index [windsorpro.com]windsorpro.com/pdf/Must_Read_for_SoftMac.pdflator for MS-DOS, the Gemulator...

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In order to benefit from the pages on the website, go to http://www.emulators.com/docs/index.htm and read the pertinent pages. Introduction ———————————————————————————————————— Windows runs Mac OS... and likes it! Cross-platform compatibility between Mac and Windows is not a new concept. Since 1984, Macintosh and PC users have grappled with the problems of reading each other’s disks, loading each other’s files, and running each other’s applications.

Transcript of index [windsorpro.com]windsorpro.com/pdf/Must_Read_for_SoftMac.pdflator for MS-DOS, the Gemulator...

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In order to benefit from the pages on the website, go to

http://www.emulators.com/docs/index.htm

and read the pertinent pages.

Introduction

————————————————————————————————————

Windows runs Mac OS... and likes it!

Cross-platform compatibility between Mac and Windows is not a new concept. Since 1984, Macintosh and PCusers have grappled with the problems of reading each other’s disks, loading each other’s files, and running eachother’s applications.

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Utilities do exist to read Macintosh files on the PC. We even provide such a free utility to read Mac disks on aPC, which is handy for reading a Mac formatted disk that contains a common file such as a Word document,Excel spreadsheet, Photoshop document, or a GIF or JPG or HTML file.

Some popular commercial utilities even go so far as to convert the file format for you, say from Mac Word 5.1format to Word 2000 format. But the act of conversion may destroy the font information and change the docu-ment layout. This type of utility is a bad idea if you plan to “round trip” the document back to a real Macintosh.It is a one-way operation at best.

Other tools, costing up to hundreds of dollars, do exist to allow Mac and PC computers to network together. Butthey do not solve the “round trip” problem of moving a Mac file from a Mac application to a Windows applica-tion and then back to the Mac application.

None of these simple file copy utilities are really a good solution for the problems faced by real world Macintoshand Windows users:

1. The round trip problem - Create a file on a Macintosh. Copy it to a PC and edit it in Windows. Then copyit back to a Macintosh and editing it using the original application. Each time the file may lose font, formatting,and layout information and may require tedious editing to fix to get it back to the way it was originally.

2. The non-standard file format problem - Some file formats simply can’t be converted from Mac to PC.The Mac applications that created the document do not exist for the PC, or the Windows version of the applica-tion lacks the ability to do the conversion.

3. The custom written software problem - Many schools have invested thousands of dollars and years oftime in developing customized educational software. While it may be inexpensive to replace the old Macintoshcomputers with PCs, it is not a trivial matter to rewrite millions of lines of computer code or to purchase thou-sands of dollars of new software which may not be able to read the old files.

4. The look-and-feel problem - While many Macintosh applications do have Windows equivalents, mostMacintosh users prefer the look and feel of the Mac OS and the way that the applications look and behave on aMac. What Mac Word user really wants to use Word 2000 or Word XP?

We have a better solution. If you love your Macintosh software and would prefer to use Macintosh applicationsover Windows applications, but you either have to use a PC or can’t resist the low cost of PCs, why not simplyuse the PC to run the Macintosh software? What a simple idea!

Our solution, since we developed it in 1997, is to turn a PC into a Macintosh clone, and to run Mac OS andMacintosh applications directly on the PC. You benefit from the lower cost and faster speed of the PC, and stillkeep the use of your legacy Macintosh applications.

Not only does this provide you the easy ability to copy files back and forth between Mac and PC, but it solvesthe round trip problem, it solves the non-standard file format problem, it solves the custom written software prob-lem, and it solves the look-and-feel problem. Because with emulation, you don’t stop using your originalMacintosh software and you are not required to purchase additional Windows applications. All you need is a PC,one of our emulators, and the Mac software that you already have.

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Using a Macintosh emulator, your PC can:

* Run the Mac OS on x86 processors - run Mac OS on Intel and AMD processors, and run Mac OS andWindows at the same time.* Read Macintosh disks - read your Macintosh floppy disks, CD-ROMs, Iomega ZIP disks and other Macdisks directly.* Run most Macintosh programs - our current emulators run about 90% of all System 6, System 7, and MacOS 8 compatible Macintosh software.* Have faster speed and larger memory - run Macintosh applications at close to the full clock speed of yourPC with up to a gigabyte of memory.

Our products have been seen on television’s Digital Desk show, in Japan’s Mac Power magazine, at MacworldExpo San Francisco, Macworld Expo Tokyo, CeBIT Hannover, COMDEX Las Vegas, and numerous other com-puter shows around the world.

Emulation is a great way for a PC to be more Mac friendly in a mixed Mac/PC environment. And it is a greatway to replace an older Macintosh computer with a fast inexpensive PC while retaining backward compatibili-ty with the older machine’s software.————————————————————————————————————

SOFTMAC XP - The intelligent solution to Macintosh - Windows compatibility

A solution for every PC and every budget. Whether your PC is running MS-DOS, Windows 95, or Windows XP,we offer a variety of Mac emulation tools, utilities, and software bundles to help you read and run Mac files onyour PC. You may download our tools free of charge for home and personal use.

SoftMac XP Classic Edition, or simply SoftMac Classic, is the free Macintosh emulator for Windows, featuring68000, 68030, and 68040 emulation in a single emulator and support for emulating Mac Classic, Mac II, andMac Quadra computers. It supports all versions of Mac OS from the original 1.1g through System 6, System 7,Mac OS 7.5 and 7.6, and Mac OS 8.0 and 8.1. For use with Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, WindowsNT 4, Windows Me, and of course, Windows XP.

SoftMac XP Xpress Edition, or simply SoftMac Xpress, is our most optimized Macintosh emulator, delivering30% to 100% more speed than past releases of SoftMac when used with Windows XP on an Intel Pentium 4processor, and featuring two-way drag-and-drop file copy support between Mac and PC disk volumes.

Download SoftMac XP - get both Classic Edition and Xpress Edition right now!SoftMac Online Documentation - instructions for installing SoftMac. Print and read carefully!SoftMac Online Tutorial - shows you how to install Mac OS 8 and Macintosh applications. Print and read care-fully!

All releases of SoftMac will boot Mac OS 8.1 in under 15 seconds on a typical Windows PC. By being able toemulate different types of Macintosh computers, SoftMac supports both “32-bit clean” and “32-bit dirty”Macintosh applications, and runs all 68K compatible versions of Mac OS (including System 7, System 6, andearlier) up to and including Mac OS 8.1.

The PowerPC processor is not emulated at this time by current releases of SoftMac, so Mac OS 8.5, 8.6, 9.0 andX are not supported since those versions of Mac OS require the PowerPC processor. PowerPC native applica-tions are also not supported at this time.

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A PC running MS-DOS cannot run SoftMac since SoftMac is designed for use on Windows only. For MS-DOSusers we offer a free product called Fusion PC 3.0. It features fast 68040 emulation with an extremely small diskfootprint. It is recommended for use on older 486 and Pentium systems running MS-DOS, or Windows 95/98MS-DOS Prompt windows. Fusion PC 3.0 runs System 7.0 and 7.1, as well as Mac OS version 7.5, 7.6, 8.0, and8.1.

