In true vogons spirit, I was able to get that Korg editor running in a special build of mini vMac called midivmac.

It is time to retire for the night but I now strongly believe I can get some MT32 games and also probably some GM games working with output to a virtual midi interface in current MacOS, which can be routed out to real or soft synth.

System 6.0.8 in midivmac running on Catalina, showing working MIDI I/O from the emulator (minus large sysex messages which is being worked on):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3nX1r9lqJo

skate323k137 wrote on 2022-04-01, 17:33:

System 6.0.8 in midivmac running on Catalina, showing working MIDI I/O from the emulator (minus large sysex messages which is being worked on):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3nX1r9lqJo

You do great stuff and it is nice for us to see and learn new stuff!

Dimitris1980 wrote on 2022-04-03, 09:02:

You do great stuff and it is nice for us to see and learn new stuff!

Thank you again for your kind words 😀

I have tested midivmac with MUNT, and it does work. However, monitor color setting is a compile time, not run time, option for mini vmac 🙁. Therefore the sierra games are complaining that I cannot turn my display down to lower color modes.

However, I was able to play a MIDI file from midivmac, and use OSX Patchbay to send it to MUNT (MT-32 EMU). This working does show some promise 😀

Nice info Dimitris.

Regarding the Pismo, i find it as an interesting project because as i checked, it has only usb ports so you need a usb Midi interface. I would follow the same connection proccess. It is something that i want tο do since a long time ago on my Imac G3 (500 mhz, 1gb ram, Ati 16MB) but unfortunately i don't have space and time so i have it in my basement. The truth is that i tried 12 years before in order to run Sierra Online games on Mac OS 9.2 and i didn't manage to do something. I have a usb midi interface. But it was the beginning where i was trying to learn about Roland and all seemed so difficult to me. Now it is different but i don't have space.

Another, perhaps less common option, are the many sound modules that support USB natively. I have a Roland 8820 which I have successfully used under MacOS 9.1 - though not for gaming. I need to try that 😀

You mention playing these old MT-32 Sierra games with MIDI, but many of these games had broken/distorted sounds on MS-DOS unless the MIDI interface supported a highly specific "intelligent" mode which only a few contemporary cards supported. For these ports to be accurate, either there would have had to be a similar interface released for the Macintosh, or the music code altered by the porting team to account for the differences between platforms. Either possibility is dubious, at best.

Always be wary of anything ported to Mac from other platforms as they are more often than not the inferior byproduct of a publisher trying to shit out the quickest buck possible. Sierra couldn't even be bothered to create patches after the upgrade to 32-bit QuickDraw broke all of their AGI ports (back when upgrades actually were upgrades, not just another way to screw the consumer.)

Also, as mentioned in your other thread on this, the QuickTime instruments especially before QT 3 are not accurate to the GM standard... they are a reduced subset. Your recording of Doom 2, for instance, has guitars playing where a piano should be. Harry The Handsome Executive doesn't even sound correct on QuickTime 3, let alone a GM device. And if you tried to play Marathon, it would sound wrong simply by virtue of the fact that the original tracks were composed with QuickTime in mind, which is why the CD includes them that way as redbook audio tracks. If you enjoy the output, that's your personal preference, but it's not at all accurate to what the composer intended.

Yes @Dimitris1980 the PM6100 is slow, but there is a big difference on the early 6100/60 and the later 6100/66 that I own.
The 6100/66 came with a 256KB L2 cache module that boost gfx-speeds a lot! +50%! if you stick to a resolution/colordeph that let's the framebuffer fit in that cache, so getting a thrid party cache-simm with 512 or better 1MB would boost up to another +50% gfx-performance und that is a BIG DEAL on such a machine. Apple only offered 256KB L2-Cache-Sims for these machines and I am searching for the bigger ones for YEARS now.

It's also quite interesting how early "fat? binarys" perform on 6100/66 compared to LC475 even with 33Mhz mod an the full 68040 with FPU...I can tell you that the 6100/66 is very defenetly faster! Look at games like Wolf3d/Spear, Ootw, etc. As I said as long as you stay in framebuffer it's fast!

But there are also problems on games that only support 68K and do not offer PPC code. e.g. Pirates gold has an issue with audio "sail how" is "sssail hoow"...but that is not a big deal, perhaps it's a glitch in the 68K code-support that I use from "speed-doubler" and not the code apple officially offered in 7.5.5...all can say is that yeager (68K) is MUCH faster on 6100/66 when using the connectix-speed-doubler 68K emulation-layer on 7.5.5.

I will retest the games you mentioned that were unplayable on your 6100.

