, 2023 10:56 pm Can you get the PowerMac and your BII computer on the same physical Ethernet network? You could share over AppleShare in that case.
Yes, I could do that. Is that where the aaui-15 to rj45 adapter comes into play? I haven't yet looked into networking with Basilisk. Is that an easy setup using the computer's existing lan jack?? I'm going to try to wrestle around with floppy drives a bit more first before I sink any money into it, but that may be what I need to do.
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by Cat_7 »

Assuming the Windows machine is connected to the lan with a cable then once you have the old mac on the same lan with the rj45 adapter (works well, I have one), it is a matter of adding some lines to the Basilisk preferences file.
After that, and enabling file sharing in Basilisk/Mac OS, the Basilisk disk should be select-able in the chooser the old mac. I use this method of exchanging files all the time.

Best,
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blarg
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by blarg »

We found an adapter in a box of old stuff that physically fits the old mac computer and tails us out to rj45. What do we need to do to the machine running basilisk to see if we can get them to talk?
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by Cat_7 »

Aha!

Did you connect the mac to the same network/router as the Windows machine? Did it receive an IP address from your router? (see the TCP/IP control panel).

On the Basilisk side open the BasiliskII_prefs file with notepad. Add the line:

redir tcp:548:10.0.2.15:548

And save the file. Next, start Basilisk.exe (not through the GUI),

Then enable file sharing in Mac OS in Basilisk: enter user name, password and machine name. Enable the option to share over TCP/IP.

On the old mac use the chooser option “AppleShare” and then “Server IP address”. Enter the IP address of the Windows machine running Basilisk (not from within Basilisk running Mac OS) and enter your credentials.

Good luck!

Best,
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blarg
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by blarg »

No luck with the adapter we found. The mac freezes with it connected and gets an image of a floppy disk and question mark when trying to boot with it connected. Can you recommend a link to the correct adapter to get us to rj45?

Here's a couple of pics of the adapter we found that didn't work:
https://ibb.co/fFP0MfD
https://ibb.co/0CTpLzQ
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by Cat_7 »

What you are looking for is something like this:
https://i0.wp.com/applerescueofdenver.c ... C829&ssl=1

Best,
Cat_7
blarg
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Re: Help me choose the best emulator

Post by blarg »

Thanks for all your help so far with this. We were delayed a few days waiting for the adapter to arrive and his mac monitor died, but we're back in business today. We are able to get an ip address on the old mac (intermittently). It seems like maybe it just times out when not actually doing anything. Pic below of what we have, but it sometimes populates with the expected info. We haven't been able to connect via appleshare yet. It hangs for about 2 minutes when we try to connect to the server and then gives a timeout error. The only thing I noticed when following your instructions was we did not see any option to share over tcp/ip when turning on file sharing in basilisk.

https://ibb.co/1vbQc0L
https://ibb.co/xmTgjXd
https://ibb.co/dfvZbbG
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