Download Fusion PC 3.0 - setup files and documentation

All of our emulators run Mac software very quickly, typically delivering 50% to 70% of the clock speed in emu-lation. In other words, a 500 MHz PC running Windows 98 can emulate the equivalent of a 300 MHz MacintoshQuadra running Mac OS 8. Your results will vary depending on the exact type of PC you are using, the amountof RAM present, the version of Windows being used, video drivers, etc. For a good explanation on exactly whattype of PC to use and how fast your results can be, see our Hardware Requirements and Benchmarks page.

IMPORTANT: All versions of SoftMac and Fusion PC require that you provide a valid Macintosh ROM BIOS(which all Macintosh computers use to start booting) and a valid Mac OS startup disk. Without these two items,and emulator will not boot or work, just as a real Macintosh computer cannot work without these items. Youshould download the free SoftMac XP or Fusion PC release to verify that you have the necessary ROM BIOSand Mac OS before purchasing a more advanced SoftMac release.

All users of Mac emulators fall into one of 3 categories. You should determine exactly which of the 3 categoriesapplies to you, and this will determine whether you need to purchase a ROM card and/or ROMs, or whether youcan use SoftMac entirely without any additional hardware. The 3 categories are:

* You do not currently own a Macintosh computer of any kind. You will have to purchase our ROM cardand a set of Macintosh ROMs and use that hardware inside your PC. You will likely also need to purchase MacOS and other Macintosh software.* You do own a Macintosh computer, but one that is not functioning. You will need to purchase our ROMcard and you will have the option to then install your computer’s ROMs into the ROM card. In effect, transfer-ring the functionality of your Macintosh computer into your PC. Only specific Macintosh ROMs are supportedby the ROM card, so please consult our Macintosh ROM Chart to verify that you have the correct ROMs.* You do own a Macintosh computer that is functioning. You may be able to simply create a ROM imageof your Macintosh’s BIOS by running a small utility on your Macintosh. Again, please consult the MacintoshROM Chart to verify that your ROMs are supported as ROM images. SoftMac currently supports over 30 dif-ferent Macintosh ROM BIOS versions that are used in dozens of different models of Macintosh computers andwe are adding support for new BIOS versions every month.————————————————————————————————————SoftMac XP Suite 8.20

On April 20 2002 we released the SoftMac XP version 8.20 Suite CD-ROM. This latest release improvesWindows XP support and Windows XP optimizations which deliver up to 100% faster speed than previousSoftMac 2000 releases. Two Windows XP compatible releases of SoftMac are included - SoftMac Classic whichminimizes memory usage and is better suited for older Windows 95 based PCs, and SoftMac Xpress which deliv-ers faster speed and is optimized for Pentium 4 and Athlon processors. Both version include a more intuitive userinterface over SoftMac 2000.

The SoftMac XP Suite comes with some additional software, including the Fusion PC 3.0 Apple Macintosh emu-lator for MS-DOS, the Gemulator Atari ST emulator for Windows, and easier to use file copy utilities which sim-ply copying files between Mac and PC disk volumes. We also offer additional third party Macintosh softwaresuch as Mac OS 8 and Claris Works, shareware software for the Mac, as well as Macintosh ROMs for use with

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SoftMac XP and other Macintosh emulators.

Order the Mac OS 7.5, Mac OS 8, Mac shareware, ClarisWorks, and Mac ROMs now.

Some quick facts about the latest SoftMac XP release:

* supports Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0, and Windows 95* compatible with all 486, Pentium, Celeron, AMD K6, Duron, and Athlon processors* 30% to 100% faster performance than previous SoftMac 2000 releases* emulates 68000, 68010, 68020, 68030, and 68040 processors* emulates 68881/68882/68040 floating point co-processors* emulates Mac Classic, Macintosh II, Macintosh LC, and Macintosh Quadra computers* runs System 6, System 7, and Mac OS 8, including Mac OS 8.1 and Mac OS 7.6* support for emulating 1 gigabyte (1024 megabytes) of Macintosh memory using an efficient swap file* multiple CD-ROM and DVD-ROM support - mount up to 9 CD-ROM devices at once* direct reading of Apple Macintosh floppy disks, CD-ROMs, hard drives, LS-120 and Iomega ZIP disks* disk image support allows mounting of SCSI hard disk and CD-ROM disk image files* easy drag-and-drop file copy support between Mac and PC disks* high resolution graphics supporting up to 1900x1080 color modes* support for editing and switching between 16 custom configurations* “Hibernate” command - quickly saves Macintosh session to hard disk* built-in links to useful web sites and online help

————————————————————————————————————

Macintosh ROM BIOS Information

As with most emulators and as explained above, SoftMac requires the ROM BIOS from a Macintosh computerin order to properly work. This is both a legal and technical requirement. If you own a functioning 68K basedMacintosh computer, you can run a ROM dumping utility (which we supply) on your Macintosh and save itsROM BIOS to a disk file. That ROM file can then be copied to your PC and used with SoftMac and in manycases also used with our Fusion PC 3.0 emulator. The directions for doing this, as well as the ROM dump utili-ty itself are on our SoftMac Online Documentation page. Please check the ROM chart below to make sure youhave the necessary model of Macintosh to create the ROM image with. If your ROMs are listed as supported,congratulations, you can skip the rest of this page!

If you do not have a working Macintosh computer or do not have the necessary model of Macintosh computer,you must use ROM card and plug in real Macintosh ROMs into the card which then plugs into your PC. TheROM card which we manufacture has 8 ROM sockets which allows you to plug in two or more sets of MacintoshROMs at once. This gives you the ability to run SoftMac and emulate multiple Macintosh computers at the sametime, each running from a different ROM on the ROM card.

If you purchase our ROM card, you have the option to have us pre-install a set of Mac OS 8 compatibleMacintosh ROMs on the card. If you wish to save some money and purchase just the ROM card without pre-installed ROMs, or you are an existing customer with a ROM card already installed, you can add your ownMacintosh ROMs to the ROM card. You have several ROMs to choose from depending on what kind ofMacintosh you wish to emulate and the kind of Macintosh software you wish to run:

* For running older 68000 software (typically old Macintosh Plus or Macintosh SE software) you will wantto use 128K Macintosh Plus ROMs. These can run System 6, System 7, and System 7.5.5, and do support read-

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ing high density 1.44M floppy disks and other Macintosh disks. These ROMs easily plug out of any MacintoshPlus computer because they are always socketed.

* The first generation of color Macintosh ROMs are the original Macintosh II series (II, IIx, IIcx, andSE/30). These ROMs support color and are great for running System 7 and System 7.5. They are relatively inex-pensive and can be plugged out of most Macintosh II computers because they are usually socketed (except in theIIcx). These ROMs however do not run Mac OS 8 because they are not 32-bit clean and support at most 8megabytes of memory, limiting their usefulness.

