Emulation: Infinite Mac

[Snial]

Should there be a sub topic for emulation? I've recently found infinite Mac really handy for testing applications on other Mac OS's. The website has vastly improved over the past year and now supports every classic OS from System 1 to Mac OS 9.0.4 and multiple hosts: Mac 128K, 512Ke, Plus, SE, II, IIfx, Q650, PM6100, PM9500 and (I think Beige) G3.

The 9500 and G3 don't support VM. But it's the PM 6100 I'm currently curious about, because the emulation for that appeared fairly recently. I'm guessing it's based on: https://github.com/dingusdev/dingusppc , since that's the only specific 601 based emulator I'm aware of.

The thing is, I couldn't find a version of Mac OS that actually worked with the emulator. Does anyone know of a combination that works?

 

[joevt]

DingusPPC is still very early in development. The developer of Infinite Mac made additions to DingusPPC. Most of those changes allow it to work with Infinite Mac. He reported that the 7.1.2 Disk Tools floppy works:
https://infinitemac.org/run?disk=System+7.1.2 Disk Tools
There may be an audio issue so you should turn down your volume.

For Mac OS X 10.2 Installer CD, the booting in DPPC Beige G3 gets as far as trying to load the Window Server. I haven't tried other emulated machines or earlier OSs.

Power Mac 7500 doesn't have working SCSI yet but maybe the floppy works?

I've used DingusPPC to test Open Firmware patches.
https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/the-great-gazelle-pci-hack-thread-part-2.38360/post-467825
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...l-work-in-a-beige-power-macintosh-g3.2303689/

 

[mihai]

joevt is right, the 6100 machine is DingusPPC-based, and the disk tools floppy gets the furthest so far. You can track the work at https://github.com/mihaip/infinite-mac/issues/219.

 

[Snial]

DingusPPC is still very early in development. The developer of Infinite Mac made additions to DingusPPC. Most of those changes allow it to work with Infinite Mac. He reported that the 7.1.2 Disk Tools floppy works:
https://infinitemac.org/run?disk=System+7.1.2 Disk Tools
There may be an audio issue so you should turn down your volume.

For Mac OS X 10.2 Installer CD, the booting in DPPC Beige G3 gets as far as trying to load the Window Server. I haven't tried other emulated machines or earlier OSs.

Power Mac 7500 doesn't have working SCSI yet but maybe the floppy works?

I've used DingusPPC to test Open Firmware patches.
https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/the-great-gazelle-pci-hack-thread-part-2.38360/post-467825
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...l-work-in-a-beige-power-macintosh-g3.2303689/

joevt is right, the 6100 machine is DingusPPC-based, and the disk tools floppy gets the furthest so far. You can track the work at https://github.com/mihaip/infinite-mac/issues/219.

Thanks, so that confirms my guess. It's good that there's 601 emulation as well as 604 and G3 emulation. Looks like it supports the 603ev in the machinegazelle.cpp; so maybe that'll be added to infinitemac too. I think it'd be welcome to support the MMU too, since it seems a bit weird to me that we can have multiple machine support there, but the MMU needs to be off for all of them.

 

[Arbee]

joevt is right, the 6100 machine is DingusPPC-based, and the disk tools floppy gets the furthest so far. You can track the work at https://github.com/mihaip/infinite-mac/issues/219.

That’s quite interesting - I’m having the same problem with the 6100 in MAME where only a few floppies boot successfully. It looks like you get a hang and I get a bomb error though.

 

[Snial]

joevt is right, the 6100 machine is DingusPPC-based, and the disk tools floppy gets the furthest so far. You can track the work at https://github.com/mihaip/infinite-mac/issues/219.

I've just seen your note on Beige G3 getting to the spinning petals when booting Mac OS 10.2. Brilliant! I saw a different error when I looked at it, but it's still great progress.

I was just wondering how far the 6100 build is going? I noticed in the log that "Switch remaining storage devices to use ImgFile" Does this imply that the 6100 will be able to boot more than just the tools disk soon? PS When I say 'wondering' I'm not trying to put pressure on you doing the 6100, it's whatever schedule you're planning to do. If there's anything I can help with then let me know (normally I'm an embedded software developer; I know 68K and some familiarity with PPC [though not great, I must admit]).

