Yabuse (Sega Saturn for Mac OSX)

Yabuse, the Sega Saturn emulator for Mac OSX, saw an update a couple months ago.

Pick up the latest version here —> yabause-0.9.14-mac.zip

OpenEMU

OpenEMU looks incredible. It reminds me a little of the Rom Collection Browser plugin for XBMC (soon to be Kodi) except it seems easier to use but with less features. It looks like it’s combined a lot of open source emulators into one application, similar to MESS but with a very nice GUI in front. It looks very user friendly and seems to support a large number of emulators (they call them cores) and game pads for your gaming pleasure. I will download and do a more in depth review, but I figured I’d give ya’ll the chance to check them out too. The only thing I see being a small issue for me is that the great emulators by Richard Bannister and the awesome n64 emulator sixty force probably aren’t ever going to be in there, but it’s still one of the coolest things to hit the Mac Emulation scene in a long long time. I’m extremely excited to try this.

GitHub OpenEMU

The list of emulators in OpenEMU.

CrabEmu
DeSmuME
FCEU
Gambatte
Genesis Plus GX
Higan
Mednafen
NeoPop
Nestopia
Picodrive
Snes9x
TwoMbit
VisualBoyAdvance
… and more!

Some screen shots from their Press Pack.

SDL MAME for Mac OSX

Here’s a great in depth article I found on how to run SDL MAME for Mac OSX. I’ve posted links in the past, but I found this article to be the best of the best. Plus, it’s fairly up to date too. It’ll take some work, but you can benefit from running the most current version of MAME rather than the older MAME OSX (although I still love MAME OSX).

http://www.tweaking4all.com/software/games/macos-x-run-mame-mavericks-10-9/

And for a little more information on how to run QMC2 (I’ve posted about it before, and it’s in the downloads box already)…

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-play-arcade-games-on-your-mac-with-mame-qmc2/

Game Oldies

Play hundreds of old school games online via Safari or Chrome over at Game Oldies. I didn’t count, but there are hundreds of games. I played a few Genesis games with no problems. I had to enter full screen mode for the keyboard controls to work, but the emulation seemed solid enough. Not much else to say, head on over and check it out.

http://game-oldies.com

Long Time No See

It’s been ages since I’ve posted here. After checking the stats, I see that the site is still visited quiet a bit. Therefore I will try and work on it this weekend and future weekends if time permits. Since there’s rarely any new emulators or news for Mac, it shouldn’t be too hard and I can still to the current revs instead of posting previous versions, updates, unstable versions, etc.

A little bit of what I’ve been up to away from the computer… I’ve starting taking my sport bike to the track. I got my race license for AFM a couple months ago. I wrecked my street bike, don’t worry I have two now. Tore down and built the race bike back up using all the best goodies. Attained some sponsors for next years race season. Sold and moved out of the condo to a house. Fixed up the house a little. Bought a classic truck. Threw too much money at that, but now it runs great and hauls the track/race bike. AND started building a PC. I’m slowly drifting away from the Xbox and on to PC Gaming again. Probably also why the mac rarely gets used from emu any more. Once I’m done with the PC, I’ll probably start working on building a MAME cabinet. I have the cabinet, new controls… but lack the screen right now. I also bought a Neo Geo cab, but that’s in the house in the living room right now. At one point it had a 161 games cart in it, but now just sports Metal Slug 4. As much as I try to pull away from gaming or computer or arcades, they just pull me back in. I will try and make sure to put the PC gaming rig build up here as well as the MAME cabinet when I get there. The MAME cabinet I was actually hoping to use an older Mac and run Mac MAME in it. It won’t play all the new games, but it’ll play all the older ones and I’ve always wanted a MAME cab that has a mac in it. Not too many people run mac in their MAME cabs.

Well, that’s that. I promise to update this soon.

SDL MAME/MESS for Mac Updated

SDL MAME/MESS for Mac updated to (stable) v146, it can be obtained from the new location of their website in both 32bit and 64bit versions here.