* The second generation of Macintosh II ROMs are the 512K, 1M, and 2M ROMs found in the MacintoshIIci, IIsi, LC series, Centris series, and Quadra series computers. These ROMs are 32-bit clean, meaning theysupport up to 1024 megabytes of Macintosh memory, they run System 7, 7.5, as well as Mac OS 7.6, 8.0, and8.1, and are generally much faster and less buggy than the original Macintosh II ROMs. These are the idealROMs to run with SoftMac and are the type of ROMs that we install with our ROM cards.

The ROM card can accept almost all types of Macintosh ROMs manufactured between about 1984 and 1992,covering everything from the Mac 128 to the higher end Mac IIci and LC models. Although the card cannot phys-ically accept 1M or larger ROMs due to the shape of those ROM chips, the 512K IIci and LC ROMs work justas well and do support Mac OS 8.

To extract the ROMs and install them on the card, first remove the cover from the Macintosh. Look for the ROMson the motherboard. They will be a 1, 2, or 4 chip set in a 28-, 32-, or 40-pin package. Most Mac motherboardslabel the ROM chips right on the board with markings such as “ROM HIGH”, “ROM LOW”, “ROM HH”,“ROM LL”, etc.

On each ROM will be part number of the form 341-0XXX or 342-0XXX. The XXX is a 3 digit part number thanuniquely identifies each ROM chip. For example, the picture here shows a set of Mac 512 ROMs plugged intothe ROM card. If you can read it, note the part numbers on the two chips - the first one is 342-220-A, the sec-ond chip is 342-221-A.

Once you unplug the ROMs from the Macintosh, installing the chips is easy. Install the chips in numerically inthe order listed in the chart below so that SoftMac will detect them correctly. When installing 28-pin chips, leaveempty pins to the left of the chip as pictured above. ROM chips will 32 pins will plug in covering the entire sock-et. 40 pin ROMs (such as from the LC III) are not supported directly without using additional sockets to sit ontop of our card and are not recommended. A ROM image of those ROMs can be used though.

The following is a list of ROMs and part numbers that we’ve cataloged so far. We will be updating this list aswe test ROMs from more Mac models.

For each Macintosh ROM we list the models of computers that the ROM was used in and the unique “check-sum” of the ROM. The checksum is displayed by the ROM dump utility and identifies the specific version ofthe ROM. Apple released dozens of different Macintosh ROMs over the years. For each ROM we also list thetype of processor that it supports, the size of the ROM image, the physical information about the ROM chips,the part number, the versions of Mac OS supported by the ROM, and which emulators support this ROM.

Information that is unknown or unsupported is marked with a * symbol.

ROMs that are marked as “jumpers” are not standard 28- or 32-pin ROMs and will require extra installationsteps. Installing them yourself is not recommended.

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Emulators legend: G = Gemulator 2000, S = SoftMac 2000/Classic/Xpress, P = SoftMac Professional, F = Fusion PC

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If you have a Mac not listed here or have ROMs with different part numbers, let us know so we can add themto the list. Give us the model of Macintosh, the year it was manufactured, the type of processor inside of it, thenumber of ROM chips, the number of pins on each ROM, and read off all the text on each ROM.

Please do not send us information about old Macintosh clones (UMAX, Power Computing, etc.) or Mac OS Xonly machines. These are not true classic Macintosh computers and are thus not intended to be supported by ouremulators.

If you prefer to purchase a ROM card with physical ROMs, if you require a Mac OS boot disk and installationCD-ROM, you can order those items directly from us at our Emulators online store.————————————————————————————————————

Copyright © 2003 Emulators Inc., 14150 NE 20th Street, Suite 302, Bellevue, WA 98007, U.S.A.Telephone: 206-236-0540 (10am to 1pm Eastern time Mon-Fri), Fax: 206-236-0540 (24 hours)Live MSN Messenger chat with [email protected] at 1800h GMT (2pm Eastern time) Mon-Fri.

Email is usually responded to by the next business day. Our offices are occasionally closed for computer tradeshows and other company events.

Apple, Mac OS, and Macintosh are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Atari is a registered trade-mark of Atari U.S. Corporation. Athlon and Athlon XP are registered trademarks of AMD. Microsoft, Windows,Windows NT, Windows XP, and/or other Microsoft products referenced herein are either trademarks or regis-tered trademarks of Microsoft. Intel and Pentium are registered trademarks of Intel. PowerPC is a trademark ofIBM. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the individual com-panies and are respectfully acknowledged.

————————————————————————————————————Online DocumentationUpdated January 17, 2003————————————————————————————————————

Welcome to the SoftMac Online Documentation page. This is where we show you how to download and installthe latest releases of SoftMac 2000 and SoftMac XP. If you have purchased SoftMac on CD-ROM you shouldalso consult the printed manual which came with your CD-ROM. If you are currently running an older versionof SoftMac (prior to 8.20) by all means go to our download page and run the latest SoftMac installer. This willinstall the latest online releases of SoftMac, Gemulator, and Xformer.

After you read this documentation and get the software installed, there are two other pages you should read:

* The SECRETS page has tips on optimizing the performance of both Windows and Mac OS. You’d beamazed at how much you don’t know about your computer!* The step-by-step TUTORIAL page covers the real life example of freshly install Mac OS on a new com-puter, something you will need to do if you are installing Mac OS for the first time on your PC————————————————————————————————————

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Changes and improvements in the Gemulator 2000 and SoftMac XP releases

A little bit about the history and capabilities of SoftMac...

We have been offering PC users the ability to run both Atari ST and Apple Macintosh software on MS-DOSbased PC for about 10 years now. For most of that time, the functionality of emulating and running Atari andMacintosh was provided in a single combined product called Gemulator, first on MS-DOS, and then later onWindows 3.1 and Windows 95.

In 1998 after releasing Gemulator version 6.0, we split Gemulator into Atari specific and Macintosh specificproduct lines. The Atari emulation product retained the name Gemulator, while the new Macintosh emulationproduct was named SoftMac. The original release of SoftMac 2000 launched in 1999 at COMDEX Las Vegaswas thus the 7th generation of emulation technology and was also called SoftMac version 7.0 rather than ver-sion 1.0. SoftMac 2000 included the obligatory Y2K bug fixes, Pentium III and Athlon optimizations (which hadboth been released earlier in 1999), and Windows 2000 fixes (which was about to be released in early 2000).

During the spring and summer of 2000 we released the SoftMac 7.1 (Service Release 1) and SoftMac 7.2(Service Release 2) upgrades to add some additional Windows 2000 and Windows Millennium fixes. Althoughwe are treating the 8.0 release as a 3rd service release, the 8.0 release is actually based on a new emulationengine. In almost all cases the 8.0 engine is faster over the previous generation, while using significantly lessdisk space and memory. Most of our SoftMac 8.0 benchmarks (Speedometer, Photoshop, Fractals, boot speed,etc.) are faster across the board compared to version 7.2.

The new version 8 engine also eliminates the problem in version 7 of using Gemulator for running 24-bit 68000code (i.e. 32-bit “dirty” code) and using SoftMac to run 32-bit clean code. The good news is the new version 8engine handles 24-bit and 32-bit address equally well, eliminating the need for two versions of SoftMac. As abonus, you can now even bring up the Memory control panel in Mac OS and toggle 24-bit and 32-bit address-ing and it will work just fine, increase the stability and compatibility of our product quite a bit with older Macsoftware. The changes also allow other control panels and Mac OS utilities, such as Monitors & Sounds andDrive Setup, to work better than before.