I've tried:

Infinite Mac

A classic Mac loaded with everything you'd want.

infinitemac.org

It currently gets as far as the desktop, with the System 7.1.2 disk opened, but then won't complete reading the infinite_hd=true image, though the mouse still moves.

 

[mihai]

Does this imply that the 6100 will be able to boot more than just the tools disk soon?

it can also boot from the 7.1.2 install CD (with graphical glitches) and a hard disk image (though it gets stuck pretty soon after the Welcome to Power Macintosh screen). I’m in the DingusPPC Discord talking to some of the other people working on it. It sounds like the SCSI implementation is not complete yet.

 

[Snial]

it can also boot from the 7.1.2 install CD (with graphical glitches) and a hard disk image (though it gets stuck pretty soon after the Welcome to Power Macintosh screen). I’m in the DingusPPC Discord talking to some of the other people working on it. It sounds like the SCSI implementation is not complete yet.

OK, cool, that makes sense. Amazingly quick reply and I have just noticed the next two comments after the Jaguar boot comment .

 

[akator70]

Should there be a sub topic for emulation?

I think an emulation sub-topic would be nice. There's a lot of Mac expertise here, including emulating Macs.

 

[Snial]

@mihai , congratulations! I'm now able to boot Dingus PowerPC as a PowerMac 6100 under all Mac OS from System 7.5.3 to System 7.6.

Unfortunately, it doesn't yet support the Infinite HD, nor the Saved HD. Also it only boots with 8MB of RAM regardless of what I set, and About This Macintosh says it's just a 'Macintosh' and uses 4503kB of RAM on boot, which sounds about right - VM is turned off BTW. OTOH, booting as a Mac II gives 2600K (and boots much slower). Booting as a IIfx or Q650 can boot as 16MB, with 800x600 video and uses 3MB. The PM9500 and later models (G3s) don't boot System 7.5.3 (obviously).

I think this proves (at least to the extent I can currently test) that the PowerMac 6100 emulation is getting there. It also appears to run at a decent rate.


Also, amazingly I can turn on VM, reboot and it appears to work!

 

[Phipli]

The PM9500 and later models (G3s) don't boot System 7.5.3 (obviously).

The 9500 should boot 7.5.3?

Not officially supported, but even my 9600 boots 7.5.3.

 

[mihai]

@mihai , congratulations! I'm now able to boot Dingus PowerPC as a PowerMac 6100 under all Mac OS from System 7.5.3 to System 7.6.

Thanks! Mostly credit to @powermax and @joevt, they've done the bulk of the work in getting DingusPPC to the point where it can boot real OSes.

Unfortunately, it doesn't yet support the Infinite HD, nor the Saved HD.

Now that there's SCSI HD support, it should be possible to attach multiple devices to the emulated bus, I'll look into making the additional drives too.

Also it only boots with 8MB of RAM regardless of what I set, and About This Macintosh says it's just a 'Macintosh'

Both of these are issues in the native build of DingusPPC too, I haven't had a chance to investigate them.

The PM9500 and later models (G3s) don't boot System 7.5.3 (obviously).

The 9500 boots the separate "System 7.5.3 - PowerPC" image that Infinite Mac has. I'm somewhat surprised that DingusPPC seems to boot the regular 7.5.3 one -- I see to recall installing only 68K software on it, but perhaps not.

 

[Snial]

Thanks! Mostly credit to @powermax and @joevt, they've done the bulk of the work in getting DingusPPC to the point where it can boot real OSes.

Cool!

Now that there's SCSI HD support, it should be possible to attach multiple devices to the emulated bus, I'll look into making the additional drives too.

Brilliant!

Both of these are issues in the native build of DingusPPC too, I haven't had a chance to investigate them.

Fair enough.

The 9500 boots the separate "System 7.5.3 - PowerPC" image that Infinite Mac has. I'm somewhat surprised that DingusPPC seems to boot the regular 7.5.3 one -- I see to recall installing only 68K software on it, but perhaps not.

