Early Macintosh Emulation at Archive.org

[DJQuad]

Not sure if you guys saw https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/16/early-macintosh-emulation-comes-to-the-archive/ but it's pretty cool. 

I'm wondering how we can launch this from LaunchBox...

[SentaiBrad]

Yea, I did an RSS story on it I think. The easiest way I could think of is to save each page as an HTML file, rename them to each of the games name and import them.

[heelsinc]

39 minutes ago, SentaiBrad said:

Yea, I did an RSS story on it I think. The easiest way I could think of is to save each page as an HTML file, rename them to each of the games name and import them.

Think I'm going to get started on this tonight!

[SentaiBrad]

Have fun.

[DJQuad]

7 hours ago, SentaiBrad said:

Yea, I did an RSS story on it I think. The easiest way I could think of is to save each page as an HTML file, rename them to each of the games name and import them.

So far no-go. Does Dark Castle work for you in MESS? (Apple IIGS)

[SentaiBrad]

I don't currently have MESS running, nor a MAME rom set to test from. I'm sorry.

[mothergoose729]

You can add your browser as an emulator and then change the command line arguments, or create a script for each game and import those. I messed around with something similar for difficult dos games.

[spycat]

Hi @DJQuad

I'm not too sure if you're talking about the Browser version or the "normal" Dark Castle.
If it's the latter running under MAME/MESS and you are getting the UNABLE TO LOAD PRODOS error message when you launch it, then your copy of the game is not bootable.

[DJQuad]

@spycat That error was exactly why I asked.  As popular as that game was I'm surprised the Apple IIGS pack didn't include a working copy. The web and dos versions have major issues too. 

Edited June 28, 2017 by DJQuad
n/a

[SentaiBrad]

Have you tried grabbing it from the TOSEC pack?

[Belgarath]

An Apple IIGS game being non-bootable doesn't mean the game doesn't work, it just needs to be loaded from the operating system instead, you'll need to load a Hard Drive image of System 6.0.x first.

[Drybonz]

On 6/27/2017 at 5:52 PM, DJQuad said:

So far no-go. Does Dark Castle work for you in MESS? (Apple IIGS)

The only emulator I could get any of those type of world builder games, such as Enchanted Scepters, running in was Vmac.

[ghettoandroid]

On 6/29/2017 at 3:25 PM, Belgarath said:

An Apple IIGS game being non-bootable doesn't mean the game doesn't work, it just needs to be loaded from the operating system instead, you'll need to load a Hard Drive image of System 6.0.x first.

Would you know how to mount a Hard Drive image in MESS? All I'm able to do is mount floppy disks images using the -flop command parameter, and thus unable to launch non-bootable disk images. 

[Belgarath]

5 hours ago, ghettoandroid said:

Would you know how to mount a Hard Drive image in MESS? All I'm able to do is mount floppy disks images using the -flop command parameter, and thus unable to launch non-bootable disk images. 

Sorry I don't, although I believe there's a floppy image of system 6 (perhaps one of the installation disks) that does work as a substitute.

[ghettoandroid]

3 hours ago, Belgarath said:

Sorry I don't, although I believe there's a floppy image of system 6 (perhaps one of the installation disks) that does work as a substitute.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll see what I can figure out.

[ghettoandroid]

6 hours ago, Belgarath said:

Sorry I don't, although I believe there's a floppy image of system 6 (perhaps one of the installation disks) that does work as a substitute.

I found disk images of system 6 on What Is The Apple IIgs website. It's listed as freeware and can be downloaded here; http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/system-6-0-1. I used the "Disk 2 of 7 System Disk.2mg" as the boot disk and renamed it boot.2mg for convenience sake.

The custom command-line parameters in LB for MESS; apple2gs -flop3 "FULL PATH TO boot.2mg" -flop4 %romfile% 

Now I can finally launch all my Apple IIgs games!! If there is a more elegant solution, I'd love to hear it.