Another major change was the addition of the new Auto Configure command. Your email feedback indicated thatour products, especially SoftMac, were hard to set up due to the numerous settings that had to be specified beforeusing the product. Now with Auto Configure, you need merely answer a few simple questions and have the prod-uct running in a few seconds. The product will figure out and set various options automatically, although you arestill free to manually adjust them at any time.

In July 2001, we launched SoftMac XP based on the version 8.1 engine which added support for Windows XP.In April 2002 we released SoftMac XP version 8.2 which contained significant rewrites to deliver significantlyfaster performance on both Intel Pentium 4 and AMD Athlon XP processors, from 30% to 100% faster.

Finally, we added the Tools menu to Gemulator and SoftMac which adds disk imaging commands directly to theemulators. While this functionality already exists in the separate Gemulator Explorer utility, many users foundit annoying to switch between the emulator and the disk utility. So we put the most common Gemulator Explorerfeatures directly into the emulators - formatting a blank Macintosh floppy disk, creating a disk image from afloppy, writing an image back to a floppy, and creating blank hard disk image files.

Overall, since the original release of SoftMac 2000, we’ve updated it to support quite a few more MacintoshROMs including ROMs that no other emulator supports, we’ve added the disk imaging features mentionedabove, fixed compatibility problems with Mac OS, worked around bug in Windows drivers and difference in var-

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ious Windows releases, added the Auto Configure feature mentioned above, and made many other changes. Thepartial (but certainly not the complete) list of recent changes is listed here:

* Easier to use – redesigned menus to make them more intuitive* Improved Setup – new Auto Configure command practically configures the product by itself* Online help – Help menu has direct links to menu useful web pages* Multiple configurations - made it easy to reconfigure the emulators, or run multiple instances

of an emulator using different settings in each one* Disk configuration - is now handled by a single intuitive dialog box instead of two, s

aving many mouse clicks* Read only disk support - disk images and SCSI devices can be marked read-only for extra protection* LS-120 and DVD support - we support the latest disk devices found in today’s desktop and notebook PCs* .CD extension support - use CD-ROM disk images that use either the .CD or .DSK file extension* Iomega ZIP drive improvements - we now support all types of ZIP drives - SCSI, parallel port, USB,

and IDE* Built in disk imaging support - new disk images can be created, and existing disk images written t

o disk directly from within the emulator* Windows 2000 support - a lot of people may have problems installing other programs on Windows 2000,

but not ours* Instant zoom - just double click the title bar to change the zoom setting, saving several mouse clicks

from before* Higher resolution color support - Macintosh color modes now supports 256 color resolutions

at up to 1920x1200 resolution* Better full screen support - full screen mode is now supported on all video cards even when DirectX

is not installed or not enabled* Redraw fixes - fixed a number of video redraw problems that displayed garbage on the screen when

the video mode changed* ATI video card support - no more black screens and corrupted displays, we’ve added options

to handle buggy ATI video card drivers* Mouse fixes - fixed mouse problems with certain Macintosh ROMs and problems when other

windows were above the emulator window* MODE32 support - third party memory managers such as MODE32, as well as 24-bit and 32-bit

mode switching now works* Monitors & Sound - fixed several bugs that now allow the Monitors & Sound control panel to work

and certain versions of Drive Setup to now work* Startup Disk - fixed bug that prevented the Startup Disk control panel in Mac OS to work properly* Save Settings on Shutdown - automatically remembers your settings when you exit the emulator* Shutdown Detection - detects when the Mac OS has shut down and brings up the main emulator menu* PRAM Clear - new command to clear the Macintosh permanent memory* Smarter ROM support - now supports multiple Atari TOS ROM images in the same directory* Low memory consumption - the 8.0 products consume from several hundred kilobytes

to several megabytes less memory than previous versions* Faster boot time - SoftMac now boots up almost instantly, eliminating the long “Rebooting...”

display and occasional locks/crashes* Higher limits - the free unregistered version of SoftMac now supports 32 megabytes of memory

and 800x600 resolution.

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There are 3 distinct Macintosh hardware configurations that are emulated by SoftMac XP are:

* the black and white System 6.0 and 7.0 compatible 68000 Macintosh Classic* the basic System 7.0, 7.1, and 7.5 compatible color 24-bit 68020/68030 Macintosh II* the Mac OS 7.6, 8.0, and 8.1 compatible 32-bit 68040 Macintosh Quadra

The full licensed install of SoftMac XP supports a maximum of 1024 megabytes of Macintosh memory underMac OS 8 and a maximum screen resolution of 1920x1080. Most video cards now support such large resolu-tions, although your monitor may not. Therefore the maximum amount of memory and screen resolution avail-able on your system will depend on the available memory of your PC, the video modes supports by your PC’svideo card and monitor, and the specific release of Mac OS that you are running.————————————————————————————————————

Hardware, Software, and Memory Requirements

A detailed explanation of the hardware requirements needed to run SoftMac, and the kind of speed you shouldexpect from your PC, are given on our Benchmarks page. In general here are some quick tips:

Windows PC requirements: Xformer 2000, Gemulator 2000, and SoftMac XP run on 32-bit compatible versionsof Windows. That is, Windows 95, Windows 95 OSR2, Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows NT4, Windows 2000, Windows Millennium, Windows XP, and Windows 2003. All processors which supportWindows 98 or higher are supported.

Virtual memory and memory requirements: SoftMac uses virtual memory provided by Windows to emulate upto 1024 megabytes of Macintosh memory. Make sure that you have enough swap file space on the hard disk toallow Windows to create as much virtual memory as necessary.

SCSI and CD-ROM support: SoftMac supports most ZIP, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, and DVD-ROM drives,whether internal, external, IDE, USB, or SCSI. It also support external Macintosh SCSI hard disks. The CD-ROM and SCSI emulation requires that the Windows ASPI driver is installed and is current. ASPI is installed bydefault in Windows 95 OSR2, Windows 98, Windows Millennium, Windows XP, and Windows 2003, but mustbe installed manually on Windows 95, Windows NT 4 and Windows 2000.

ROM image support: SoftMac supports all 68K compatible Macintosh BIOS ROM image files that are 64K,128K, 256K, 512K, 1M, or 2M in size. The ROM images can be created from your own Macintosh computer,including the Plus, II, IIx, IIcx, IIci, IIsi, IIfx, Classic II, Color Classic, SE/30, LC, LC II, LC III, LC475, Quadra605, Quadra 610, Quadra 650, Quadra 700, Quadra 900, Quadra 950, Quadra AV, and others. All ROM imagessupported by other Macintosh emulators are supported.

ROM card support: If you do not own a supported Macintosh and cannot create a ROM image file, then you needto physically plug in a ROM card with appropriate Macintosh ROMs. The ROM card is manufactured and soldby Emulators and requires an available ISA slot. Check your computer to make sure you have an available ISAslot! To be able to use Mac OS 8 you must plug in a 4-chip set of 512K Macintosh ROM (for example, IIci, LC,or LC II ROMs). To use System 7 you can also use a 4-chip set of 256K Macintosh II ROMs or a 2-chip set ofMacintosh Plus ROMs.

