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Alice/Through the Looking Glass...where?!

MacPlusOwner

MacPlusOwner

6502
Does anyone know where this software can be found by any chance? I read about it on Folklore and got intrigued. I looked through almost all of the links on the wiki software page, searched here, googled, etc. It all turns up old dead links, or dead sites. The sites that worked didn't seem to have it. Is this game really that rare or is it right in front of my nose and I just keep overlooking it?!

 
I downloaded it but it's corrupted. :-( Anyone else have trouble with this?
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Nope. Works perfectly. OS X 10.4.11 Mini vMac v2.8.2, 64K ROM build, System 2.0

 
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It runs, but it bombed out for me in mini vmac 3.0.4 as soon as I tried moving a piece. I'm going to try it on a real machine today and see what happens.

 
I finally found time to get the file over onto some real macs (it's a bit of a pain for me right now as the only floppy drive I have is on a PC). I tried it on a Mac Plus (with System 6.0.8 ) and it loaded, but when you move a piece, the game bombs out. Same thing on an SE FDHD with system 6.0.7. I was thinking that maybe it only worked with the Mac 128/512K machine as it was probably coded in assembly and very specific to those machines(??)

And just now I re-read Mac128's post about having it working and just noticed that it was with System 2.0 and a 64K ROM. I guess the devil is in the details!

I'll have to make a System 2 disk and try it again...

edit: er, make that a System 3.2 disk for the Mac Plus. According to the specs that's the lowest OS version it can run. If that doesn't work, I'll try the System2 thing in mini Vmac like Mac128.

 
MrMacPlus: I did not know that you could run system 1 and 2 on a mac plus. Interesting!

well whaddayaknow! Alice does work on mini vMac with system 3.2. Exactly how to play the game is another matter though! (I think Andy Hertzfeld explains it in his book and on folklore.org)

Next up, trying it on a real Mac...

 
I thought some version of 3.x was the first to support hfs?!?!
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Yes, but HFS was programmed into ROM and if you run system 1/2 on a Plus and try to use an HFS disk strange results happen.

(Trust me, I've tried.)

 
Strange, indeed

I used a disk named "untitled", and when i start up OSv1.1, two disks pop up on the desktop.

One has the System folder, and the other everything else. Te first onre can be renamed, but jumps right back to untitled. The second one can be renamed, but i couldn't start up from the disk again.

 
Strangely, not the results I got. Mine was something like half the folders were there and the other half were invisible and the folders inside weren't to be seen. It scared me for a minute. :lol:

 
I thought some version of 3.x was the first to support hfs?!?!
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System 2.1 to be exact, which required the HD20 INIT on the 512K (the 128K cannot load the INIT). These are indeed all HFS issues. In addition, the 128K ROM changed some things related to the system. Stuff that was previously in the System was now in the ROM, but duplicates were left to support the 64K ROMs up to, but not including, System 6 (the first signs of system bloat). System 3.0 onward supported HFS, but more specifically Finder 5.0 was required. Alice likely required 64K ROM resources and once those began to be eliminated from System code, the proper calls could no longer be made. System 3.2 is the last which will run on a 128K, and 4.1 the last to run on a 512K. So that is the last likely system to support Alice.

For the record, the Plus, SE & Classic will all boot from System 1.1. In my experience System 1.0 (out for barely 3 months) is so ROM specific and buggy that it will not handle the 128K and later ROMs properly. 1.1 will support all of those Macs properly as MFS. Since it will not read HFS disks, you run the risks of losing data on any HFS disk. NEVER mix HFS & MFS environments for this reason, except for backward compatibility. The problem is the later ROMs understand HFS even though the System doesn't so the disk does not come up as "unrecognizable" tricking you into using it. Nevertheless, this is a handy setup for formatting 800K MFS disks for use with the 128K & 512K as well as formatting the HD20 for MFS only use with a 512K (the 128K won't load the driver).

So in using vintage Macs, the following applies to the Plus, SE & Classic. As long as you don't ask the System to use hardware of which it isn't aware or with software that does – in fact all three models can be configured to run with 512K RAM thus when using earlier MFS systems, making them virtually indistinguishable:

System 1.1 through 2.0 for MFS only, NO HFS support, SCSI support, PDS support or display brightness.

System 2.1 through 3.2 for HFS, SCSI support, NO PDS support or display brightness.

System 4.0 through 6.0.2 for HFS, SCSI support, PDS support, NO display brightness.

System 6.0.3 through 6.0.8 for HFS, SCSI support, PDS Support, Display brightness.

System 7.0 through 7.5.5, not recommended for MFS support.

 
Be careful with one of those Alice archives: there's one which has 'slomacuser 2007' written all over it, and an extra pixel on the desktop pattern. Took me about 10 minutes to scrub that guy's name off of it. :-/

 
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