Apple Mac emulation

Can I emulate a Macintosh on Amiga?
Once you expand your Amiga it can emulate a Macintosh with little problem. The Macintosh and the Amiga shared a similar CPU (the Motorola 68k) for a long time. You can emulate these '68k Mac's' on your Amiga with great success. Many times the programs written for the Mac will run at the same speed it ran on the original Macintosh.  Without having the PPC upgrades for the Amiga you will have problems emulating a PowerMac, if at all.

What Emulators are out there?

There is a great emulator called ShapeShifter, and is freely available and can be registered for $40. There is a  new leader in Mac emulation called Fusion. Fusion is a software emulator that will use, when available, the hardware emulation of  Emplant and AMax boards. With more hard drive space and better processors, plus better programming, hardware emulation is usually no longer necessary.

Why emulate a Mac?

Macs are easy to use, powerful and have both a professional and gaming following. With any computer platform it means good software is bound to follow. You can find old 68k versions as bargains, as you don't usually need  the most powerful programs running under emulation.

What can I run using my emulator?

Even emulated Macs can run top software like Microsoft Office, Netscape, PhotoShop, Quark Xpress, Claris and Explorer for Mac. You can also run many games. Run Doom, Quake, and others that are not available on Amiga.

If you have a well tuned and expanded Amiga, with graphics boards and fast processors you can sometimes even outperform the 68K-based Macs you are emulating.  With the evolution to AmigaPPC, PowerMac emulation is on the way. Soon you will see "PowerAmigas" running programs like iFusion (the PowerPC version of Fusion).

Why emulate, can't I just buy a Mac as a companion to the Amiga?

With emulation the Amiga system remains useable, even while Mac emulation is running. The emulation runs as a separate task on separate screens or in windows.  The two computers running at the same time will make it easier to transfer files to and from the Mac emulator. Also, you are saving valuable desk space.

What will I need from a Macintosh to run my emulator?

1) Macintosh ROM

The Mac has a portion of its system code in pre-programmed ROM (Read Only Memory) chips. This must be available for the emulators to run on the Amiga. On hardware emulators you put the actual Mac Roms on the card. For software emulators like Shapeshifter and Fusion you can copy the ROM information from a Macintosh  . Before taking your Mac apart, find out if your emulator supports ROM images.

2) Macintosh System software

You will also need Macintosh System Software, (equivalent to Workbench on the Amiga)

3) Memory

Mac OS 8 demands 16 Mb RAM and Macintosh programs will require 8 Mb or more on the Mac side. This does not include what the Amiga will need to support the Emulation (2Mb to 8 Mb).

Without a CPU accelerator and RAM expansion, your emulation will struggle to make enough RAM available. Macs cannot cope with memory in 'fragments', as the Amiga system can, so you must make the memory available in one contiguous block.

4) Hard drive space

You will need plenty of room to run a Macintosh emulator.

You will need room for the emulator itself, for the Mac ROM, and for the Macintosh System software. You will also want program software to run on the emulator, and leave plenty of HDD space left over for 'virtual memory', space on your HDD used as RAM.

Apple Computer Corp, owns the rights to the 'software' included in the Macintosh ROM and the System Software. According to the license you can be permitted to make copies of the Macintosh ROM and the System software to run on your Mac emulator, but you must own the Macintosh that the ROM images came from, and you are NOT allowed to use the REAL Mac and the Emulated Macintosh at the same time. Or you will be in violation of copyright law.

I recommend buying a cheap Macintosh SE, or LC to use the Macintosh ROM's from. These are quite good little 68k Macs, are inexpensive and will give you the ownership right to the ROM's and Macintosh System software. Though Macintosh OS ROM IMAGES are available from the Internet.

What Mac System software should I run?

That depends on the emulator, and the software you want to run. The more modern 68k Macs run 32 bit system files. 32 Bit accessing started with System 7. You can use System 7.0 with ShapeShifter but it does not work with  Fusion. For Fusion you will need at least System 7.1, though 7.5 or 7.6 run better. Later versions of the Macintosh System, added the PowerPC coding. System 8 will take almost 300 Mb of  your HDD. You can use it on Fusion but will not run on ShapeShifter.  It is also possible you will run into problems if trying system 8 on a 68060. Apple never used a 68060 for the Macintosh in favor of  the PowerPC 601 chip. Though the System software 'emulated' the 68k code, when native PPC code was not available.

Will I be able to use Macintosh floppy disks?