Mac OS support: SoftMac supports all 68K compatible Mac OS releases, including System 7.0.1, 7.1, 7.5, 7.5.3,7.5.5, Mac OS 7.6, 7.6.1, 8.0, and the latest 8.1. Mac OS 8.5 or higher are not supported by existing SoftMacreleases, but will be supported in future releases of SoftMac Professional.

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PowerPC support: Why only support up to 68040 processors and not PowerPC? Keep in mind that the greatmajority of Macintosh software out there does not require a PowerPC processor or even Mac OS 8.5, as mostMac software is written for the 68000 or 68040 and compatible with Mac OS 8.1 or earlier. Macintosh comput-ers have been around since 1984, and most Macintosh software written until about 2000 was actually still 68020or 68040 based. Even the Mac OS itself was mostly 68040 code right until the release of Mac OS 9, unfortunate-ly leaving millions of owners of PowerMac computers with nothing more than PowerPC machines that spentmost of their time emulating a 68040. So at this time, until PowerPC actually becomes prevalent on the Mac,you will need to run 68000 and 68040 compatible versions of Mac OS and Mac applications on our emulators.

If your PC meets all of the above requirements, as well as the hardware requirements listed here, should you thenproceed to install SoftMac.————————————————————————————————————

Support and Problem Reporting

As can happen even when setting up a real Macintosh computer from scratch, you may encounter problems get-ting everything to work. This can be caused by using an incorrect Macintosh ROM BIOS, trying to boot thewrong Mac OS version with a given ROM BIOS, or some other common problem.

Due to the thousands of downloads of SoftMac every week, we cannot provide support to non-customers. If youare a paid and registered SoftMac customer, we do provide additional support by email. Be sure to indicate thefollowing pieces of information when reporting a problem:

* the processor and speed of your PC (for example, 486/33, Pentium II 233, K6-200, etc)* the version and the release date of the SoftMac you are using (get this from Help About)* the version of Windows (i.e. 2000, XP, 2003, Me, 98, etc. Get this from Help About also)* the amount of RAM in your PC (right click on My Computer and select Properties)* the video card and sound card you are using* the model version or exact checksum of Atari ST or Macintosh ROMs being used* the exact settings in the Properties and Disk Properties dialog boxes in SoftMac or Gemulator* the output of the Debug Info menu item* the version of Mac OS you are using (if applicable) and how it is being loaded (floppy, CD, hard disk)* the settings in Gemulator’s or SoftMac’s Properties dialog box* the steps you have taken to reproduce the problem or bug

If you do not submit at least this information there is little we will be able to do to help you. It also helps, but isnot required, that you submit a screen shot of the problem. You can take a screen shot of your entire Windowsdesktop by pressing the PrntScrn key (or Print Screen on some keyboards). You can take a smaller screen shotof just the SoftMac window by pressing both the Alt and PrntScrn keys. Then use the Edit Paste command inyour email editor to send us the screen shot.————————————————————————————————————

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Installing SoftMac (with Gemulator and Xformer)

Step 1 - Run the product installer

The SoftMac XP Xpress Edition, SoftMac XP Classic Edition, SoftMac 2000, Gemulator 2000, and Xformer2000 emulators are installed at the same time by a common setup program. Whether you download the freerelease from our download page or you have a SoftMac 2000 CD-ROM, just run SETUP.EXE which will installthe following files to a C:\GEMUL8R directory on your PC:

* SOFTMAC.EXE - The SoftMac XP Classic Edition Macintosh emulator - for use on most Windows based PCs

* SOFTMAC2.EXE - The SoftMac XP Xpress Edition emulator, specifically optimized for Intel Pentium 4 and Windows XP

* SOFTMAC8.EXE - The older and discontinued SoftMac 2000 Macintosh emulator for Windows 95/98/2000 and NT 4.0

* GEMUL8R8.EXE - The Gemulator 2000 version 8 Atari ST and Macintosh Classic 68000 emulator* XFORMER8.EXE - The Xformer 2000 Atari 8-bit 6502 emulator* GEMXPLOR.EXE - The Gemulator Explorer file copy and disk imaging utility - reads Atari ST

and Macintosh disks on a PC

In the same C:\GEMUL8R directory you will also find a folder called APPLEMAC which contains these addi-tional files:

* COPYROM.HQX - A BinHex’ed version of the utility to create a ROM image file on your Macintosh* UTILITY.IMG - A 1.44M Macintosh floppy disk image file with useful tools such as CopyROM

and Transfer. This disk image can be used to create a real Macintosh floppy disk that you can then put directly in your Macintosh computer to run CopyROM.

Shortcuts to these programs are also added to your Windows Programs menu. So go ahead and...

Download the latest release of SoftMac XP

Step 2 - Create a ROM BIOS image

Gemulator and SoftMac will not run without the appropriate ROM BIOS taken out of your Atari ST or AppleMacintosh computer. If you have purchased and installed our ROM card with ROMs, then you can skip this stepcompletely since your ROMs are already installed and ready to be used. Consult your printed manual for direc-tions on how to install the ROM card.

To create a Macintosh ROM image file you need to get the CopyROM utility over to your Macintosh computer.You can do this in one of those ways:

* Copy the file COPYROM.HQX to your Macintosh using floppy disk, modem, or ZIP disk, and thenrun StuffIf Expander on your Macintosh to create the executable CopyROM program. Use themodem method or ZIP disk method on Macintosh computers that lack a 1.44M floppy disk drive

* Run SoftMac and use the Write Disk Image to Floppy Disk menu command to specify theUTILITY.IMG image file and have it written to a blank disk in your PC’s A: drive. This is the easi-er method but requires that your Macintosh has a 1.44M floppy disk drive. This is be no problem onall but the original Mac, Mac Plus, Mac SE, and Mac II computer.

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Now run the CopyROM utility on your Macintosh. It will display the ROM checksum of your Macintosh com-puter’s ROM BIOS. Verify that the checksum matches one of the 30 or so supported ROMs listed on our ROMchart. If it matches, then go ahead and save the ROM image to disk, and name the file something likeMAC.ROM. Then copy that ROM file back to the PC. You can use the same Utilities floppy disk, or use a remov-able disk such as a ZIP disk. If the disk is in Macintosh format, use the Gemulator Explorer utility to drag anddrop the file from the Macintosh disk to your PC’s C: drive.

Macintosh BIOS ROM image files should have a .ROM extension and should be placed either in the root of yourPC’s C: drive, or in the same directory as your SoftMac program. To make sure that your Mac ROM is support-ed, see our ROM chart. If your ROM is not listed, then it is not supported by SoftMac and you will to purchasea ROM card with ROMs instead.

Please remember to stay LEGAL and create ROM images of computers that you own. If you do not own anappropriate Macintosh computer to create a ROM image with, then you should order our ROM card andMacintosh ROM bundle from our online store. We also offer an essential Macintosh software bundle whichincludes Mac OS and useful applications.

