MAME 2023 Mac emulation updates

[Arbee]

If you run MAME with the -cheat switch on, it enables CPU overclocking which increases the CPU speed without changing the machine's "real time" reference. Switch the keyboard mode to enable the MAME keys like Tab and so on, and hit ` to bring up the small list of slider, or press Tab for the full menu and navigate to "Slider Controls". The downside is that it won't save the overclock setting, and Macs can malfunction all kinds of ways just from the CPU being faster (definitely you don't want to try floppy disks with the CPU speed different). That's one reason accelerators tended to be kind of complicated.

[almeath]

If you run MAME with the -cheat switch on, it enables CPU overclocking which increases the CPU speed without changing the machine's "real time" reference. Switch the keyboard mode to enable the MAME keys like Tab and so on, and hit ` to bring up the small list of slider, or press Tab for the full menu and navigate to "Slider Controls". The downside is that it won't save the overclock setting, and Macs can malfunction all kinds of ways just from the CPU being faster (definitely you don't want to try floppy disks with the CPU speed different). That's one reason accelerators tended to be kind of complicated.

Thanks - that is a very useful setting. It has helped me with a few games already, which are too sluggish even when emulating a Quadra or IIfx model. I think this will keep me going until the PPC issues are resolved.

[almeath]

I appear to be experiencing a regression with MAME 272 on Windows. I am successfully using MAME 268 to emulate a Quadra 800 under System 7.1, with CD audio support for the Alone in the Dark Trilogy, specifically the second and third game. As soon as I switch to MAME 272 I no longer hear CD audio during the games, but I can still hear it if I open the Apple CD Audio Player and play the tracks in there. No settings are altered either within the emulated environment or in MAME, apart from swapping out the MAME exe in my launch command.

[Arbee]

The CD audio emulation was made a lot more correct in 0.272 thanks to some documentation that recently leaked out of Apple France. It improved all the test cases I tried but there's always a chance of regressions. I'll check out Alone in the Dark, thanks!

[almeath]

The CD audio emulation was made a lot more correct in 0.272 thanks to some documentation that recently leaked out of Apple France. It improved all the test cases I tried but there's always a chance of regressions. I'll check out Alone in the Dark, thanks!

Good to know, thanks. I appreciate you looking into it.

In case you were not already aware, the only way to get the CD audio to play in-game for Alone in the Dark 2 and 3 is to copy the "video" folders from the CD images into the game folder installed on the hard drive.

[adespoton]

In other news, something I somehow missed elsewhere: https://github.com/ksherlock/ample/comm ... 42c660f1d3 -- MAME 0.273 now includes support for the PowerBook 140,145, 145b, 160, 165, 165c, 170, 180 and 180c! I believe this is an emulator first; none of the other Mac emulators have ever been able to properly emulate these models. Ample doesn't have a release build yet, but vanilla MAME works, and you can check out the current Ample source and build it yourself as well.

Thanks, Arbee!

[edit] I wonder if we should change the name of this discussion thread, now that it's 2025 :D

[Arbee]

LOL, yeah, probably should've started a new thread about a year ago, and then again now

A fun extra for the new year: the Power Mac 6100 now can boot and run 7.1.2 and 7.5.0. It's still quite a ways from where I'd recommend anyone actually use it, but it's progress.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi4q2Ejefsw

[adespoton]

LOL, yeah, probably should've started a new thread about a year ago, and then again now

A fun extra for the new year: the Power Mac 6100 now can boot and run 7.1.2 and 7.5.0. It's still quite a ways from where I'd recommend anyone actually use it, but it's progress.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi4q2Ejefsw

We've got multiple threads about MAME 6100 across multiple message boards now :D Was it primarily quirky SCSI handling at fault, or were there further issues? And would the DingusPPC solution to handling > 8MB RAM be at all useful to you?

[Arbee]

I don't think I've seen those other threads, but the primary issue was that the 601 still has some significant IBM POWER elements and instructions to it that we weren't supporting other than some of the MMU differences. SCSI worked perfectly first time once the 601 was doing more of what it was supposed to, and I have no idea what the Dingus 8MB thing is about.

[bribri]

I just tried out the latest version of this (or at least the version used in the latest release of Ample) and see that things are getting more usable, which is great. Previously the mouse cursor moved in erratic ways that made things nigh unusable, but that seems to be cleared up. I'm really hoping this can eventually turn into a highly accurate and polished mac emulator.

Right now I think the biggest issue hampering it, at least for me, is the way the mouse cursor is handled. I can see movement from my host system's mouse is being converted into the guest 68k Mac OS, but either I have to set it to completely capture the mouse, which makes switching between the emulated mac and any other app difficult (and I can't find any way to toggle it on or off), or the cursor moves out of sync with the host system's cursor.

I gather this is about having more accurate emulation, but I wonder if there could be a mode where the mouse cursor stays in sync with the system cursor? This is an area where I might like to make some contributions myself, assuming I can manage it. Is there a specific spot where development discussion about MAME mac emulation is happening, other than here?

[Arbee]

We've done some work with MAME's Lua engine to write a script that pokes the native mouse position into the Mac low memory globals, which gives the nice transparency. It works really well on some machines and pretty much not at all on others, depending on the type of ADB hardware involved. It should be possible to make it work well in all cases, but it'll definitely need more work to get there.

There's no specific place for Mac discussion, but MAME development discussion usually happens on forums.bannister.org.