MiSTer FPGA Forum

Been working on a .vhd update. It's up on archive.org, just search for 'MacPack-20210626 for FPGA' or look for my username (same as here) and check my uploads. Over 1,000 game folders on the main drive now. That was more or less my arbitrary numerical quota, so I should be slowing the release of updates at this point.

Notable new additions include lots of new World Builder and Hypercard games, a speed-hack of Prince of Persia which corrects the speed to run like the DOS version, and significant additional polish and system tweaking.

Let the After Dark screensaver engage in 7.5.5 and you'll find a bonus game, Lunatic Fringe - an excellent little space shooter by Ben Haller (creator of Solarian II).

My aim has been to create something like an interactive museum of play, collecting and making more easily available the excellent software produced for this delightful machine, and I think I've largely succeeded at this point. I'm hoping you all enjoy it as much as I have!

As an aside, if you find a game you really love on there, let me know so I can make a more definitive list of recommendations to help people dive in more easily.

Cheers!

Thanks for all your work on these MacPacks, meauxdal. They have brought back many good memories.

Just want to echo the thanks meauxdal! The pack works a charm and I've been having a blast discovering some of these old games. I was particularly fond of a Swedish one called Dubbelmoral and sure enough it was included, nice work! No problems I've found so far but I've only scratched the surface so thanks for all the hard work!

None of our great dev can port last MiST Apple core se support ?

breiztiger wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 6:58 pm None of our great dev can port last MiST Apple core se support ?

Probably mostly due to the fact all Macintosh emulation efforts have nearly stalled and are not likely to continue (excluding MAME/MESS), given the current state of emulation in the Macintosh emulation scene, FPGA or otherwise, unless someone steps out of the woodwork and decides to improve it.
https://invisibleup.com/articles/30/

I think the question was asking about bringing recent color Mac support that was added to MiST over to MiSTer. There's no reinvention required.

Color mac support would be wonderful.

yes but almost se advance from MiST is a starting point

more rom size (256 vs 128ko) and FDHD will be a big jump

meauxdal wrote: ↑Sat Jun 26, 2021 5:59 pm Been working on a .vhd update. It's up on archive.org, just search for 'MacPack-20210626 for FPGA' or look for my username (same as here) and check my uploads. Over 1,000 game folders on the main drive now. That was more or less my arbitrary numerical quota, so I should be slowing the release of updates at this point.

Notable new additions include lots of new World Builder and Hypercard games, a speed-hack of Prince of Persia which corrects the speed to run like the DOS version, and significant additional polish and system tweaking.

Let the After Dark screensaver engage in 7.5.5 and you'll find a bonus game, Lunatic Fringe - an excellent little space shooter by Ben Haller (creator of Solarian II).

My aim has been to create something like an interactive museum of play, collecting and making more easily available the excellent software produced for this delightful machine, and I think I've largely succeeded at this point. I'm hoping you all enjoy it as much as I have!

As an aside, if you find a game you really love on there, let me know so I can make a more definitive list of recommendations to help people dive in more easily.

Cheers!

I had a Mac 128k back in that time.

I recall from my software list:
Mac Write
Mac paint (first, with toolbars visible)
Mac Vegas
Millionaire
MS Basic
Multiplan
Floorplan (or something similar to design buildings)
Sargon III
Lode Runner (which misses sound effects in this core)

Of course, prince of persia was too much for a 128k mac.

I'm working on a new update with some additional Hypercard stacks, hopefully to be released before the end of the year. Always thought Hypercard was a great program, and there's a ton of interesting stuff on the platform.

great to hear that !!!

meauxdal wrote: ↑Sat Nov 27, 2021 1:54 pm I'm working on a new update with some additional Hypercard stacks, hopefully to be released before the end of the year. Always thought Hypercard was a great program, and there's a ton of interesting stuff on the platform.

I loved hypercard as well .. it just makes me sad there is really no modern version of it now .. to think what it COULD HAVE evolved into..

ericgus09 wrote: ↑Sat Nov 27, 2021 10:39 pm I loved hypercard as well .. it just makes me sad there is really no modern version of it now .. to think what it COULD HAVE evolved into..

...the World Wide Web?

rhester72 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 28, 2021 2:18 am

ericgus09 wrote: ↑Sat Nov 27, 2021 10:39 pm I loved hypercard as well .. it just makes me sad there is really no modern version of it now .. to think what it COULD HAVE evolved into..

