{"id":5504,"date":"2023-03-01T15:51:15","date_gmt":"2023-03-01T14:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.quantum-bits.org\/?p=5504"},"modified":"2023-03-01T17:00:50","modified_gmt":"2023-03-01T16:00:50","slug":"on-retro-computing-marchintosh-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.quantum-bits.org\/?p=5504","title":{"rendered":"On retro-computing: MARCHintosh 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, right on time for MARCHintosh<\/strong> 2022, I acquired my very first classic Macintosh<\/a>, that I have been enjoying ever since. But the vintage-computing fever troubled my mind, pushing me into other arms and having fun with Atari<\/a>‘s, Matra-Hachette<\/a>‘s and Oric<\/a>‘s delightful 8-bit machines. But … even if I didn’t buy any new hardware for classic Macintosh for over a year, I am still an insufferable Apple fanboy<\/strong> ! \"\"<\/p>\n

So, this year’s contributions for MARCHintosh will be about running Macintosh software on non-Machintosh hardware<\/strong> !<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Classic Macintosh on Recalbox 9<\/span><\/p>\n

Recalbox<\/a> is my favorite all-in-one retro-gaming console. I have already mentioning it a few times in this blog, and I have built a few projects<\/a> with it. It is the platform that got me into retro-gaming, and, later on, into vintage computer hardware.<\/p>\n

At each release, Recalbox adds bug-fixes, performance improvements and new features. Recalbox 9.0<\/strong> was released on 24 Feb 2023, and I promptly upgraded<\/strong> my Nes4Pi<\/strong> console the following week-end:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Among its new features, one of them particularly caught my intention (yes, the 5″1\/4 disquette by the side of the Macintosh is really weird):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Recalbox 9 added new emulation systems<\/strong>, such as the Philips VG5000<\/a> or the Z-Machine<\/a> for Infocom<\/a>‘s text adventure games<\/a>., and … the Macintosh<\/strong> Classic <\/strong>family  of computer !<\/p>\n

Libretro and Mini vMac<\/span><\/p>\n

How did they achieve this ?<\/p>\n

Recalbox is a set of different independent emulation systems (called “cores”), united within the graphical frontend EmulationStation<\/a>. Many of these cores are based on the Libretro API<\/a>, like libretro-cap32<\/a> for Amstrad CPC<\/a>‘s, or libretro-hatari<\/a> for Atari ST<\/a>‘s. Themselves are based on the Caprice32<\/a> and the Hatari<\/a> emulators codebase.<\/p>\n

For Classic Macintosh emulation, Recalbox relies on libretro-minivmac<\/a>, which is the Libretro port of the Mini vMac<\/a> emulator. I was already familiar with Mini vMac, that I tried and quickly presented in an old post<\/a>. Mini vMac is the spinoff of vMac<\/a>, an opensource emulator that has been discontinued. Mini vMac is developed by Paul C. Pratt. Unfortunately, Paul hasn’t been seen online<\/a> for over a year and the community is very worried<\/strong> about him.<\/p>\n

There are three variations of Mini vMac<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Standard version (emulating a Macintosh Plus)<\/li>\n
  2. Macintosh II version (built with the -m II option)<\/li>\n
  3. Macintosh 128K version (built with the -m 128 K option)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Here is a shot of the BIOS checking screen from Recalbox: <\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    According to the screen, for the Macintosh emulator to work, two “BIOS” files are required:<\/p>\n