Step 3 - Booting Mac OS from a startup disk

Finally, you will need to boot the Mac OS. You can use any 1.44M Mac OS boot floppy that came with yourexisting Macintosh computer, or use Mac OS installation CD-ROM. SoftMac supports the Mac OS 7.5, 7.6, 8.0,and 8.1 CD-ROMs.

To save some time, you can also use your existing Macintosh computer to create a bootable Mac OS partitionon a portable disk such as an external SCSI hard disk or an Iomega ZIP disk. Once you have formatted the diskand installed the Mac OS to it, just disconnect the disk from your Macintosh, connect it to your PC using theSCSI or USB port, and SoftMac will be able to boot directly from it! Literally transplant all your Macintosh filesto your PC in minutes!

If you have lost your original Mac OS boot floppy or installation CD-ROM, you are in luck. Apple makes older68K versions of Mac OS (7.5.5 and earlier) freely available on the web at their FTP site. Simply browse this FTPdirectory on Apple’s site:

f t p : / / f t p . a p p l e . c o m / A p p l e _ S u p p o r t _ A r e a / A p p l e _ S o f t w a r e _ U p d a t e s / E n g l i s h -North_American/Macintosh/System/Older_System

Several versions of both System 6 and System 7 are available in the form of boot floppy images. If you are usingpre-68040 ROMs (such as Mac Plus, Mac II, or Mac LC) we recommend you download the basic System 6.0.8boot disk, as this is a general purpose boot disk that will boot with any older 68K Mac.

If you are using 68040 ROMs, i.e. Quadra, Centris, Performa, LC 580 series, LC 630 series, LC III, etc., thenyou should download a System 7.0.1 or higher boot disk.

If you are running System 7.5, 7.6, or Mac OS 8, you should also download the latest Drive Setup 1.7 format-ting utility from the following page:

http://asu.info.apple.com/swupdates.nsf/artnum/n11303

The versions of Drive Setup that come with Mac OS 7.6 and 8.0 have known bugs and should not be used. Werecommend using the Drive Setup 1.7 above, or use the recent versions found on the Mac OS 8.1, Mac OS 8.5,

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and Mac OS 8.0 CD-ROMs. Yes, I said 9.0. While Mac OS 9 does need PowerPC to boot up, the dirty secret isthat most of the files in Mac OS 9 are actually still 68040 programs are can be used on older Macs and onSoftMac. On a real PowerPC based Macintosh computer, most Mac OS 9 programs actually run in 68K emula-tion mode.

Finally, to decompress and extract some of these disk image files, you will need to use the Windows version ofAladdin StuffIt Expander. You can download and install Expander directly from Aladdin’s web site at:

http://www.aladdinsys.com/expander

When you download disk images, select the MacBinary version to download, then use the StuffIt Expander onWindows to extract the raw disk image file which is usually 1474644 bytes (i.e. 1.44 megabytes) in size. Youcan mount that disk image as a Mac floppy directly in SoftMac using the Disk Properties dialog box, or use theWrite Disk Image to Floppy Disk menu in SoftMac to create a real floppy boot disk.

Note: Other free Mac OS releases and Mac OS utilities can be searched for and downloaded from Apple’s website at: http://asu.info.apple.com.————————————————————————————————————

Running SoftMac

Once you have installed a Macintosh ROM BIOS and have a bootable Mac OS boot disk, run SoftMac. You willbe prompted by the Auto Configure feature. By default, this will create three new Macintosh profiles, or modes.One profile will be called Macintosh Classic and is used to run older black and white 68000 Macintosh pro-grams. The second profile is called Macintosh II and should be used to run 32-bit dirty Macintosh II compatibleprograms. The third default profile is called Macintosh Quadra and is of course used to run Mac OS 8 and 32-bit clean programs. You can create additional profiles, up to 16 of them.

You will be asked to specify where your ROM image file is. If you created one and placed it it a directory otherthan C:\ or the SoftMac program directly, click on the appropriate directory when prompted. Click Cancel if youare not using a ROM image file or if you placed the image in one of the two default locations.

The next step is the ROM BIOS Setup dialog box, (formerly called First Time Setup). This is the dialog box thatactually scans your PC for the ROM BIOS. Click on the Scan button to have SoftMac find your ROMs.

Next your will be asked if you wish to install your CD-ROM drives. What this feature does is find any IDE orSCSI CD-ROM drives in your PC and installs them in each of the three Macintosh profiles. If you plan to useMacintosh CD-ROMs in emulation, go ahead and do this, otherwise cancel it.

At this point SoftMac is configured to a very basic set of profiles. Depending on which Macintosh ROM BIOSor BIOSes you have installed, one or more of the profiles can be selected with the Mode selector on the mainSoftMac menu dialog. Use the Properties command to adjust things like Macintosh memory and screen size. Usethe Disk Properties command to add additional disk drive devices and disk image files to each profile.

Macintosh Classic mode supports 64K original Macintosh, 128M Macintosh Plus, 256K Macintosh SE, and512K Macintosh Classic ROMs. This mode is limited to 4 megabytes of memory, a limitation of those olderMacs, and is black and white only. You can run all versions of Mac OS up to 7.5.5 in this mode. You will typi-cally boot from a System 7 startup disk or you can boot from a Mac OS 7.5 system CD-ROM. This mode is sim-ilar to the type of emulation provided by the vMac emulator.

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Macintosh II mode supports 256K and 512K Macintosh II series ROMs, including the original Macintosh II, andthe enhanced Macintosh IIx, IIcx, IIci, IIsi, IIfx, IIvx, Classic II, LC II, and other similar models. This mode canrun in either 24-bit or 32-bit mode. Using 256K ROMs, you are limited to 8 megabytes of memory in 24-bitmode. Using 512K ROMs you can switch to 32-bit mode and select up to 48 megabytes of memory. This modeis similar to the type of emulation provided by the Basilisk II emulator.

Macintosh Quadra mode supports 512K, 1M, and 2M ROMs from Macintosh LC, Performa, Centris, and Quadramodels. These ROMs all support Mac OS 8.0 and 8.1, between 64 to 1024 megabytes of memory (depending onthe ROM), and generally run faster than earlier Macintosh ROMs. This mode is similar to the emulation provid-ed by the FUSION PC emulator.

The beauty of SoftMac of course is that you have the best of all 3 worlds in one emulator, and with faster speed!

Where the settings are stored

SoftMac saves its settings separate from Gemulator. SoftMac uses the SOFTMAC.INI file while Gemulator usesthe GEM2000.INI file. Both files can be found in your main Windows directory, and on newer releases ofWindows, in your personal settings directory. To load a previously saved settings file from an earlier release ofGemulator or SoftMac, click on the Import Configuration menu item and specify the older INI file.

Booting from an external Mac hard disk or ZIP disk

If you took my advice and created a bootable Mac OS hard disk or ZIP disk on your Macintosh, now is the timeto tell SoftMac about it. Click on the Disk Properties menu in SoftMac to configure the Mac disk devices. Ifbooting from Mac boot floppy, make sure that the first Mac floppy disk device in the dialog box is mapped tothe PC’s A: drive (or B: drive depending on how your PC maps the floppy disk drives). An LS-120 Superdiskdrive is NOT a regular floppy disk drives but is actually treated as a SCSI device and you should map the flop-py to the appropriate SCSI device. You will need to have ASPI installed as well.

