Warcraft II is for 68k CPU.
68k emulation on PowerPC Macintoshes is available in classic Mac OS, and in the "Classic Environment" for Mac OS X up to 10.4.

So I'm afraid it can't be run under 10.5.x.

Grzyb wrote on 2025-01-08, 01:11:

Warcraft II is for 68k CPU.
68k emulation on PowerPC Macintoshes is available in classic Mac OS, and in the "Classic Environment" for Mac OS X up to 10.4.

So I'm afraid it can't be run under 10.5.x.

So could it work on Dosbox on 10.4 on the PowerBook? If I had OS9, I could just run the actual game in classic, but I don’t. I do have retail 10.4, I could partition and install to run Dosbox if it would.

And does that mean it won’t run on my Intel Mac using 10.5 either? I thought that might work if my issue was the PowerPC.

The Warcraft II CD contains both DOS and MAC versions, AFAIK. If you install DOSBox, then the DOS version should run in it, regardless of the version of your host MacOS.

You're trying to run the DOS version in Dosbox on Mac, not the native Mac version, correct?
Post a screenshot of the entire command prompt with all the commands you've entered.

I’ve included a picture of my cd, the commands in Dosbox, and the files/folders on the disc. The original command in the guide saying to mount it as “Warcraft2” didn’t work and since the cd label in finder was Warcraft II CD, I used that to mount it. There’s no file I can see on the disc labeled “install.exe” even when I show hidden files.

Please tell me I’m a dope and missing something here. Thanks for your support! Hoping I can get this working.

"Mounted subdirectory: limited support" is because you mounted a directory on the hard drive as a CD instead of a real CD-ROM drive.
Try mounting your actual drive. Failing that, simply make an ISO image of the disc, use the imgmount command (not to be confused with mount) and everything should run fine then.

If I was you though, I'd find a copy of OS9 and install it on that G4 so you can run the game natively. Such an old computer is just screaming for a classic OS.

Edit: I guess what's happening is that Mac OS is seeing only the Mac-compatible file system on the CD, so that's what is being mounted. Hence no install.exe. Anyway, just make an ISO.

feda wrote on 2025-01-08, 13:49:

Edit: I guess what's happening is that Mac OS is seeing only the Mac-compatible file system on the CD, so that's what is being mounted. Hence no install.exe. Anyway, just make an ISO.

I don’t think I can install classic on it. I have retail 10.3 discs but it wouldn’t take the install on a fresh partition. I read that it won’t take an install on a system older than the hardware, not sure if that’s accurate but I thought I could run classic on that.

Anyway, still unsuccessful. What am I doing wrong now? Created the iso with terminal, put it in the folder, mounted it, but can’t get beyond that. Thanks again, really appreciate you!

You are on the wrong volume.

You are on Drive C, and the CD is on drive E.

Try this:

1E:
2dir

(I want to see if the iso you created is actually valid/useful. Sometimes mac tools simply stop what they are doing when they find an HFS volume, and only dump that. This is an issue with hybrid CDs like War2 and Starcraft. We want the ISO9660 volume, not the HFS one. )

nickxedge wrote on 2025-01-08, 15:53:

I read that it won’t take an install on a system older than the hardware, not sure if that’s accurate but I thought I could run classic on that.

Nonsense. G4 supports OS 9.2.2 and older: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_G4

Obviously you need to switch to the E: drive you've just mounted 🙄

One thing to keep in mind is that this will be limited to the MIDI music score, since the disc image handler wont / cant do CDAudio tracks, which are present on the War2 retail disc. 😜

Not a deal breaker; Especially with the built in MT32 emulation options in DosBox, but yeah. It's a minor quibble that will pop up.

The big one, is seeing if the mac tools actually decided to fully image the hybrid disc, and didnt just cop out once it found an HFS volume on it.

We'll know once he switches to E, and checks it for a filesystem with dir. 😜

When I tried to install 10.3 on a fresh partition to use classic it kept giving me the ghostbusters no symbol and when I looked it up, the consensus was the hardware wasn’t accepting an OS that was created prior to the computer itself. Didn’t really make sense to me but I stopped looking for answers after that. As far as I know 10.3 includes classic so I would be able to run the game through there, but I couldn’t make that work. And I have the retail install discs for panther.

Anyway, here’s the directory. It seems like I don’t have the whole thing? How do I make an image of the disc to include that? I swear I use to be very savvy but I’m out of the game a long time.

It only dumped the HFS portion. I'm not familiar with Mac imaging tools, but there's probably an option in the app you used to dump it.

I used terminal and it’s supposed to get everything but evidently not. Can’t find any third party app online that will work since it’s so old. Think I’m out of luck here. I have a collection of old Macs and none of them are the correct iteration to make this work. I have an iBook g3 with 10.3 and classic which worked but the game was unplayable due to the lack of graphics support and ram- and it’s been upgraded to the max extent possible.

So unless someone has a solution for me to make this work on my PowerBook G4 with 10.5.8, or 10.4 (I do have retail discs for that as well, but no OS9 to install for classic support) or my 2007 intel MacBook running 10.5 (or maybe 10.6 actually I’d have to verify and it’s not in front of me currently), I think I’m out of luck.

Thank you all for your help!

Modern MacOS is Unix-like underneath.

Find the actual block device of your optical drive, and feed THAT to Dosbox with the appropriate switches. You only need read, since its an optical drive.

MSCDEX should be smart enough to only deal with the ISO9660 portion of the disc.

(But this, "But the HFS volume is the ONLY IMPORTANT part of the disc!!" nonsense from Mac software, stretching all the way back into the 90s, is the main reason I roll my eyes at the tools on the platform. NO, Mac Fanbois, sometimes you want the DOS/ISO9660 side of the disc TOO! Like right here, right now! Which is why you shouldn't try to pretend that one part of a hybrid volume is infinitely more important than another. The mere fact that it is hybrid media, should be your clue. Sadly no, they seem to never get this hint.)

wierd_w wrote on 2025-01-08, 18:02:

Find the actual block device of your optical drive, and feed THAT to Dosbox with the appropriate switches. You only need read, since it’s an optical drive.

I’m going to need way more help here. How would I do this?

Well... on linux boxes, it would be something like

/dev/sr0

Let me dig out my external dvd writer, and have a go at making dosbox talk to it on linux. I'll get back with you.

wierd_w wrote on 2025-01-08, 18:02:

(But this, "But the HFS volume is the ONLY IMPORTANT part of the disc!!" nonsense from Mac software, stretching all the way back into the 90s, is the main reason I roll my eyes at the tools on the platform. NO, Mac Fanbois, sometimes you want the DOS/ISO9660 side of the disc TOO! Like right here, right now! Which is why you shouldn't try to pretend that one part of a hybrid volume is infinitely more important than another. The mere fact that it is hybrid media, should be your clue. Sadly no, they seem to never get this hint.)

True - on modern(ish) Macs, emulation of classic Mac OS isn't any easier than emulation of DOS/Windows...