Physical game CDs and macOS

[24bit]

Is there a way to mount actual CDs, so that SheepShaver can use those?
The problem is described here: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=10207
SheepShaver 2.4 with OSX 10.6 can use the game CD, just as SheepShaver for Windows.

With macOS I can´t seem to get the game CD mounted.
Purple Moon seems to be among the few, where a mounted CD image does not allow game play.
Am I missing something?
I got the CD mounted once in SheepShaver, as I could install the game files to a local volume, maybe just a glitch?

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

Isn't the problem related to the fact that these disk image are from (Windows/MacOS) hybrid CDs?

[24bit]

Thanks Ronald, that could very possibly be.
As said above, the physical CD does work (as with a real Mac) however with SheepShaver for Windows or OSX 10.8? or lower.
We had some examples with CDs not working with emulators at all, but in this case macOS seems to be involved with the issue.
The CD is not found by the game. Images of the CD are not accepted by the game.



Is there a possibility to mount a CD with SheepShaver 2.5 under macOS?
Otherwise, some virtual machine should help, as long as optical drives are supported with macOS.

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

Physical CDs can only be mounted in Mac OS X 10.7 and earlier. In OSX 10.8 and later a CD image needs to be added to the volumes list instead. There were workarounds, but those are not widely shared here because of related security issues. If I remember well, one possibility was running SheepShaver as root. Another possibility that was discussed was to enable reading raw disks. I do not know exactly how, but it involved using terminal commands. I do not know if those workarounds still work in the latest macOS versions.

I tried 'Rockett's New School', a toast image of a (Mac/Windows) hybrid CD, download link in Macintosh Garden, in my latest SheepShaver 2.4 and 2.5 builds on my Mojave iMac. The image will not mount on the SheepShaver desktop. If I check the CDROM box for the image in SheepShaver Preferences, it somehow mounts as a (useless) Audio-CD. I cannot try earlier SheepShaver builds, like the February 2014 build, because those 'Universal Builds' (Intel + PPC) will not run in Mojave.

Do I understand correctly that the problem CDs work in MacOSX 10.6 if used as physical CDs?

Do those CDs also work there as CD image mounted by adding to the volumes list?

[24bit]

Thanks for the detailed summary!

"Do I understand correctly that the problem CDs work in MacOSX 10.6 if used as physical CDs?"
Yes, exactly.
"Do those CDs also work there as CD image mounted by adding to the volumes list?"
No way. Any CD image I could try is useless to "unlock" game play.

Looks like a dead end somehow.
As the game runs in Windows98 SE (VMWare), this may do as workaround.

[adespoton]

One possibility:
Insert the CD, and then unmount (but do not eject) it.

Next, on the line in the prefs file where you reference the CD, reference the device path instead (/dev/rdisk{n}[s{n}]) or possibly the partition.

Some fiddling may be required.

[24bit]

Thanks, nice thought!
Too bad I´m only getting a requester to format a 557MB drive, no matter which dev/disk2 partition I´m choosing.

[adespoton]

Does the game require the CD? Just thinking that maybe creating a new image from the HFS partition would do the trick.

[Elyus]

The lack of physical CD support is an unfortunate gap in SheepShaver's capabilities. BIN/CUE images would enable virtual mounting of any type of CD, so I've been playing with BIN/CUE support locally (based on Geoffrey Brown's work which I learned via Cat7). Audio tracks are still iffy, and only standard MODE1/2352 binary files are working.

I tried the .toast image Ronald referenced from Mac Garden and found it mounting as a broken Audio CD, so I converted it to BIN/CUE in Toast 7. According to Toast, the resulting BIN/CUE is encoded as a MODE2/2352 binary track. This mode was typically used to encode Video CDs, as well as Playstation discs. I'm not sure why Rockett's games used this, but it may be the cause of your troubles. Re-encoding as a data disc with MODE1/2048 also failed. Clearly, there's more implementation needed for full BIN/CUE support

I ended up converting the BIN/CUE to an ISO with bchunk, and that seems to run flawlessly in SheepShaver. It's now on the Garden's Rockett page if you want to test it. The Virtual CD/DVD-ROM Mounter should also handle the ISO. It's not a perfect solution since the PC partition is lost, but at least it will run!

[24bit]

Thanks a bunch Elyus for fixing the RNS CD!
Great work.
Is it asking for too much that you would fix the other titles for SheepShaver as well?
I´m not going to play these games myself, but other users will sure appreciate a possibility to run the games with SheepShaver / macOS.

[GrimDescendant]

I ended up converting the BIN/CUE to an ISO with bchunk, and that seems to run flawlessly in SheepShaver. It's now on the Garden's Rockett page if you want to test it. The Virtual CD/DVD-ROM Mounter should also handle the ISO. It's not a perfect solution since the PC partition is lost, but at least it will run!

I am so glad this topic has been made because I have been trying to figure the Purple Moon games out for two weeks. I didn't think anyone else was interested in them.

I saw the .iso posted to the Garden's website and tried to use it but got the above issue that 24bit mentioned with the "Could not find the GLOBAL folder." message. I feel like an idiot and hope that I am just doing it wrong (I'm pretty new to sheepshaver but have gotten a few games to work.)

I get that message by installing it via the iso (and I think the toast file. But at this point my brain is fried from trying so many different courses of action from before this thread.)

[24bit]

Strange. I gave the ISO Elyus made a short try last night.
Copy the Iso to you emulated Macs HDD (Not to the Mac desktop).
Mount the ISO with http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/virtual ... cd-utility
You should see two additional volumes mounted.



Install the game from Rockett´s New School and run it from the installation folder that was created.
That way it should work.

Alternative only for Widows and OSX 10.6 and OSX 10.7:
Burn the original .toast file to a blank CD and use the CD for playing in SheepShaver.