...the World Wide Web?

Besides that aspect, im referring to the coding side of it..

ericgus09 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 28, 2021 6:43 am Besides that aspect, im referring to the coding side of it..

I've found Flash to be pretty similar, and ported some of my Hypercard games to it.
(before that, Macromedia Director was the closest thing to it)

Nowadays though, I suppose it might be better to use one of the Haxe frameworks (HaxeFlixel or Heaps)

Newsdee wrote: ↑Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:47 am

ericgus09 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 28, 2021 6:43 am Besides that aspect, im referring to the coding side of it..

I've found Flash to be pretty similar, and ported some of my Hypercard games to it.
(before that, Macromedia Director was the closest thing to it)

Nowadays though, I suppose it might be better to use one of the Haxe frameworks (HaxeFlixel or Heaps)

Yea I would tend to agree, I did a lot of work with Director myself..

I have released "MacPack-20211212 for FPGA" on archive.org, though it might take some time before it is indexed for searching.

meauxdal wrote: ↑Sun Dec 12, 2021 3:21 pm I have released "MacPack-20211212 for FPGA" on archive.org, though it might take some time before it is indexed for searching.

It is already indexd. Thanks a lot!

Thank you for everything!

I wish the core could do color and higher screen resolutions (at least like an LC).

Hi,
first of all, thank you very much for creating this awesome compilation. There is some much stuff in it i even don't know what to play - this brings me directly to my question

There's a imgur album which shows many screenshots. I browsed through them and found many games i intend to try out, but don't know their name. As i assume that you are also the creator of the Imgur album: Do you have Screenshots of the games from the album which have their actual name associated (e.g. with the filename)
Thanks,
egrath

This core has had some nice updates this year, for those that may have missed it. The keyboard is working properly again, and SE mode has been brought across from MiST too.

BlueIn2Red wrote: ↑Wed Apr 27, 2022 6:09 pm This core has had some nice updates this year, for those that may have missed it. The keyboard is working properly again, and SE mode has been brought across from MiST too.

This is interesting...pragmatically, from an emulation point of view, what does the SE bring to the table? I read up on the specs/improvements over the Mac Plus and very few seemed relevant.

Anyone knows why lode runner is missing all sound effects? It only plays the inter-level music.

meauxdal wrote: ↑Sun Dec 12, 2021 3:21 pm I have released "MacPack-20211212 for FPGA" on archive.org, though it might take some time before it is indexed for searching.

I have played with it - nice work! One can immediately tell that it is a labor of love. There are so many games and apps to play with, and I have been spending hours with it.

One question I do have: I noticed there is some kind of scratchy distortion in most audio. Like if you go and try to play a song in MusicWorks it is easy to notice. But it's pretty much in almost everything that produces sound. (Somehow, Space Quest III music is not affected?). I did notice that reducing the CPU to 8MHz lessens it somewhat - but it's still there. Have you experienced this problem? Is it just a problem with this core?

bigern77 wrote: ↑Thu Sep 01, 2022 1:38 am

meauxdal wrote: ↑Sun Dec 12, 2021 3:21 pm I have released "MacPack-20211212 for FPGA" on archive.org, though it might take some time before it is indexed for searching.

I have played with it - nice work! One can immediately tell that it is a labor of love. There are so many games and apps to play with, and I have been spending hours with it.

One question I do have: I noticed there is some kind of scratchy distortion in most audio. Like if you go and try to play a song in MusicWorks it is easy to notice. But it's pretty much in almost everything that produces sound. (Somehow, Space Quest III music is not affected?). I did notice that reducing the CPU to 8MHz lessens it somewhat - but it's still there. Have you experienced this problem? Is it just a problem with this core?

Audio for MacPlus relies on CPU timing, so most audio will be broken if you increase the clock speed. However, the implementation is not perfect nor cycle-exact, so even when set to base Plus specs, you still get crackling sometimes. Nothing we can do until the core is updated.

Until now, I have yet to try this core, but I remembered that I used to play Airborne back in the day and it was an amazing game. I tried the disk image for that game on my Mac LC III and it complained about not being the original disk and made me reboot my Mac. Is Airborne in the MacPack? Any ideas why it won't run on my Mac LC III (is the Mac LC III not backwards compatible, or is the OS too new for the game and if I install an older one it would work?). I am using a Floppy Emu on the LC III. Thanks!

