Formac driver archive

[joshc]

I have started to collate Formac drivers together here:

Index of /mirrors/ftp.formac.com/

I haven't been able to find a complete archive of ftp.formac.com, so this is not reflective of everything that would've originally been on Formac's FTP server.

If anyone has any Formac files they think are missing, please let me know and I can include them.

This is part of my wider long term effort to create a collection of useful resources for vintage Mac users here: https://machut.net/

I've tried to organise it in a somewhat logical way, though 'Formac Archive.sit.hqx' is a larger collection of files that I could've split out but haven't had time to yet, it includes older versions of a lot of the other files I've uploaded.

I hope people find this useful.

 

[adespoton]

MG's /search/node/formac might be useful for you... Formac used to put out a CD regularly with their drivers on it. There's also /apps/drivers-hardware-support specifically for drivers.

Having it all in an HTTP 1.0 - accessible location is definitely a great idea! Do you have an FTP server and Gopher server set up as well?

 

[joshc]

Yup, I've got the drivers from those CDs that Mac Garden has images of, that's why I split them out into separate archive files so that it's a bit easier for people to find what they want in the HTTP directory listings.

I do not have an FTP server or Gopher server at the moment, mainly as I try to keep overhead low, but I might be open to it - making the archive more accessible would be nice.

 

[joshc]

Do you have an FTP server and Gopher server set up as well?

I have setup a read only guest FTP server:

You can login as an anonymous user on port 21.

ftp://machut.net/

No plans to support Gopher at the moment.

 

[stynx]

Here is my Formac graphics driver and rom collection.

 

[stynx]

The ZIP archives of my previous post do not work well with modern mac os x.
I have put another zip with the same files together on mac os x 14.4.1 and I hope that the Macintosh resource fork is still ok.
The ROM files are collected from the net, CDs, other enthusiasts and my own cards.
In the GA-folder there are all the control panels that i could find for the PCI card generation.
GA 4.2.1 is the last 68K/NuBus driver. GA 4.5 and greater has 3D acceleration is PPC/PCI only.
Some later GA-control panel versions will brake compatibility with earlier cards, like the ProMedia (S3 Virge) and ProMedia 3D Pro (Permedia 2).
The "S3 Virge" was never completely supported in QD3D and the "3DLabs Permedia 2" 3D-support was partly broken in versions > 5.4.6 (most likely because of the similar architecture of the Permedia 3)

 

[joshc]

The ZIP archives of my previous post do not work well with modern mac os x.
I have put another zip with the same files together on mac os x 14.4.1 and I hope that the Macintosh resource fork is still ok.
The ROM files are collected from the net, CDs, other enthusiasts and my own cards.
In the GA-folder there are all the control panels that i could find for the PCI card generation.
Some later GA-control panel versions will brake compatibility with earlier cards, like the ProMedia (S3 Virge) and ProMedia 3D Pro (Permedia 2).
The Virge was never completely supported in QD3D and the Permedia 2 3D-support was partly broken in versions > 5.4.0 (most likely because of the similar architecture of the Permedia 3)

Thanks for this! However...

The bare files lost their data. The files that are .sit or .sit.hqx or .bin seem OK.

 

[stynx]

Thanks for this! However...

The bare files lost their data. The files that are .sit or .sit.hqx or .bin seem OK.

View attachment 84342View attachment 84341

I will have to retry this from a vintage mac. My NAS-server for the retro-stuff only supports afp and that is a bit broken in the modern Mac OS X.
On top of that there was some strange bug with the login that made Netatalk 2 ignore the "double" files.
After i have restarted the server, everything is back to normal ... very strange.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Just repacked the files on MacOS 10.4 ...

Inside the ZIP archive are 4 other ZIP-files that contain the actual Mac-files.
I was able to extract the archive on an OSX 10.4 machine without problems and the control-panels did work under OS9 (inside OSX 10.4)

Extracting the ZIP-Files on a modern Mac (OSX 15.3) resulted in some broken files (at least on my mac).
I would recommend to process the files on a OSX 10.4 or MacOS 9 Mac for safety.
If i find the time the next weekend, i will HQX all the files for better FTP-server compatibility.

Sorry again for the problems.

-Jonas

 

[ArmorAlley]

If anyone has any Formac files they think are missing, please let me know and I can include them.

I've uploaded my Formac driver CD to the Macintosh Garden but I have since done a trawl of Archive.org and if I can find where I save the files, I'll send them to you.

https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/formac-drivers-version-2011-01-05-archive