SixtyForce (N64) Updated

The N64 emulator by Gerrit called SixtyForce saw an updated some time ago. I tried it out and it plays really well on my 24″ iMac with my wireless Xbox 360 controller. The graphics and sound seem on point. It looks like their gem just keeps getting more and more polished. If you support the emulator and donate a little bit of well deserved cash, they remove the Gerrit logo and allow saves. This is by far my favorite emulator for the Mac. Grab it from the downloads box on the right hand side of this blog or from their homepage.

The Evolution of My Bike

I bought my bike from a small dealership in the Los Angeles area called Arcadia Motorcycles. I hopped on a one way flight to LA and rode the bike home. It took about 11 hours to ride home. It rained on me in the valley but then cleared up just outside of LA. There were high wind warnings and I got blown off the road a few times. I stopped a lot because I hadn’t ridden in 6 years. The main thing is though, I made it home. I got it blue and very “toolish”. There were skull stickers all over it and spiked bar ends. Spiked bar ends are retarded and super unsafe. It’s not if you go down, it’s when and do you really want to add spikes to that equation? I sure as fuck don’t. So I stripped it down and replaced them, pulled the stickers off, had a friend paint the fairings (decent for the price), and put it all back together. Then cleaned up the back end and integrated the rear turn signals into the rear brake with an integrated smoked out tail. I replaced the front flush mount turn signals with “smoked” ones to match. I paid a local shop to switch out the chain and had them do the rear sprocket at the same time. Chains have to be cut off and the new one riveted on. One of the things I can’t do myself. Everything else I’ve done myself. The chain is an RK chain and the sprocket is a Vortex sprocket. It changed the gearing up and made it much “quicker”. This lowers the top end a little, but the first few gears and super quick. I replaced the air and oil filters with K&N high performance filters. I upgraded the spark plugs to Iridium NGK spark plugs, although the stock one’s were still NGK. They were just old and my rule is to never trust a previous owner. I used a lighting relay to make both sides of the head light assembly both low and high. Previously, like a lot of motorcycles, the let side was low and the right high. I upgraded both bulbs to H4’s (car headlights) and used a lighting relay and some soldering to make the bike safer and cooler looking. I will also never hear the, “you have a headlight out bro” phrase any more. I’ve added small things like a new gas tank lid (when it was painted), stock bar ends, and a stock oil cap. A smoked double bubble windscreen from Zero Gravity. Vortex rear slider spools and some other no-name mid-frame sliders. New rear Metzeler M5 sticky ass rear tire. Re-did the seat with some real nice boat vinyl. Good Motul oil… basically this bike is nothing like the original and I continue to work on it … and occasionally ride it.

2006 Kawasaki Zx6r 636

Blog News

Also known as my life.

I have not posted here in a long time. It’s been a couple years since a significant change in my life. I’ve gotten promoted at work, I’ve bought a few new toys, and I’ve been living most of my life away from a computer. I’m now in (soon to run) a department called Thin Film Deposition. Basically I put metal on material that eventually becomes circuits that go in to many a different electronic device. All you really need to know is that I enjoy my job, it’s extremely flexible. Flexibility is what you need when you are taking night classes to finish up GE. I bought a street bike. I’ll post pics of the build. It looks and rides completely different than when I first bought it and rode it home from LA. That’s a ride I won’t be making again any time soon. The ride was long and full of obstacles. I got a dog. Originally I went looking for an adult dog to adopt because they usually aren’t the one’s that get adopted. I just didn’t vibe with any of the dogs. Eventually I got a call from the shelter and they had a runt from a puppy liter that was left over from an accidental birth. She’s awesome. Good with kids, good with dogs, and an all round awesome dog. She’s an American Staffordshire Terrier, aka a Pit Bull. That comes with some prejudice but it helps that she’s freaking awesome. I’ve also been fixing up a condo too but that was before the bike and the dog. I’m simply try to sum up a long winded apology for neglecting my blog. I played around with the newer Sixtyforce and it plays really well. I thought I’d check in on things and post a few blogs, related and unrelated.