Edit: Answering part of my own question, the MacPack has Airborne in the 1985 folder. Yay! So glad I was able to play it after all these years. The next thing I want to do is try to get the VHD file to work on my SCSI2SD and see what all works on my LC III. This is a great collection of games!

meauxdal wrote: ↑Thu Sep 01, 2022 5:36 pm

bigern77 wrote: ↑Thu Sep 01, 2022 1:38 am

meauxdal wrote: ↑Sun Dec 12, 2021 3:21 pm I have released "MacPack-20211212 for FPGA" on archive.org, though it might take some time before it is indexed for searching.

I have played with it - nice work! One can immediately tell that it is a labor of love. There are so many games and apps to play with, and I have been spending hours with it.

One question I do have: I noticed there is some kind of scratchy distortion in most audio. Like if you go and try to play a song in MusicWorks it is easy to notice. But it's pretty much in almost everything that produces sound. (Somehow, Space Quest III music is not affected?). I did notice that reducing the CPU to 8MHz lessens it somewhat - but it's still there. Have you experienced this problem? Is it just a problem with this core?

Audio for MacPlus relies on CPU timing, so most audio will be broken if you increase the clock speed. However, the implementation is not perfect nor cycle-exact, so even when set to base Plus specs, you still get crackling sometimes. Nothing we can do until the core is updated.

For some reason, I kept trying different songs in MusicWorks and eventually the problem totally disappeared! Now every song seems to play OK, at least for this session. I suppose if I "reboot" the problem will be back. Oh well, I'm happy to at least have a way to make it work!

On a side note, do you know why the "Alert Sounds" under Control Panel->Sounds all produce a simple beep regardless of which one (Clink-Klank, Boing, etc) you select?

Haven't played with this core yet, but I remember this one from a friend who had a Mac.

bigern77 wrote: ↑Thu Sep 01, 2022 11:33 pm

meauxdal wrote: ↑Thu Sep 01, 2022 5:36 pm

bigern77 wrote: ↑Thu Sep 01, 2022 1:38 am

I have played with it - nice work! One can immediately tell that it is a labor of love. There are so many games and apps to play with, and I have been spending hours with it.

One question I do have: I noticed there is some kind of scratchy distortion in most audio. Like if you go and try to play a song in MusicWorks it is easy to notice. But it's pretty much in almost everything that produces sound. (Somehow, Space Quest III music is not affected?). I did notice that reducing the CPU to 8MHz lessens it somewhat - but it's still there. Have you experienced this problem? Is it just a problem with this core?

Audio for MacPlus relies on CPU timing, so most audio will be broken if you increase the clock speed. However, the implementation is not perfect nor cycle-exact, so even when set to base Plus specs, you still get crackling sometimes. Nothing we can do until the core is updated.

For some reason, I kept trying different songs in MusicWorks and eventually the problem totally disappeared! Now every song seems to play OK, at least for this session. I suppose if I "reboot" the problem will be back. Oh well, I'm happy to at least have a way to make it work!

On a side note, do you know why the "Alert Sounds" under Control Panel->Sounds all produce a simple beep regardless of which one (Clink-Klank, Boing, etc) you select?

Some beeping is broken, as I said lode runner won't make sound for lasers, ...

Is a .VHD the same as a .DSK? I have seen lots of forum posts suggesting using dd to read and write microSD cards for SCSI2SD and this generates .dsk files.

I currently have a bunch of stuff on my 8GB SCSI2SD microSD card. What I want to do is get a 32GB microSD card and add the MacPack VHD to it along with all my other data. My version of SCSI2SD card supports emulating up to four SCSI hard drives. Each of those hard drives can have partitions on it. My Mac LC III supports partitions up to 2GB in size.

Ultimately, what I want to know is can I use dd with the .vhd file the same way I would with a .dsk file, or are their different headers I need to deal with. Maybe the best thing to do is set up everything the way I want on the 32GB card with the SCSI2SD card with 4 drives 8GB drives and create some 2GB partitions on my Mac LC III, then use dd to create a .dsk file of one of the empty partitions or the whole 8GB drive (not sure how it works yet), then mount that in Basilisk II and also mount the MacPack and copy all the data from the MacPack to the new .dsk file and then dd it back to my SCSI2SD. I could also do this with my old 8GB microSD card data - read it off to the PC and copy it to the new .dsk files in Basilisk II.