MAME 2024/2025 Mac emulation updates

[Arbee]

2024 updates from my blog:
https://rbelmont.mameworld.info/?p=1626
https://rbelmont.mameworld.info/?p=1629
https://rbelmont.mameworld.info/?p=1638
https://rbelmont.mameworld.info/?p=1641

A summary of updates in 2024:
- Improved 680x0 FPU emulation, which fixed several games and the Jigsaw Puzzle desk accessory
- Improved mouse tracking for the SE, II, IIx, IIcx, IIci, SE/30, Quadra 700, and Quadra 800.
- Support for the IIfx, Quadra 900, Quadra 950, Macintosh Portable, and PowerBook 100, 140, 145, 145b, 160, 165, 165c, 170, 180, and 180c. The Portable and all PowerBooks support being put into Sleep mode and awakened with a keypress, like the real systems. The ability to do fun things like connect and disconnect the charger and change the battery charge level will come at some future point.
- Support for the ZuluSCSI/BlueSCSI "Toolbox" protocol so programs like ScuzEmu ( https://github.com/saybur/scuzEMU/releases ) can be used to transfer files in and out of the emulation to your host system.

Work in progress for 2025:
- Fixing reported audio issues
- Fixing a reported CD-ROM audio regression
- 68030 and '040 based PowerBook Duo systems, eventually including the docks if dumps of the declaration ROMs surface
- Quadra 660AV and 840AV support and the remaining non-Duo 68K PowerBooks (150, 190, 520, and 540).
- NuBus PowerMac support (6100/7100/8100 and 5200/6200)

[adespoton]

ScuzEmu is totally new to me -- so you run ScuzEmu on the guest system and set the shared folder in MAME, and that provides data/resource transparent transfer from host to guest? Kind of like Mini vMac and its ImportFl app, but done on top of the SCSI interface instead of using a bespoke patch to the disk handling?

Seems to me the image swapping wouldn't be needed as you can already control the storage devices on the SCSI chain directly from the MAME interface.

Now I'm thinking of how VirtFS could be integrated in a similar manner such that a host folder shows up as a SCSI device on the chain... but this moves outside of what MAME is designed to do and more into "feature emulator" territory. Maybe similar to the existing HFS partition wrapper device?

[Arbee]

On hardware, ScuzEmu lets the system directly see the files on the VFAT or exFAT-formatted SD card the SCSI emulator hardware is using. Normally you just put a hard disk or CD-ROM image on the card and the emulator presents it to the system as a hard disk or CD-ROM. ScuzEmu (the official BlueSCSI branded utilities also work) uses vendor-specific SCSI commands supported by the ZuluSCSI and BlueSCSI devices to get a directory and transfer files.

In MAME, we skip the SD card part and just expose a host directory.

I don't know anything about VirtFS so I can't really speak to how it could be supported.

[adespoton]

Finally got around to testing out MAME 0.275 -- PBD emulation is great!

I did find one interesting thing -- running MacCheck gets to "Running Clock/Interrupt Test..." and that test fails. I haven't broken out the debug yet to see what it's doing that's causing the failures, and it's probably something you already are painfully aware of, RIchard, but I figured I'd mention it

[joevt]

Finally got around to testing out MAME 0.275 -- PBD emulation is great!

PBD?

[almeath]

Finally got around to testing out MAME 0.275 -- PBD emulation is great!

PBD?

PowerBook Duo

[adespoton]

Still haven't figured out what's causing the test error, but I finally figured out how ScuzEmu works with MAME 0.273 and later

For those of you who haven't tried it:

you can set a shared directory using -share_directory on your host system, grab the latest scuzemu.img from https://github.com/saybur/scuzEMU/releases/ , mount that image as a shared drive, and then, run ScuzEmu from within the guest environment (you can copy it to your main image and run it from there, too.) ScuzEmu will work on System 6 - Mac OS 9. Once it starts up, select Files (or you can set up directories to mount images as well, but why do that when you can mount them directly from MAME?) and (here's the part I missed on multiple readings) select SCSI ID 3.