MAME for Mac OS X v.145u6

The experimental version of MAME for Mac OS X now sits at version 145u6. The Universal binaries are no longer supported, so if you have a PPC still then it’s time to upgrade. Let’s peep the changes. Find it in the Box File Widget or from their website.

0.145u6
-------

MAMETesters Bugs Fixed
----------------------
- 04741: [Sound] xmen: Instruments in the music are playing back at
         the wrong volume (hap)
- 02675: [Sound] rdft, rdft2: Music used in the boss levels of Raiden
         Fighters and Raiden Fighters 2 play (Mssion 1-3, 2-3) slower
	 than the original. (Sonikos)
- 04734: [Crash/Freeze] tylz: Crash after OK (Pugsy)
- 04743: [Crash/Freeze] pzloop2jr1: Black Screen (Tafoid)
- 04735: [Crash/Freeze] breywood, shackled: Black screen (stephh)
- 04737: [Original Reference] ckong: correct manufacturer found for
         Crazy Kong (Falcon?)

Source Changes
--------------
Change DirectInput joystick acquisition method to be non exclusive.
[bdam]

toaplan2.c: Correct the video (character layer) offset for 1945 Part-2
(Chinese hack of Battle Garegga) [Dave Haywood]

dc: Fix the maple hookup and controllers and add the missing maple irq
[O. Galibert]

galaxia.c: Improved colors and hooked up cvs stars circuit. [hap]

Hooked up TMS9928 and PIA devices to Baby Pac-Man video CPU, gives
some gfx if you press the service switch [Angelo Salese]

pgm.c: Continued refactoring of the protections, including improved
notes.  Moved some code into the states and split states by protection
type.  [David Haywood]

Set the correct cpu in mpu5.c driver and split a few alternate
revisions into clone sets.  [David Haywood]

Decrypted the rest of the gambling sets in igs_m027.c.  No further
advancements in visible emulation to report, though.  [iq132]

Redumped sound roms in funcube2 and funcube3 [Guru, Yasuhiro Ogawa]

Improved irqs in Little Robin, and added preliminary sound to it
[Angelo Salese]

model2.c: Added the I/O Controller rom (Z80 based) for Rail Chase 2
[Brian Troha, The Dumping Union]

Converted gamtor.c to use VGA device (doesn't work though due of a
weird banking problem) [Angelo Salese]

m68k: add preliminary on-board peripherals to 68307 and 68340
[David Haywood]

SDL: Fix formatting of chdman man page [wallyweek]

Allow compilation with compatible system-installed versions of libjpeg
and libflac [wallyweek, R. Belmont]

Solved the remaining issues with Raiden 2's sprite decryption.
[Andreas Naive]

Major driver modernization changes [Miodrag Milanovic]
- Added 4th parameter to all address maps
- Added missing state classes
- Removed ADDRESS_MAP_MODERN define

rastan.c: Add dipswitch locations to the Rastan sets. [Brian Troha]

namcos21.c: Added Namco game prefix to the Winning Run 91 set. Added
minor documentation about the System21B two board stack. [Brian Troha]

nmk16.c: Fixes some issues and cleaned up the video sources a bit
[trap15]

Fixed ymf271.c core timer allowing for greater accuracy. [Sonikos]

BFM Scorpion 4 Hardware:  [David Haywood]
 * General update which fleshes out some of the 68307 code (not 100%
    correct hookups, just improved logging and enough to get us
    somewhere).
 * Added various devices to the SC4 emulation, added a default layout
    showing the VFD, to which most of the earlier games will now write
    'Initializing'.  Timers and other devices still need to be
    implemented properly before they actually initialize.
 * Put the actual SC4 hardware emulation in drivers/bfm_sc4h.c so that
    it doesn't get lost in the swamp of sets (scrolling through a file
    is quite hard when it's almost entirely set definitions)

mirax, miraxa (mirax.c) [stephh] :
 * Fixed Dip Switches and Inputs (after verification of the Z80 code)