Again, fair enough, I was really only trying to find a difference in behaviour to prove the Dingus PPC 6100 was the one being properly booted

 

[mihai]

I was really only trying to find a difference in behaviour to prove the Dingus PPC 6100 was the one being properly booted

The fact that it boots 7.1.2 with a “Welcome to Power Macintosh” message is a pretty good way to show that it’s a 6100.

 

[Snial]

The fact that it boots 7.1.2 with a “Welcome to Power Macintosh” message is a pretty good way to show that it’s a 6100.

Aaah, yes, well the link you provided actually crashed (with a message about the CD) when I tried to run it, but I can see "Welcome to Power Macintosh" behind the crash message. Booting from the 7.1.2 HD image (which does say "Welcome to Power Macintosh"), 7.5, 7.5.1, 7.5.2 HD images hang half way through the boot.


7.5.3 is the first one that boots properly. 7.5.3 (PowerPC) won't even try to boot properly, it displays:

But anyway, looking forward to the 6100 update that supports the second HD and saved HD!

-cheers from Julz

 

[Snial]

Update on Power Macintosh 6100 emulation support on Infinite Mac. It's now possible to boot at least 7.5.3, 7.5.5 and 7.6 to the desktop and have the infinite HD also mounting. So, this is real progress. As before you can only choose 8MB of RAM, other settings still default to 8MB. However, there's a couple of new problems. In the previous version I could select a control panel and change the memory to 16MB of VM, but now the emulator just hangs before the control panel appears. I tried running ClarisWorks 5.0, but that crashed after I selected a word processing document to run. MemMapper ran OK. There's no Macintosh System Profiler so I couldn't directly report the Mac model, but I was going to create a little THINK C program to get the gestaltMachineType, which should be 75 for the PM 6100:

gestaltPowerMac6100_60 = 75; { Power Macintosh 6100/60 }

FUNCTION Gestalt (selector: OSType; VAR response: LongInt): OSErr;

Basically, I'd just call the function via the debugger and observe the result rather than creating a proper app to do it, though I guess I could just modify a hello world app to do a NumToString and display the string.

I also tried the PM 7500 emulation with Mac OS 7.5.3, but it just hung. Nevertheless, it's good to see another model appearing !

But the big thing is that the Infinite HD now mounts, so it's possible to do something practical (in theory) with the emulator. Thanks again @mihai !

 

[Snial]

@mihai , I've looked at the issue with running the memory control panel on the 6100 a bit more using 7.5.3 which is the default one I use. It turns out that most control panels will run OK, but not the memory one if I do attach the Infinite HD. The memory control panel will run OK if I don't attach the Infinite HD and will also allow me to turn on VM to 16MB and restart (it boots up fine and reports 16MB of VM (8MB real)). I wonder why adding the Infinite HD would cause the memory control panel to fail?

 

[Snial]

@mihai Good news! With your latest update: 1fd7075 we now have more progress on the PowerMac 6100 front. I can still only boot up with 8MB of real memory, but I'm now able to start up with the Infinite HD and Saved HD on Mac OS 7.5.5; then switch to the memory control panel and activate VM, setting it to 16MB. Then it does fully reboot on restart! We can see that Mac OS 7.5.5 then uses quite a bit less memory (as you'd expect). What it means in practice is that it should be possible to use apps that would exceed the 8MB limit (and does the Dingus PowerMac 6100 use DRAM for video, or is it the AV version?), so it's a bit more usable. I tried running ZX81 PPC on my Saved HD, but it said there was a -50 error (that also happens when I tried to do a Get Info).




So, real progress! Well done to you and the Dingus PPC emulation people!

-cheers from Julz
PS. I've now also tried System 7.1.2, System 7.5, System 7.5.1, System 7.5.2. Everything up to (and including) 7.5.1 hangs mid-way through the boot and System 7.5.2 throws up an error message. Mac OS 7.6 however, appears to work as well as Mac OS 7.5.5.

 

[joevt]

Later OS versions can boot if you hold the shift key at boot to disable extensions. We haven't investigated which extension is causing the problem. I suspect either ethernet or printer port related. You could manually try to find the culprit, or use a utility such as Conflict Catcher.

