I have a Powerbook 540 (the black & white version) that came with System 7.5 pre-installed. Is this a good combination of OS and computer if I want to play classic Mac-games, like Shadowgate, Dark Castle, Ancient Art of War, etc?
Would it be better if I downgraded to an earlier version of System 7 or even System 6?
I use either 7.6.1 or 8.1 on all my 040 based Macs. There is a catch with upgrading to 8.1, though. The file system was upgraded with 8.1 so you have to back up your hard drive before upgrading or else your hard drive will be wiped clean. If you don't have a lot of files that you want to keep on the drive then you can just go ahead and do the upgrade. There are supposed to be third party utilities that preserve your files but I don't know what they are called so you'd have to ask around on some Mac forums or newsgroups about them.
I'm only interested in playing games from the eighties, so wouldn't it be more reasonable to downgrade, or do later operating systems have increased backwards compatibility?
I think you better should try BasiliskII in color 😀
wrote:I have a Powerbook 540 (the black & white version) that came with System 7.5 pre-installed. Is this a good combination of OS and computer if I want to play classic Mac-games, like Shadowgate, Dark Castle, Ancient Art of War, etc?
Would it be better if I downgraded to an earlier version of System 7 or even System 6?
I don't think you can even run a version of MacOS earlier than System 7.5 on a Powerbook.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA47341?viewlocale=en_US
I don't think there's anything to be gained by using System 6 instead of 7.5 anyway.
According to this page:
http://lowendmac.com/pb/powerbook-540c.html
You can't go lower than 7.1.1.
The best OS to play late 80's games on is an OS from the late 80s. 😮
wrote:I think you better should try BasiliskII in color 😀
I like the idea of Basilisk II, but this is not an emulator for game, most of them will crash or slow down.
Here are mac game I tested
Starcraft
Madden 2000
Star Wars Dark Force
Star Wars Rebel Assault
Rune
Risk (Floppy Version)
Diablo
Hexen (Glitched music)
The only game that work well in my mac collection is Activision Atari 2600 Pack for Macintosh.
I am surprised any of those on Basilisk II at all. They sound more like PPC games, not late 80's games.
according to the boxes, both star wars, risk and hexen said that they support 68000k based computer
I've tried Basilisk and Sheepshaver for games and both are really poor for that because of the inability to control speed. I even tried slowdown apps inside of the emulator but that doesn't work well.
That's why I ended up buying a vintage mac. Everything works great plus there's 3D acceleration. Most games actually ran great inside Sheepshaver and Basilisk II. The only game I had serious issues was Redneck Rampage. It'll crash on the second level if I run it at any resolution higher than 640x480. The beta patch does not fix this and sticks you into the first level. I tried on Mac OS 8.6 and 9.2.2 and both give the same.
wrote:I've tried Basilisk and Sheepshaver for games and both are really poor for that because of the inability to control speed. I even tried slowdown apps inside of the emulator but that doesn't work well.
You will probably run into a similar problem running very old games on even vaguely newer Macs. I remember when my high school's computer lab upgraded from Mac Classics to LC 475's; the once-sedate animations of Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego suddenly played as if in fast-forward.
What slowdown apps did you try, anyway?
wrote:That's why I ended up buying a vintage mac. Everything works great plus there's 3D acceleration.
Heh. A "vintage Mac" in my mind greatly predates the era of 3D acceleration. Actually, is there anything that uses 3D acceleration on a Mac that wouldn't be just as easily run under Windows?
I had a ibook G3 recently and with a slowdown util it could run Super Wing Commander ok. But the screen was so small and it only had composite output (wtf?). Plus the power connection was the composite output so no using both! Ack.
I prefer to just emulate. Don't really want more old junk. But the emulators for these machines are simply not gaming oriented.
wrote:That's why I ended up buying a vintage mac. Everything works great plus there's 3D acceleration.
Heh. A "vintage Mac" in my mind greatly predates the era of 3D acceleration. Actually, is there anything that uses 3D acceleration on a Mac that wouldn't be just as easily run under Windows?
There were some mac-only games that used 3D accel, so there's no way to run them inside an existing emulator. Kawasaki ATV Powersports, Reckless Driver and Wave Race (or a title very similar to this) are some. Quake for the Macintosh also came with a built-in RAVE (Mac's equivalent to Direct3D) version. Episode 1 Racer also needs retro hardware to work properly, so it works fine on my mac.
I just found four pizzabox shaped Macs in a closet at work and I was allowed to bring them home. They were all different models from the age span 1989-1996. Two had Motorola 68K processors and two were PowerPC. The trouble is that they all require an external monitor with the proprietary Apple connector, and there were no monitors to be found with the computers.
Are there adapters that would let me convert a standard VGA connector to the Apple one? I have one that converts from Apple to VGA, but I need one that works the other way around.
You want to connect a standard VGA monitor to your old Macs?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-DB-15-VGA-Video … #ht_1646wt_1064
VogonsDrivers.com | Link | News Thread
wrote:You want to connect a standard VGA monitor to your old Macs?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-DB-15-VGA-Video … #ht_1646wt_1064
I have one of these from Samsung. It came with my old SyncMaster 17 GLsi
Are there adapters that would let me convert a standard VGA connector to the Apple one? I have one that converts from Apple to VGA, but I need one that works the other way around.
Old Macs use a video signal that's mostly VGA, but scans at 35 Khz instead of 31 Khz. Most decent multisync monitors will not have a problem with this.
