Introduction..

The Atari ST family has had a curiously close relationship with the Apple Macintosh, at least going back to the very early Mac Classic days. The ST was launched as a cut-price alternative to the expensive 1985 era greatness of the Mac Classic. Indeed, the slogan, "Power without the price!" may have been inspired by the price difference between a comparably specced Atari ST and Apple Mac. If the original ST can be considered as being close to any other hardware of its era, it would be the MC68K powered Mac Classic.

The symbiosis continued with the Spectre series of hardware add-ons from David Small, that turned an ST properly into an Apple Mac. This needed an official copy of Apple System ROMS and System 6 OS disks. An attempt to get a 68030 version fizzled and died. I'm struggling to remember if there was even a rumour of something of this nature intended for the Falcon?

Anyway, emulations of other classic systems have appeared, but the idea of crafting further hardware or code to run the best of the ST's 68k cousin on an ST, fell completely away. At least until recently.

'MinivMac' is a Mac Classic (Mac Plus) as emulated on an Atari Falcon or similar higher end Atari TOS/GEM clone. This is a straight port of an early, but still maintained portable open source emulator MinivMac. The port has been done by Olivier Landemarre from SDL. MinivMac has not been optimised too much, so it will in practice need something quite a bit more powerful than a standard Falcon on its own to run decently.

How to get it to work..

A download for this will have the required files to run the emulation, including the all important vMac.rom and a system disk, called 'Disk608.dsk' . There is a link at the bottom of the page, if you want to get it for yourself. Alternatively, search for the Atari Forum thread 'Mac emulator for CT60/CT63'.

Getting it to run is simply a matter of clicking on the 'minivmac.gtp' file. A parameter dialog box appears, where you enter the Disk608.dsk and then the name of the other disk that you wish to mount when the system boots up. A GEM window appears in mono grey hues. Ignoring the 'open failed message (press 'c' to get rid of that), the system boots up and the Mac Classic desktop hoves into view.

It is then a question of finding suitable and fun things to try out with it. We will refer to a nice place to find some goodies towards the end of the article.

MinivMac needs a factor of around fifty times more power than the original hardware to run at full speed. It was built on an 68040 based platform. My CT2 Falcon can manage around 12-13 times more power over the original, so it turns out to be bearable, but really still a bit slow to be comfortably useable. Hatari 1.9 will run this as well. In fake '060 mode, it seems to be a bit quicker than a CT2, but not too much so.

It has been tested on Aranym (non-JIT) and seems to be fine on there. The sound emulation seems to stumble a bit, which suggests we're not quite there at full speed. A CT60 class Falcon will run this one comfortably.

It has been suggested that an optimised emulator, especially with a slick CPU core should be able to run more comfortably on less powerful hardware. What we have now is a straight port with little extra done with it.

Stuff tried..

So you've got this one running and have a cool looking Mac Classic desktop to admire and enjoy. Now it's time to get this out of the interesting curio stage and try out some applications and games with it.

The bundled 'Mac Painter' is fully functional, if you want to create mono artwork. Good for creating screen grabs for reviews!

Lunar Phantom is quite a slick game for the hardware and era. It features sampled sound and several different landscapes and fanciful scenes to pilot your lunar lander through to a safe landing. On Aranym, the controls are responsive and very playable. The fuel runs out more quickly than you expect. Like other games, this accurately reproduces the Atari GEM gaming experience, only a little bit more commercial looking.

Another recommended game in a similar vein, and something of a classic on that system, is 'Glider'. This concerns the adventures of a paper aeroplane, which you have to get across the room, with only thermals (hot air rising) and rubber bands to help out. This one is very well finished with lots of sampled sounds in it, and would represent what might have happened on the ST if only GEM based games were allowed by law. Unsurprisingly, an updated version for Mac OSX and iPad has been created by the author. I don't think this game has ever been seen on another system. Maybe a suggestion for someone looking for a new project with something different in mind?

'Speedometer' allows you to take a look at exactly what your emulated Mac is. We learn that it is a Mac Plus, with an MC68000, no FPU or MMU and a whopping 4096K of RAM included. Like the Atari equivalent, GEMBench, it will run a variety of tests. We are warned it could take up to fifteen minutes, so anxious to move on. I don't.

'Bachman' This is a 3D style of Pacman game. It has an isometric viewpoint, good controls and presents a strong challenge, with some nicely animated ghosts and decent use of sound samples. It has strong hints of Pacmania but plays like a straight Pacman.

'Bert 114' Can be described as a QBert style game, ominously subtitled 'The rise and fall of a Swedish Politician'. It has some very nice grey scaling on the graphics (It has support for colour Macs as well.) It is nicely paced but best suited for people who like that sort of thing.

'Bedlam' Finally we attempt to get to grips with a Space Invaders clone. I say "attempt to" as running it comes up with what is effectively an 'out of memory' message. Yes, it needs more than the 4 MB specified for this version of MinivMac. For a Space Invaders Clone?!?! When attempting to go into trousers off mode and running it anyway, it then asks for System 7.0 and above. The document file reveals that the author was aiming at something above a bare 68000 anyway. So this must be an early example of that 'bloatware' that people were talking about?

There is at least one demo which targets a classic Mac, the rather enjoyable '3.5 inches is enough' by Unreal Voodoo, from the Assembly 2009 party. It isn't in a .dsk image (yet.) I haven't tried it.

You can use blank .dsk images and keep these separately in an Atari directory, so if you do create anything or want to save anything from the emulated Mac, then the means are there.

Generally, apart from that last example, where the actual system requirements exceeded the emulator, anything that you throw at MinivMac seems happy enough to run. As an emulator, it does a decent job without complaining.

Other things of interest..

The Gryphel pages suggest that a System 7 emulation is possible. (We've got System 6 with the current distribution.)

You might also like to know that MinvMac is multi-tasking compliant, at least with a modern Mint distribution.

We can also provide some useful resources for MinivMac.

Firstly, the download of the port itself can be obtained from:- Here!

The home page for the original can be found at:- the MinvMac Grypel Site. - This goes into an information overload level of detail and hints and help with the emulator. It is still being developed. There is also a jumping off point for software within this site, you have to look for it. Many things have been repackaged into an emulator friendly .dsk format.

Conclusion..

A rather good and fun emulation of a classic Mac on a higher end Falcon. If Olivier or someone else makes a tweaked and optimised version that needs less poke than a 68040/60 Atari to run it, then we have a definite winner here. As it is, no real complaints or issues.

CiH - For Maggie 25th Anniversary issue - Oct 2015.

Back to the Seriousness.