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

Strange. I gave the ISO Elyus made a short try last night.
Copy the Iso to you emulated Macs HDD (Not to the Mac desktop).
Mount the ISO with http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/virtual ... cd-utility

From what I understand from the description by Elyus, this procedure is not needed. Doesn't Elyus' ISO work (at least in macOS) by simply adding it as CDROM to the volumes list in SheepShaver Preferences?

[24bit]

Not really, so it seems.
Adding the ISO to the volumes tab and checking the CD-ROM box for the ISO results in a missing Global folder on my side.

Edit: Second try
Created a bin/cue file from the CD I made with IMGBurn, threw it onto bchunk as described here:
https://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/18944/h ... s-in-os-x/
Got an ISO that can be mounted via volumes tab and is accepted by the game for playing.

I´ll retry the ISO Elyus made.
Not sure what happened.

Edit2:
My bad. The ISO Elyus uploaded can be mounted via volumes and is fine for playing.
So you were right, Ronald. As usual.

[Elyus]

Yeah, as Ronald said, I didn't try the Virtual CD Mounter, but the ISO continues to work for me just mounted as a CD-ROM to the Volumes list. I'm glad to hear confirmation it's working for someone else; thanks, 24bit!

@GrimDescendant, make sure to mount it as a CD-ROM and not just a regular volume. If that fails, I'd definitely follow 24bit's suggestion to use the Virtual Mounter. That little tool was my goto for years, up until SheepShaver got the feature to mount volumes as CDs.

I'm still puzzled by this particular disc. It mounts wrong as a .toast, unreadable as bin/cue, and with an extra DVD partition in the Virtual app. I'd like to strip out all the unnecessary partitions, but that might fail if this elusive GLOBAL folder is part of some copy protection scheme.

[GrimDescendant]

@Elyus I forgot to mount as a CD-ROM and was clicking the icon not the folder.
Thank you so much! I am so excited to relive my childhood.

Now I just have to try and figure out a way to do the other Purple Moon games. Haven't fully figured out the bchunk thing you mentioned but I will give it another try.
Appreciate you making the ISO for this!

[24bit]

So I followed the instructions Elyus kindly posted.
Got Toast 5 running via Rosetta and created the bin/cue via Toast menue.
Threw the files onto bchunk, but ended up with a .ugh image looking useless to me.
Any idea, what I´m missing?

[almeath]

Are there any current work-arounds to support mixed mode CD games with Red Book audio tracks? (encoded in BIN/CUE format)

I am thinking specifically of the Descent and Alone in the Dark games. I have wanted to get these working for years.

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

Threw the files onto bchunk, but ended up with a .ugh image looking useless to me.
Any idea, what I´m missing?

Does this help? http://osxdaily.com/2018/08/05/how-conv ... o-iso-mac/

[Elyus]

Is it just the Rockett series posing the problem, or other Purple Moon games? I can probably move them through a workflow and convert the affected titles. It sounds like a tricky thing for others to setup, and I already have a process in place, so I'll give it a try. I was using Toast 7 because it seems to have the best bin/cue support of the pre-OS X Toasts.

EDIT: I just realized Toast 7 is an OS X build, which throws my reasoning for liking it out the window... I'll have to recheck later versions, maybe Roxio had made significant changes to the software I didn't like, but at any rate, Toast 7 seemed to work for Rockett's New School. Hopefully it will for other titles as well.

Are there any current work-arounds to support mixed mode CD games with Red Book audio tracks? (encoded in BIN/CUE format)

I am thinking specifically of the Descent and Alone in the Dark games. I have wanted to get these working for years.

You can mount the data partition by moving to a different format, like ISO as we're trying with the Rockett games, but mixed-mode games typically placed the soundtrack on the audio portion. Currently, there's no way to mount or play these in SheepShaver. However, Geoffrey Brown very generously contributed code to the project several years ago which adds bin/cue support. Unfortunately, it never made it into mainline builds, and its reliance on CoreAudio has made audio CD support somewhat dated. I've been experimenting with tweaking his code to work again but still no audio CD playback

[GrimDescendant]

Is it just the Rockett series posing the problem, or other Purple Moon games? I can probably move them through a workflow and convert the affected titles. It sounds like a tricky thing for others to setup, and I already have a process in place, so I'll give it a try. I was using Toast 7 because it seems to have the best bin/cue support of the pre-OS X Toasts.

If you could do that I would be forever grateful. This is my first time using and learning how to do emulators and all of that does sound a bit complicated (at least for me currently.) I started to try and install VMWare with Windows 98 to just try that instead if the .sit files posted work on there but am not getting anywhere with it. So being able to use them as fixed iso files in Sheepshaver would be wonderful.

I don’t remember if I can get the Secret paths games working from Purple Moon as they are but I will check when I return home shortly. There are 6 Rockett games if you include the adventure maker and 3 Secret Paths games.

[24bit]

I´m about to fix Rockett´s Tricky Decision, so this one should need no further attention.
If you would take care of the others Elyus, I thankfully step aside.

GrimDescendant, shall I send you the link for the W98SE appliance for VMWare Fusion?
You may probably prefer SheepShaver, but there are other games on hybrid Mac/Windows CDs too.

[GrimDescendant]

@24bit That would be amazing, thank you. (Might need to send you a question or two about it because walk throughs I found have been really unhelpful. I did get Fusion 11 for the free trial to try it for now. )

[Elyus]

I´m about to fix Rockett´s Tricky Decision, so this one should need no further attention.
If you would take care of the others Elyus, I thankfully step aside.

Oops! I'm uploading a fixed Tricky Decision now :D I guess we'll see what the Mac Garden server keeps if we're both changing it concurrently.