MiSTer FPGA Forum

Is there ever a chance this core can run on a CRT ?
The original Mac Plus had a built-in CRT, although I'm not sure if it was higher res than a normal CRT, or if it was 15khz or not.

It should work over vga.

MiSTer_Kirk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 25, 2021 12:23 am Is there ever a chance this core can run on a CRT ?
The original Mac Plus had a built-in CRT, although I'm not sure if it was higher res than a normal CRT, or if it was 15khz or not.

The original hardware used 350 line modes and scanned at 22khz. So like EGA on the PC or medium res in the arcade.

This core is doubled. 512x640. 1024x768 or something

alanswx wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 5:55 pm I keep working on the uart but I am not making good progress. I think I need to get an emulation and verilator setup to figure out which bits I am not setting correctly.

I am not seeing any of the data written from zterm when I type letters.

Thank you for trying .. I appreciate it ..

I made a quick test of OS 7.5:
From https://www.savagetaylor.com/downloads/ ... macintosh/
Type Drive (2GB) System 7.5.5

I changed the extension to VHD and it booted right away. An error/warning poped up regarding Adobe Type Manager which is installed on this drive. Looking in the System folder there is the file ~ATM 68020/030/040 so I changed the CPU to 68020 and rebooted.
I did not do much testing but it seems to work.

Just a heads up for anyone pushing the envelope with this core - be very cautious about attempting to load into 6.0.8 with a mounted .vhd that has more than about 10,000-11,000 files on it or so - in my case it was like 1.8 GB of files. System 6 is capable of addressing 2GB partitions, but it needs to first read the drive hierarchy in order to (re)build the desktop file under normal circumstances. This process, if you have too many files, seems to crash 6.0.8, even if you give it 4MB of memory. An identical drive with this issue should load fine under System 7. In System 6, you'll see a long wristwatch animation, and eventually a flashing empty dialog box, something like this: and after some more time waiting it might show you some kind of corruption like this and freeze completely: If you restart the core, you might see an error: I wouldn't recommend repairing here, as it is very likely just going to crash again in a similar manner, and it might take your .vhd down with it. Instead, try loading into System 7 (tested with 7.5.5) and allow it to completely rebuild the desktop file (a progress bar should pop up before the desktop fully loads).

I've had better luck booting into 6.0.8 with too many files on my .vhd when using the System Picker and booting directly into 6 via 7 from the same .vhd. It gave me an error about not being able to fully rebuild the desktop file, but I was able to mount the drive and browse the files after clicking OK on the error, apparently normally.

(just for the record, I'm pretty sure all of my troubles here are limitations on real hardware, not indicative of any issue with the core!)

I have a 1GB OS 6.0.8 which does not contains that many file but sometimes the following happens:
I shutdown the Mac, I change the boot drive to a different VHD and boot the Mac.
Now if I do the same thing to set the boot drive to 6.0.8 it sometimes boots up with the warning saying that the drive needs minor repairs.
The disk repair proceeds and succeeds. I did not figure out the exact conditions for this to happen as it seems to be random.

If you have Basilisk II installed you can try the repair by booting with that instead..

A while back I made a post about these hidden files with a name in the form .fuse_hiddenxxxxxxxx which have a size identical to some of my VHDs. These files are deleted files which where opened by some process while being deleted. They should disappear when said process close them or after a reboot. This does not seem to work and they stay there forever. I confirmed they where not in use using the lsof command and I deleted them and recovered more than 4GB of disk space. The strange thing is that it happened only in the MACPLUS directory, it just may be a coincidence.

I absolutely adore the early Mac aesthetic. Right-click > open in new tab to prevent the forum software from scaling the image and ruining the dithering patterns.
I'll probably edit this post to add more pictures later.

So does the MacPlus core support color and other boot.rom files as well now? Is it emulating a 68020 CPU now? Where can I find more info on the updates?

meauxdal wrote: ↑Thu Mar 25, 2021 9:03 pm I absolutely adore the early Mac aesthetic. Right-click > open in new tab to prevent the forum software from scaling the image and ruining the dithering patterns.

what game is that MAZE one? .. I love a good rouge clone..

Yes I know what you mean about aesthetic , try getting some hypercard decks from archive.org .. I could browse those for hours.

Does anyone know what the relationship is between the latest Mister MacPlus core update and the core previously released on 20210315?

In the latest core update the keyboard behaviour is far less stable than in the 20210315 core. The keyboard usability even regressed from the previous "official" core release.

meauxdal wrote: ↑Thu Mar 25, 2021 9:03 pm I absolutely adore the early Mac aesthetic. Right-click > open in new tab to prevent the forum software from scaling the image and ruining the dithering patterns.