External SCSI hard disks should be mounted as SCSI device 0 in the dialog box. CD-ROM drives should bemounted as SCSI device 1 or higher. Mac OS does not correctly handle a CD-ROM drive at SCSI ID 0.

Booting from an .HFX or .IMG file

SoftMac does support disk volume images created on the Macintosh (.IMG, .HFX, and .HFV files) and true SCSIhard disk and CD-ROM disk image files created by Gemulator Explorer (.DSK and .CD files). The disk volumeimages created on the Macintosh are not true SCSI disk images (as they lack the boot sector, partition map, andother critical disk sector). Therefore they must be mounted as floppy disk devices. The Mac OS will simply seethem as large floppy disks, regardless of the size.

True SCSI disk image files (the .DSK or .CD files created by Gemulator Explorer) can be mounted as SCSIdevices and SoftMac will treat them as suck. Be sure to specify in the dialog box whether the SCSI disk imageis to be treated as a normal hard disk or as a CD-ROM. You will get strange behavior if you mount a CD as ahard disk for example.

Advanced menu options

Once you have the emulator booting Mac OS, you may wish to optimize the performance and customize the set-tings further. There are several menu options under the Options and Advanced menus that are useful:

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* Full Screen toggles a full screen display in the emulator. If you have DirectX enabled, the emulator willattempt to switch to a screen resolution which matches the emulated video mode. This will maximizegraphics speed. If this fails, for example, DirectX is not installed or does not support the resolution the MacOS is using, the emulator will continue to use your current Windows resolution but will stretch the emula-tor display to fill up as much of the screen as possible.

* Zoom Mode is similar to Full Screen mode except this will only attempt to stretch the emulation window.This may or may not cover up your entire Windows desktop. Note: You can enter Zoom Mode by doubleclicking the emulator title bar (i.e. the top of the window). You can undo Full Screen mode or Zoom Modeby doing the same or by pressing Alt+Enter. If you press Alt+Enter again, you will enter Full Screen mode.This is similar to the behavior of other programs that have a full screen mode (such as the MS-DOS promptand Windows Media Player) so you should be familiar with the concept of using Alt+Enter to toggle backand forth.

* Fast Refresh enables a slightly faster redraw rate for the emulated graphics. If you have a fast PCI or AGPvideo card you can usually enable this option with little if any degradation in overall emulation speed.

* The DirectX Video menu has three settings - Automatic, Delay, and Disable. Set it to Automatic for fastswitching to and from full screen mode. This also wastes some memory. Set it to Delay to save memory.Set it to Disable if you do not have DirectX installed, if it is a buggy release (such as DirectX in WindowsNT 4.0), or you want to force Alt+Enter to enter Zoom Mode only (which is useful if you wish to run theemulator in full screen mode but have other Windows applications visible on top).

* Select the Disable Windows 98 Features option if you are not running on Windows 98 or WindowsMillennium. The emulator will try to do this automatically. On Windows 98 and Windows Millennium,having this option turned off (i.e. Windows 98 features enabled) will speed up screen graphics.

* If you get garbled graphics output, or just a black screen but you see your floppy disk spinning and youknow the emulator is booting, chances are you are using an ATI video card and have run into one of manyATI video driver bugs. Either go to ATI’s web site and download the most current video drivers, or selectthe Disable Monochrome Bitmaps option. ATI video drivers do not handle black and white video modesproperly, such as what is displayed when the Mac OS is first booting.

* Finally, if you are running on a laptop computer with a power saving mobile processor and you find thattiming seems to be totally off, it is because the processor is randomly going to sleep. To fix this, select theDisable Power Saving menu option. It this still does not help, enable the Use Hardware Timer option. Tomaximize speed on desktop computers which do not use mobile processors, make sure both options are notselected.

By default, when you go through Auto Configure, some of these options will be set to their “safe” settings. Fullscreen mode will be disabled, the hardware timer will be used, etc. We do this to save you the trouble of havingthe emulator crash, hang, or malfunction due to the various problems mentioned above. This also means the emu-lator is not running as fast as possible. Only once you have the emulator up and running and the good settingssaved should you attempt to change the settings listed above.

We’ve set it up so that when all the menu items under the Advanced menu are not selected, and the hardwaretimer option is not selected, the emulator is running as fast as possible. As you start enabling more menu options,the emulators gets safer, but slower.

You should enable the Skip Startup Screen option once you have your settings perfected so that you can boot theemulator that much faster yet! Similarly set the Save On Exit option to automatically remember your settingsbetween sessions. Otherwise you can manually click on Save when you change settings.

Finally, if you wish to share files between your Mac OS volumes and your PC’s disk partitions, enable theWindows File System option in the Properties dialog box. You can then use the Transfer utility provided on ourUtilities floppy to copy files back and forth. More recent versions of SoftMac also support directly drag and drop

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file copying between Mac and PC volumes, but only if the the Windows File System option is on.

For more detailed directions on installing Mac OS and installing Macintosh applications with SoftMac, pleaseread our Beginner’s Guide online tutorial.————————————————————————————————————

Formatting Macintosh floppy disks

SoftMac can read Macintosh floppy disks, hard disks, CD-ROMs, and disk image files directly. That means thatyou can literally start SoftMac, drop in a Mac OS 7.6 or Mac OS 8 boot CD-ROM, boot up the Mac OS, and runthe setup utility to install Mac OS on your PC’s hard disk.

Sometimes you will need to format a blank Macintosh floppy disk. If your PC has a standard 3.5 inch floppydisk drive installed as drive letter A:, you can quickly format a Macintosh floppy disk without even booting MacOS. Just run SoftMac 2000 or SoftMac XP and click on the Format 1.44M Mac Floppy menu item. Insert a pre-formatted DOS or Macintosh floppy disk and then click OK. Your disk will be quick formatted in Macintosh for-mat in about 3 seconds. Insert another disk and repeat this if you wish to format another floppy disk.————————————————————————————————————

Creating new Macintosh hard disk partitions

Borrowing an idea used by Linux and many emulation products, SoftMac does not require you to physicallyreformat your PC’s hard disk. Instead, it uses what are called “disk containers”, “disk images”, or “virtual disks”to store Macintosh hard disk volumes on your PC’s hard disk.

Both the Gemulator 8.0 and SoftMac 8.0 emulators now have a new Tools menu which makes creating diskimages stupidly simple. Simply click on the Create Unformatted SCSI Disk Image (.DSK) menu item, then spec-ify the size of disk image to create, then specify the filename to create it as. That’s it! A few seconds later yourdisk image will be ready.

The newly created disk image is blank, filled with zero bytes only, and is thus not “formatted”. You still need torun your Atari ST disk formatter such as HDX, or your Mac OS disk formatter (Drive Setup or Apple SC HDSetup), in order for the disk image to be bootable and so that files can be copied to it.