There are commits in my fork for 264MB for the pm6100 (only 136MB for 7.1.2?), and 512MB for pm7200. There's 1.5GB for pm7500, 8500, 9500, 7300, 7600, 8600, 9600, and 768MB for the beige G3, and 1GB for Blue&White G3 (though that one probably doesn't boot yet).

pm6100 can boot 7.1.2 and later (though I haven't seen it boot 7.5, 7.6.1, 8.x, (except 8.1 disk tools), 9.x. I probably need to rebuild my hard drives for some of those versions but I thought for sure I selecting the universal install option?

pm7200 to pm9600 can all boot 7.5.3 to 8.6 (except pm7500 and later only boot 8.5 disk tools and not 8.6 and later so far).

Beige G3 can boot 8.1 and later.

The Darwin 1.0 installer has Mac OS 9.0.4 with very few extensions and can boot (pm7200 and probably later) without holding the shift key.

 

[Snial]

Thanks for the reply!

Later OS versions can boot if you hold the shift key at boot to disable extensions. We haven't investigated which extension is causing the problem. I suspect either ethernet or printer port related. You could manually try to find the culprit, or use a utility such as Conflict Catcher.

OK, I'll have a look.

There are commits in my fork for 264MB for the pm6100 (only 136MB for 7.1.2?), and 512MB for pm7200. There's 1.5GB for pm7500, 8500, 9500, 7300, 7600, 8600, 9600, and 768MB for the beige G3, and 1GB for Blue&White G3 (though that one probably doesn't boot yet).

So, I guess this is for a native macOS emulator rather than InfiniteMac's web-based emulator (which I understand is a WebAssembly conversion of DingusPPC)? I've only been trying the InfiniteMac version, which still only allows 8MB of real RAM even with the latest build: cd67940

pm6100 can boot 7.1.2 and later (though I haven't seen it boot 7.5, 7.6.1, 8.x, (except 8.1 disk tools), 9.x. I probably need to rebuild my hard drives for some of those versions but I thought for sure I selecting the universal install option?

Trying to boot the HD image of 7.1.2 on Infinite Mac's PM6100 emulator hangs (though as you can see from earlier comments, 7.1.2 disk tools could boot).

Infinite Mac

A classic Mac loaded with everything you'd want.

infinitemac.org

pm7200 to pm9600 can all boot 7.5.3 to 8.6 (except pm7500 and later only boot 8.5 disk tools and not 8.6 and later so far).

The PM7200 is an interesting machine to me, being the first PCI Mac! The 7500 emulator on InfiniteMac won't boot properly, it does a slow screen clear to black and then the pointer cursor appears within a grey 16x16 block against that black background. Then Mac OS (I've tried 7.5.3) doesn't boot (but the mouse moves).

Beige G3 can boot 8.1 and later.

I haven't tried Beige G3, mostly because I'm interested in seeing the first PowerMac being emulated. I've never actually used a real PowerMac x100. The first PowerMac I used was a Performa 5200 (with 12MB of RAM I think) in early 1996 at a friend's house I was house-sitting for. The next one was my PowerMac 4400 bought in late 1996. So, basically, no PowerMac earlier than a PowerPC 603/603e based Mac, though I have had a Beige G3 and 8500 at one point.

The Darwin 1.0 installer has Mac OS 9.0.4 with very few extensions and can boot (pm7200 and probably later) without holding the shift key.

@mihai , thanks for the latest update! I can the performance of Dingus PPC seems to be improving. I've tried the latest build. I now know I don't need to set the desktop pattern before the Memory control panel works. The PM6100 emulation still can't emulate >8MB of real RAM, but I've tried VM up to 32MB. I had made a mistake with the ZX81 PPC emulator, it was an error on my Saved HD. By expanding the original .sit I found I could play with it! It can run the ZX81 emulator up to 7.7x faster than a real ZX81. That's the important stuff, obviously, to run an emulated ZX81 on an emulated PowerMac ;-) [Actually I was doing it to demo a PPC app]. I tried running MacBench 4.0, but it hangs getting SCSI information.


And here's the amazing ZX81 program that generated the banner!


-cheers from Julz