Implemented flip screen support to Mirax [Angelo Salese]

galdrvr.c: Added preliminary protection emulation to Monster Zero.
[hap]

Moved all drivers to using the paletteram helpers defined in the
driver_device base class. The palette base is now specified via an
AM_SHARE of "paletteram" or "paletteram2". The driver_device base
class now finds these pointers and places them in
m_generic_paletteram_8/_16/_32 and m_generic_paletteram2_8/_16/_32.
[Aaron Giles]

Removed machine.generic.paletteram*, and machine.generic entirely.
Removed AM_BASE_GENERIC/AM_SIZE_GENERIC as they don't apply anymore.
[Aaron Giles]

Changed required_/optional_shared_ptr to support set_target with base
and size for manually configuring a shared pointer, and a new allocate
method for dynamically allocating (and registering the memory for save
states). [Aaron Giles]

Converted memory_private to memory_manager and moved global memory
operations into methods on it. Converted the less-popular cases over
in drivers that used them, leaving the bank management APIs global for
now. [Aaron Giles]

Add logic to ensure that shared pointers are checked to be of the
right width. The primary upshot is that if you declare
AM_SHARE("paletteram") in an 8-bit memory map, then only
m_generic_paletteram_8 will be populated, and m_generic_paletteram_16
will be NULL. But it applies to all required_/optional_shared_ptrs
declared, so make sure they are of the right type. [Aaron Giles]

Added code to cdrom.c to compute and verify ECC codes for mode 1/2
sectors. [David Haywood]

Added CD compressor template which separates subcode data from sector
data, removes redundant ECC data prior to compression, and uses
separate compressors for each part. Defined LZMA and ZLib CD
compressors based on this and made them the default for CDs.
[Aaron Giles]

Redumped sprites rom of lhzb2 [Guru]

Decrypted sprites in lhzb. Decrypted tiles and palette in lhzb2 and
slqz2. Added inputs and memory maps in these games, pending protection
simulation [Luca Elia]

Move driver list/enumerator to new file drivenum.c/.h. Move
game_driver definition and constants to new header gamedrv.h. [Aaron
Giles]

wldarrow.c: Added service inputs, allowing battery RAM to be
initialized in test mode, making the games close to playable. [hap]

namcos10: Fix banking for Mr. Driller 2, first stab at the encryption
[O. Galibert]

misc sc4/68307 updates + prelim peripheral hookups, allows most sc4
sets to run their sound rom checks [David Haywood]

rastan.c: Cleaned up Parent/Child order. Corrected ROM names and added
additional information / notes. [Brian Troha]

New games added or promoted from NOT_WORKING status
---------------------------------------------------
Fun River [Sara S.]
unknown Japanese horse gambling game (preliminary) [hap, Paul Swan]

New clones added
----------------
Rastan (US) [Stefan Lindberg]

New games marked as GAME_NOT_WORKING
------------------------------------
Quiz Show [hap, Siftware]
Dragon World Pretty Chance [Smitdogg, Tjeerd Carter]

Dapplegrey 2.35

Dapplegrey, a great DosBox front end, was updated to 2.35. This was a maintenance update. Let’s scope the changes. As usual, download it from the Box File Widget on the right hand side of the Mac Emulators Blog homepage or go grab it from their website.

• When mounting images, the boot command has been revised.
• Also, to support multiple floppy disk images to be booted, now you can add more than one floppy image, rather than one floppy disk image like before. Remember, only *one* floppy disk image is supported by DOSBox to be imgmounted, if you need multiple floppy disk images imgmounted to a drive letter, you’ld need to boot that.
• In rare cases, if you need/want to select a different Drive C: path (near the ‘or’ line in the ‘Drives’ section, the buttons to select a different folder or another disk image (disk image not supported for Toolbar entries) are working again now.
• Recent DOSBoxSVN application will be recognized now (to get it, find the text string “DOSBox SVN snapshot for OS X (10.4-10.7 ppc/intel)” for example at Director Player Error?