The hard part about the emulation will be getting OLDER Macintosh floppy disks to work. Macintosh floppy drives are non-standard. Original Mac floppies are either 400K or 800K capacities and have variable-speed recording. This process makes the data inaccessible to standard 300 RPM Amiga DD drives. Later Macintosh models have 1.44 Mb "Superdrives",  this drive is compatible with normal HD floppies but also is capable of accessing the non-standard formats, and will also read double density and High Density (HD) PC floppies.

Disks should not be ejected unless you've moved them into the 'trashcan' first. Mac's have a motorized drive, without a button, so it was hard to do that, but on an Amiga you can break this rule, and you do so at your own frustration.

What about the Macintosh hardware?

Most of the Macintosh hardware is also emulated, using the Amiga hardware. Apple Macs have allot in common with many of our Amiga systems. Macintosh systems included: standard serial ports, a standard parallel port, and  onboard SCSI. Some had optional Ethernet, and Macintosh has their own low -cost network called AppleTalk, used for networking and sometimes as an external device communication method.

Will I be able to use Macintosh floppy disks?

The hard part about the emulation will be getting OLDER Macintosh floppy disks to work. Macintosh floppy drives are non-standard. Original Mac floppies are either 400K or 800K capacities and have variable-speed recording. This process makes the data inaccessible to standard 300 RPM Amiga DD drives. Later Macintosh models have 1.44 Mb "Superdrives",  this drive is compatible with normal HD floppies but also is capable of accessing the non-standard formats, and will also read double density and High Density (HD) PC floppies.

Disks should not be ejected unless you've moved them into the 'trashcan' first. Mac's have a motorized drive, without a button, so it was hard to do that, but on an Amiga you can break this rule, and you do so at your own frustration.

Would the emulation be better with a Catweasel controller?

Fusion can access Mac disks via the Catweasel controller, much faster than custom Amiga HD drives and supporting cheap PC-type drives. Catweasel itself lacks Workbench support for Mac disks, but works well alongside Fusion and ShapeShifter 3.7 or later.

How can I share information with the Amiga?

Real Mac devices can be mounted and used as Amiga drives, while the Emulation is running, under Fusion and ShapeShifter. Amiga devices can also be Mounted as Mac devices. You will be able to cut and paste text directly between systems. Sharing other files and graphics are more tricky, and you will have to read the documentation for your emulator.

Can I use my Amiga Printer with an Emulator?

Yes, but setting up the printer will take some time. The difficulty comes from the fact that early Mac system software only supports Apple's printers. You will have to find the free third party drivers for the most common printers. You may also use  the option of 'desktop printing', and that will create a file in postscript that you can then transfer to the Amiga and print them using files such as GhostScript, or use the Amiga Post Script Datatype and Library to print them.

What is AMax?

Amax-II (and higher) boards fit a Zorro slot. The original AMax, fits the Amiga floppy port. Both cards have sockets to install Mac ROMs. Originally the AMax had an interface to connect an 800K Mac drive. Amax II+ and AMaxIV (for Zorro slots) add Macintosh ports and can read old Mac disks in a standard Amiga drive.

I have the old A-Max card, what Mac can I emulate?

The AMax card was designed with the old 16 bit systems in mind. The original AMax, fits the Amiga floppy port. I would only expect it to run Mac System 6 or 6.5.  AMax will limit your Macintosh to 24 bit addressing, because of the the older 68k chips that the system software was based on. Better suited for the A1000, A500 and   unaccelerated Amigas.

What is an Emplant card?

The 'basic' Emplant is a mostly empty board with timer and interface chips and DIP and SIMM sockets for Mac ROMs. It can be extended to 'deluxe specification' with a Mac-style SCSI-1 controller, Appletalk network interface and a change of the copyright-control PAL (Programmed Logic Array). Emplant software requires this board - Fusion uses it, if present.

My Emulation is Slow, what can I do?

1) If the emulation is too slow, don't run it as a task, run it so that it takes over the Amiga.
2) If you have an emulator that supports it, get a video card, this will certainly speed things up. When the Amiga was new, the way it handled video was elegant, but now super fast video cards are much better than even AGA, there are systems for better video for every Amiga model including the A500/1200 without even opening the case.

What the heck are .SIT files?

These are common as archive formats for the Mac. Just like .LHA files on the Amiga.  .SIT is  - short for StuffIT, a shareware compressor.  Another common format are .HQX files.

What can I get from the web?