If you need to create a pre-formatted Macintosh compatible disk volume image, a .HFX file, click on the CreateFormatted Mac OS Volume Image (.HFX) menu instead. The newly created disk image can then be used bySoftMac, as well as vMac, Basilisk II, and FUSION PC.

You can create and mount up to 9 disk images per profile or use a combination of 9 disk images and real phys-ical disk drives.————————————————————————————————————

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Accessing IDE CD-ROM drives, SCSI devices, and LS-120 Superdisks

There is a common device driver in Windows called ASPI (the file WNASPI32.DLL in your Windows systemdirectory) which handles low level access to CD-ROM, DVD, SCSI, ZIP, Jaz, ATAPI, and Superdisk drives. Youmust have ASPI installed in order for Mac OS to access these devices, since Mac OS is bypassing the Windowsfile system complete.

ASPI is built in to Windows 98, Me, XP, and 2003, but need to be installed manually on Windows 95, WindowsNT, and Windows 2000. Adaptec has posted a version 4.60 of their ASPI driver which fixes many bugs and addsWindows 2000 support. We highly recommend that all Windows users upgrade their ASPI driver to the 4.60 ver-sion. It can be downloaded from Adaptec’s web site.

It has been pointed out that unless you have an Adaptec SCSI card already installed in your PC, the ASPI driv-er will not install. In other words, if you’re not running Windows 98 where ASPI is installed already, you’re introuble. Most CD-ROM drives come with their own ASPI driver, but if your manufacturer does not provide oneyou can use Adaptec’s driver thanks to a minor workaround. We thank Mark A. Clark for finding this tip:

http://www.datman.com/tbul/dmtb_028.htm

We have also found that the legal DeCSS utility (available from various sites on the Internet) includes a goodWNASPI32.DLL file that is compatible with Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000. Therefore if you have alreadyinstalled DeCSS (and who hasn’t!) you should already have ASPI installed and working.————————————————————————————————————

Special Keystrokes in SoftMac

The following keystrokes have special meaning in SoftMac XP, SoftMac 2000, Gemulator 2000, and Xformer2000:

* F11 refreshes the Mac desktop. Use this after inserting or formatting a floppy disk* Ctrl+F11 brings up the main menu dialog* Alt+F11 brings up the Properties dialog box* Shift+F11 brings up the Disk Properties dialog box* Ctrl+F12 reboots the emulation* Alt is the Macintosh Command key (Apple logo key)* Left Control is the Macintosh Option key* Right Control is the Macintosh Control key* F12 and Pause act as the Macintosh power key, which you can use to quickly shut down the Mac OS————————————————————————————————————

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Troubleshooting Tips

There are some things to keep in mind that will save you time and headaches:

* If you are using an ATI video card and you only get a black screen being displayed, you have likely run intothe famous ATI video driver bug. Read our Dirty Little Secrets page on ways to work around this bug. Toavoid the bug, select the Disable Monochrome Bitmaps option under the Advanced menu in SoftMac orGemulator

* Use Mac Classic mode (in Gemulator and SoftMac) to run old black and white Macintosh programs that runonly on a 68000 processor.

* Use Mac II mode to run System 7.0 and Mac OS 7.5 68020 compatible programs in color.* Use Quadra mode to run Mac OS 7.5, 7.6, 8.0, and 8.1 68040 compatible programs in color.* .HFX and .IMG files used by vMac and Fusion and other emulators are not true disk sector images of Mac

hard disks. They are Mac disk partition images, and so they can be mounted in one of the two “disk image”slots in SoftMac’s Disk Properties dialog but they can’t be mounted as a SCSI device. True SCSI drives (suchas SCSI and ATAPI/IDE CD-ROM drives, externally connected Mac SCSI hard disks, or real SCSI hard diskimages) may be mounted as SCSI devices. SoftMac does recognize CD-ROM disk image files and mountthem correctly as CD-ROM devices.

* When installing Mac OS 8 make sure you set the RAM size to at least 12 megabytes, preferably 24megabytes.

* When you run Mac OS 8 setup, you can do either an Easy Install or Custom Install. It is recommended youdo a Custom Install and do not install Networking components of the A/ROSE Extension, as networking isnot supported on SoftMac yet, and A/ROSE is something completely irrelevant. You can install everythingelse.

* During Mac OS 8 install, click Customize and turn off the Update Disk Drivers option. It is also recommend-ed that you turn on the Clean System option to do a fresh install as opposed to upgrading an existing SystemFolder.

* If during the setup of Mac OS 8 you get warning messages about some component only being supported onthe Power Macintosh, simply click Skip and continue the installations.

* Do NOT turn on Mac virtual memory. SoftMac relies on Windows for virtual memory, so in the Memorycontrol panel in Mac OS make sure Virtual Memory is set Off. Otherwise Mac OS will not boot.

* If you are booting Mac OS 7.6 or earlier and need to format a hard disk, use the Apple SC HD Setup utility,not Drive Setup. If you are booting Mac OS 8.0 or later, then use Drive Setup.

* If Mac OS 7.6 or Mac OS 8 fails to boot right after you’ve installed it, it is because Mac OS has turned onVirtual Memory by default. Reboot the Mac, hold down the Shift key to skip loading extensions, then go intothe Memory control panel as described above and turn off Virtual Memory. Also check to make sure thatA/ROSE or Open Transport extensions are removed from the System Folder.

* If the Mac OS gets totally hosed, usually zapping the PRAM will help. We’ve added a new Clear PRAMmenu option to do that.

* SoftMac 8.0 now supports the Startup Disk control panel, so you can usually set the Boot Disk option in theemulator to Default. This allows you to change the boot disk from within the Mac OS, as on a real Macintosh.

Remember, if you get stuck and want to change a setting or exit, click the right mouse button or press Ctrl+F11to bring up SoftMac’s main menu.

Also remember that PC floppy disks don’t read true 400K and 800K Mac floppy disks, only high density 1.44MHD disks used by newer Macs, and the special “10 sector” format used by some other Macintosh emulators. Tomake the PC detect a new floppy disk, simply press F11.

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If all else fails, take our step-by-step visual Beginner’s Guide to running Mac OS 8 on Windows.

If you still have any problems running SoftMac please email us with the relevant information so that we areaware of the problem.————————————————————————————————————Copyright © 2003 Emulators Inc., 14150 NE 20th Street, Suite 302, Bellevue, WA 98007, U.S.A.Telephone: 206-236-0540 (10am to 1pm Eastern time Mon-Fri), Fax: 206-236-0540 (24 hours)Live MSN Messenger chat with [email protected] at 1800h GMT (2pm Eastern time) Mon-Fri.

Email is usually responded to by the next business day. Our offices are occasionally closed for computer tradeshows and other company events.

Apple, Mac OS, and Macintosh are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Atari is a registered trade-mark of Atari U.S. Corporation. Athlon and Athlon XP are registered trademarks of AMD. Microsoft, Windows,Windows NT, Windows XP, and/or other Microsoft products referenced herein are either trademarks or regis-tered trademarks of Microsoft. Intel and Pentium are registered trademarks of Intel. PowerPC is a trademark ofIBM. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the individual com-panies and are respectfully acknowledged.

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