A Description of the Mac emulation in MESS

About Mini vMac and all other 68k emulators, including SoftMac, Executor, and MESS.

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ClockWise
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Post by ClockWise »

A new version of MESS was posted on the official page October 31:

http://www.mess.org/

It seems to contain the Mac emulation improvements that we've been discussing in this thread.
Arbee
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Post by Arbee »

Yup, although there's a regression with floppy disks on the Plus/SE/Classic that snuck in that I'm chasing (the SE/30 and II/IIx/IIcx works for setting up HDD installs in the meantime).

Windows users can get updated daily builds at http://bobz38.free.fr/mess_autobuild/index.php since official releases are typically 6 weeks apart. Nothing too exciting since the release yet, but once I find the Plus's floppy problem FDHD's up next.
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Post by ClockWise »

I added all this to our "news" page (which no one actually reads):

http://www.emaculation.com/doku.php/news

Please let us know if there is anything important in those daily builds that we should be aware of!
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Post by Arbee »

The floppy problem on the Plus/SE/Classic is fixed in the latest daily builds. Also, the Classic II and IIsi are showing signs of life (they show a blinking ? disk now but don't recognize any media for some reason).

SWIM/FDHD progress is happening on my local system as threatened. Nothing cool to show yet with it though :)
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Post by Arbee »

Thanks to some submitted MMU fixes from someone emulating an Apollo Domain/OS workstation in MESS, Mode32 now works in MESS's IIcx emulation to get you 32-bit cleanliness (virtual memory does not work). This means you can now run a decent variety of Mac II apps and games with color and sound. (To clarify: these improvements are not in 0.140 - you need to either pull and build SVN or get a Bobz live build for Windows).
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Post by Arbee »

Haven't posted here for a while, but a lot of Mac stuff got done over the last few weeks so I'll mention it.

- The Mac Portable and PowerBook 100 and the Powerbook 140/170 series now all boot. ADB isn't hooked up yet so they're not usable though.
- I finally got the dumped Egret 6805 code to run and communicate with the 68K, so systems that used one are going to be much easier to bring up. Thanks to Paul Pratt for the dumper program and the people who ran it on their hardware Macs and submitted the results.
- I fixed the interrupt routing on the IIci emulation so full ASC sound works without hanging the emulated MacOS. PlayerPro and SoundTrecker sound great now, as do games.
- VIA wait states have been implemented for all models, so they run closer to real speed.
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ClockWise
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Post by ClockWise »

Thanks for the update, Arbee. I'll mention that on our "news" page.
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Post by Arbee »

New updates:

- I tracked down and fixed a bug introduced back in February that made the '030 emulation unstable (whoops).
- I fixed interrupt routing on the IIci emulation so now sound plays fine, just like on the Mac II, SE/30, and IIcx emulations. SoundTrecker and PlayerPRO both now sound great under System 7.6.1 on the IIci emulation, and games like Crystal Quest have proper stereo sound too. I also expanded the IIci's available RAM settings to 128 MB, which it handles fine (makes the startup take a while though).
- I did some preliminary work on the PowerMac 6100/60 - it plays the boot chime now but doesn't do anything else yet.
- I also did some preliminary work on the IIfx. It hangs now waiting for the IOPs to say hello.
- The previous '030 fix and some other work got 7.6.1 booting on the PowerBook 160/180 emulation, although PowerBooks still lack keyboard and mouse input.
- MESS recently gained core support for the concept of buses and slots with user-selectable cards in them. The PC emulation now lets you choose sound and video cards, and I didn't want them to have all the fun so I've begun work on NuBus. The currently-hardcoded RasterOps video card will become an option, and I'm adding emulations for the Apple 4*8, 8*24, and Extended Hi-Resolution video cards - once this is working you should be able to have a 6-headed Mac II ;-)
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Post by sheepmyshaver123 »

Arbee wrote:New updates:

- I tracked down and fixed a bug introduced back in February that made the '030 emulation unstable (whoops).
- I fixed interrupt routing on the IIci emulation so now sound plays fine, just like on the Mac II, SE/30, and IIcx emulations. SoundTrecker and PlayerPRO both now sound great under System 7.6.1 on the IIci emulation, and games like Crystal Quest have proper stereo sound too. I also expanded the IIci's available RAM settings to 128 MB, which it handles fine (makes the startup take a while though).
- I did some preliminary work on the PowerMac 6100/60 - it plays the boot chime now but doesn't do anything else yet.
- I also did some preliminary work on the IIfx. It hangs now waiting for the IOPs to say hello.
- The previous '030 fix and some other work got 7.6.1 booting on the PowerBook 160/180 emulation, although PowerBooks still lack keyboard and mouse input.
- MESS recently gained core support for the concept of buses and slots with user-selectable cards in them. The PC emulation now lets you choose sound and video cards, and I didn't want them to have all the fun so I've begun work on NuBus. The currently-hardcoded RasterOps video card will become an option, and I'm adding emulations for the Apple 4*8, 8*24, and Extended Hi-Resolution video cards - once this is working you should be able to have a 6-headed Mac II ;-)
Awesome features.

OFFTOPIC: I hope when Mac II emulation for Mini vMac is done.
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Post by Arbee »

A quick update: selectable cards is in SVN and seems to have gone over well with my testers. Due to core limitations you can only have 4 heads right now, but that should be fixable ;-) Also, System 7 virtual memory now works fine, although it's kind of silly since you can just give the emulated Mac II 128 megs of RAM.

Up next: A/UX (our MMU emulation boots NetBSD and DomainOS Unix on other drivers now, so it oughta be tough enough), keyboard/mouse for Egret systems and PowerBooks, Ethernet, and Quadras.
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ClockWise
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Post by ClockWise »

That's a great update! An emulated MMU... that's wonderful.
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Post by sheepmyshaver123 »

It looks like that Mac emulation in MESS is better than Mini vMac.
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Post by Ambassador »

Up next: A/UX
Woot! :)
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