Doc

This info is very interesting. You know, I jumped from the Performa 6116CD directly to G3 so I would like to know how is the performance on your Powermac 6100/66. Some games that I remember they were slow on my Performa are:

Gabriel Knight
King's Quest 7
Police Quest 4
Monkey Island 1 & 2
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis Floppy version and the 68k CD version
Dark Forces (needs lower quality graphics)
Doom (the same as Dark Forces)
Heretic (the same as Dark Forces)

I just grabbed some originals, TheDig, FullThrottle, SpaceQuest6...everything runs just fine on my 6100/66 with 256K 2nd-Level cache.

Checked another bunch of games, Monkey Island 1+2 Indy4, Sam+Max, Wolfenstein, Spear everything just fine. Have to test Doom/Heretic...

The Dig, Full Throttle, Space Quest 6 run fine also on my Performa without the Sonnet drivers installed. Also Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max.

The others (Monkey Island, Indy 4 Floppy version, not CD PPC) are slow. As I remember Wolfenstein and Spear of Destiny run slowly.

All the above run like a dream with the Sonnet G3 card. Full speed highest graphics. I have also installed 24x Apple SCSI cd rom drive, very fast loading. Some other games that run perfectly with the Sonnet are:

Diablo, Under A Killing Moon, Hexen, Riven, The Crystal Key, Ripper, Championship Manager 2001, Myst Masterpiece Edition, Redjack, Morpheus, Age of Empires.

dr.zeissler wrote on 2023-02-21, 17:37:

I just grabbed some originals, TheDig, FullThrottle, SpaceQuest6...everything runs just fine on my 6100/66 with 256K 2nd-Level cache.

Do you like original games? I am trying to find some originals especially from Lucasarts but they are very expensive 😀

I think I have about 200+ originals...I buy every game I get mostly PPC and 68K on CD, no floppys.

Doom should be fine https://youtu.be/9UclHrIIaYA?t=495

I don't have so many but I do have original games for PC, Mac, Amiga and Atari ST. Most of them are for PC 😀. Maybe about 70-80 games. For Mac as I remember I have the following:

Day of the Tentacle only disk
Sam and Max only disk
Frankenstein Through the Eyes of the Monster only disk
Dark Seed only disk
The Beast Within French version big box
Rex Nebular big box
The Legend of Kyrandia big box floppy
Under a Killing Moon Big box
The Dig jewel case
Redjack jewel case
Riven jewel case
Myst 3 jewel case
Lighthouse jewel case
Versailles jewel case

can you list the games that are working on PPC machines?
I am struggling on my machines....the LC seems to be too slow on 256color adventures, the PPC 6100/66 runs mostly into traps or simply hangs.

dr.zeissler wrote on 2023-03-10, 17:32:

can you list the games that are working on PPC machines?
I am struggling on my machines....the LC seems to be too slow on 256color adventures, the PPC 6100/66 runs mostly into traps or simply hangs.

For which games? 😀

mt32/midi

Some Sierra Online adventure games hang very often (system error) on my Performa 6116. They run better on the LC475. Games like King's Quest 5, King's Quest 6, Freddy Pharkas, King's Quest 7. I have my LC475 on my other house and i have used it before a long time. Also I use the Performa with the Sonnet installed.

So as I remember:

Macintosh Performa with Sonnet:
Freddy Pharkas hangs very often (system error)
King's Quest 5 hangs often
King's Quest 7 hangs sometimes
King's Quest 6 almost everytime
Larry 5 i think not so often
Larry 6 floppy not so often
Larry 6 cd runs ok most of the times, maybe every time
Police Quest 4 runs ok most of the times, maybe every time
Larry 1 enchanced i think runs ok the most times
Space Quest 4 needs the ppc patch and there is sound only with Roland MT32, not Mac sound
Space Quest 3 runs ok with ppc patch, i think also there is sound only with Roland MT32

The problems are especially with the Sierra online titles. There is a patch also in order not to hang at the start but i think the better solution is to use a date before September 1993. I use 1992 as a date 😀

But all these adventure games that hang with system error on the Performa run better on the LC475.

The best one for the Performa is Gabriel Knight. It runs perfectly, speed, sound, everythink, It has also better fonts than the PC version so for me it is better for reading the dialogues and the descriptions. But the PC has also the cd version.

I hope I helped a little 😀

This does indeed help and it's really annoying that sierra had such problems finding a quality mac-coder.
This starts from early AGI and goes up to the latest SCI games. These games should be fixed...but no one seems to be able to do so....or everyone is playing via scummVM but I am here for the real thing. Real 68k/ppc macs with real MT32...