1.png

3.png

I'll probably edit this post to add more pictures later.

5.png

6.png

7.png

10.png

All these ditherings recall me of my homework until Windows 95... Yes, I had a B/W Macintosh for a lot of years.

shaitan wrote: ↑Fri Mar 26, 2021 2:00 am So does the MacPlus core support color and other boot.rom files as well now? Is it emulating a 68020 CPU now? Where can I find more info on the updates?

This is a Mac Plus so I would be very surprised if it supported color but a Mac Plus CPU could be upgraded with the best one being 68030 at 50MHz.

antonie wrote: ↑Fri Mar 26, 2021 7:26 am Does anyone know what the relationship is between the latest Mister MacPlus core update and the core previously released on 20210315?

In the latest core update the keyboard behaviour is far less stable than in the 20210315 core. The keyboard usability even regressed from the previous "official" core release.

I have noticed some strangeness with the keyboard input as well on the released core. Sometimes keys seem to repeat infinitely or are delayed. I wasn't having these issues with the previous test core, so it could be a regression if others are seeing the same thing.

ericgus09 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 26, 2021 4:33 amwhat game is that MAZE one?

Wizardry II! I really enjoy these Mac ports of other games, as they tend to be pretty custom. The Wizardry ports go further than most in leveraging the UI for their own purposes in a very cool way. Worth messing with even if you have played Wizardry on another platform!

Rapid progress is being made on a hard drive image I've been working on for this core. Shoot me an email or message if you are interested in trying it out...

Exciting stuff is happening for this core behind the scenes.

meauxdal wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 4:17 pm Exciting stuff is happening for this core behind the scenes.

Screenshot 2021-03-30 12-15-42.png

Is this part of a soon to be released core update? Where can I find this version of the core?

alanswx posted it in the MiSTer discord server. I've attached it here.

meauxdal wrote: ↑Mon Mar 29, 2021 1:47 am Rapid progress is being made on a hard drive image I've been working on for this core. Shoot me an email or message if you are interested in trying it out...

What size HD and what kind of programs?

meauxdal wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:09 pm alanswx posted it in the MiSTer discord server. I've attached it here.

Ok, excellent. Thanks

jca wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:18 pm

meauxdal wrote: ↑Mon Mar 29, 2021 1:47 am Rapid progress is being made on a hard drive image I've been working on for this core. Shoot me an email or message if you are interested in trying it out...

What size HD and what kind of programs?

It's very much a WIP still, but I'm using a single 2GB .vhd in my current setup. Less than a gigabyte of actual space is used on my current working image, I can't recall how much is in use on the released version. There are several hundred more-or-less compatible monochrome games, and a basic scattering of popular applications. MS Word, MacWrite, ClarisWorks, Photoshop, WorldBuilder, HyperCard, Excel... a few other notable ones, but the games side is much more comprehensive than the app side (for now). There's a system selection function that will let you hot swap between systems 5.1 / 6.0.8 / 7.0.1 / 7.1.2 / 7.5.5... lots of other goodies. DM me if you want to give it a spin. Suggestions are extremely welcome - are there Mac apps you consider essential that should be added? Let me know.

Nice to have a Mac without a KB driving you insane. Thanks to the developers.

meauxdal wrote: ↑Tue Mar 30, 2021 7:10 pm ...
There's a system selection function that will let you hot swap between systems 5.1 / 6.0.8 / 7.0.1 / 7.1.2 / 7.5.5... lots of other goodies. DM me if you want to give it a spin. Suggestions are extremely welcome - are there Mac apps you consider essential that should be added? Let me know.

Thanks for the info. Being able to switch OS versions seems to be interesting; being semi illiterate regarding the mac I am curious to see how it is done. Regarding apps I think apps which have/had no equivalent on the PC and which showcased the revolutionary GUI (at the time) would be interesting but my lack of knowledge on the Mac is not helpful to make any recommendation.

There's a System Picker app installed and accessible after you first boot into 7.5.

Bas wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 3:54 pm There's a System Picker app installed and accessible after you first boot into 7.5.

Where is this ? part of one of the vhd images?

ericgus09 wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 9:11 pm

Bas wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 3:54 pm There's a System Picker app installed and accessible after you first boot into 7.5.

Where is this ? part of one of the vhd images?

SavageTaylor's images (linked earlier in this thread) have the application installed, but only one OS present. In the WIP .vhd I've been sharing, there are 5 different OSes (covering most of what you'd want to use on a Plus) installed on the drive, with System Picker 1.1a3 allowing you to switch between them from a single .vhd. It's extremely useful software for this era of Macintosh computing!