Then you can copy files over from the host directory directly into your guest environment without having to do the disk image shuffle.

[robin-fo]

I‘m currently trying to set up MAME SE/30 emulation on my M1 Pro Mac. The emulation works fine, but there is no output on the internal screen (PDS video cards work alright). Is this a known issue? It happens both with a self-compiled binary and the one supplied by ample.

Btw. is there a way to change the ROM image?

[adespoton]

I‘m currently trying to set up MAME SE/30 emulation on my M1 Pro Mac. The emulation works fine, but there is no output on the internal screen (PDS video cards work alright). Is this a known issue? It happens both with a self-compiled binary and the one supplied by ample.

Btw. is there a way to change the ROM image?

I highly recommend using Ample if you're on a modern Mac. It's a UI that walks you through all the configuration.

I found that with the SE/30 and some of the Quadras, getting internal screen output was a bit confusing. Eventually I figured it out: use the defaults, get the black screen, then enter the MAME menu for the machine options, and there you can select alternative internal screen settings. These settings will persist across runs of MAME, so once you've set them once, you don't need to tweak them from the command line.

I haven't figured out what the command line equivalents are yet to set the internal settings correctly on the first run; I suspect that RB has the video out defaults set to a single default for each family class/ROM, and some of the computers don't follow those defaults, resulting in the display issues.

[snorkel]

I have been working with MAME using a maciifx rom that I obtained from my own machine. Compared to Basilisk I am happy that MAME at least plays the system sounds and Carmen Sandiego 1.4. What I am not happy about is how often MAME will not even boot the OS (7.5.5). Just get the blinking drive icon that indicated that it can't find an OS. Quit and try repeatedly until it finally boots. Very frustrating. In addition I have a HD floppy image of the Carmen Sandiego game where in Basilisk the icon is correct but mounted in MAME is has the right color, surprisingly, but the image looks like the simple text icon.

[snorkel]

(1) Why does MAME start with the date 1959 and 7 hours ahead of my time zone? I have installed the 2020 patch for Date and TIme (which works fine on my actual maciifx) so that I can set the date to 2025. MAME does not seem to update its RTC settings.
(2) Restart results in a blinking Welcome to Macintosh and never boots the OS.
(3) On shutdown MAME displays a safe to power down message. I want MAME to actually shutdown like my actual mac. Sick of the scrlck/esc stuff.

[almeath]

I don’t think you are doing anything wrong in terms of configuration or settings, as I’ve experienced the same issues with IIfx emulation under MAME for months now.

I found that using an older version of MAME (0.268) is more stable with the IIfx but it does not entirely eliminate the flashing disk icon on startup.

I’ve tried absolutely everything and cannot figure it out, so I’ve put it down to a regression or problem with IIfx emulation. The Quadra models work fine with the exact same configurations and drive images, which rules out settings errors.

As for the 1959 date, I’ve not been able to resolve that either.

Sorry I can’t help, I can only verify you are not the only one experiencing these issues. It’s a shame because the IIfx is currently so much faster than the Quadra 68040 emulation in MAME, it’s very noticeable with demanding apps and games.

[akator]

Perhaps I'm missing something, but on the Mac IIci emulation there's no way to not have a monitor connected to the onboard video. I haven't tested every machine, but on the Quadra 700 that works properly.

It was common to install a NuBus video card and not use the onboard video, something I distinctly remember doing with a real IIci.

Is there a setting that I'm missing or is this an issue with MAME?

[adespoton]

Perhaps I'm missing something, but on the Mac IIci emulation there's no way to not have a monitor connected to the onboard video. I haven't tested every machine, but on the Quadra 700 that works properly.

It was common to install a NuBus video card and not use the onboard video, something I distinctly remember doing with a real IIci.

Is there a setting that I'm missing or is this an issue with MAME?

This is an issue with MAME; I've also struggled with it on a few (but not all) hardware profiles that use NuBus video cards.