Mac Emulators Blog Update

If you were a follower of my blog before the Winter, then you already know this, but I’ve been a little preoccupied with snowboarding. This is the reason for the lack of posts, and for that I’m sorry. Okay, who are we kidding here, I’m not sorry. I’ve had a blast boarding at Squaw and Alpine this season. My new Ride Ultra Light board is explicit awesome. Here are some photos from a few of the trips. I will get back to posting about emulation soon and before you judge, remember that I work, go to school, and no one pays me for this explicit. I have a lot of different hobbies, blogging only happens to be one of them. Winky face. And yes, the use of the word explicit is because I love to explicit with people. Winky face.

The Latest Dolphin Emulator For Mac

Dolphin, the Wii and Game Cube emulator for Mac, now sits at version 3.0-427. Grab it from the Box File Widget on the right hand side of this blogs home page or direct from their website. Let’s check out the changes.

Improvement to revision b8bef29bcc5a .. 😛

Newest Addition To Console Collection

I recently stumbled across a 3DO game system at a local thrift shop. My friend works at two thrifts shops and has some of the coolest toys and collectables you could ever imagine, all of which he obtained through working at his job. Some of his Akira toys are still in the original packaging. While he digs the toys and the collectables, I’m more partial to old gaming. I told him to keep his eye open for old gaming consoles, and he came across this and didn’t even know what it was. Thanks to our friendship, and his selling it to me without looking up the price, I was able to obtain this system for 20 bucks. That’s right folks, Andrew Jackson bought me this console that originally sold for 700 big ones. Even today the system sells for several hundred dollars. It is in near mint condition and came with all the various cables, Road Rash, and a controller. This bad boy is packing 32bits of power! When this console originally came out, it was the most powerful gaming console. Unfortunately the system was just too damn expensive and lacked the proper catalog of games. I think if it had been better priced and had more software support, it could have done quite well. Although this has nothing to do with Mac Emulators, it was a great find and I just had to share it. Cheers!

Steam Is Compromised And Members Get A Letter

Back in February Valve’s game service Steam was hacked. It sounds like they took a large chunk of data. Let’s check out what they had to say.

February 10, 2012

Dear Steam Users and Steam Forum Users:We continue our investigation of last year’s intrusion with the help of outside security experts. In my last note about this, I described how intruders had accessed our Steam database but we found no evidence that the intruders took information from that database. That is still the case. Recently we learned that it is probable that the intruders obtained a copy of a backup file with information about Steam transactions between 2004 and 2008. This backup file contained user names, email addresses, encrypted billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. It did not include Steam passwords. We do not have any evidence that the encrypted credit card numbers or billing addresses have been compromised. However as I said in November it’s a good idea to watch your credit card activity and statements. And of course keeping Steam Guard on is a good idea as well. We are still investigating and working with law enforcement authorities. Some state laws require a more formal notice of this incident so some of you will get that notice, but we wanted to update everyone with this new information now. – Gabe (Valve)

SDL MAME .145 and beyond

SDL MAME now has a stable .145 release and a .145u1 (experimental) release. You can find both releases in the Box File Widget or go check out their website. And don’t forget, “make sure you have installed the SDL runtime library first!”

Boxer 1.2.2

Boxer was updated quite some time ago, but I’m just now getting around to blogging about it. It now rests at version 1.2.2. Some substantial changes in this build, most notably the ability to paste text into the DOS Prompt to execute DOS commands. You can get this new version of Boxer from the Box File Widget or from their homepage. Let’s scope the rest of the changes.

Improvements to keyboard input:

• Numeric keypad support for Macbooks and Apple Wireless Keyboards: Press Cmd+U or hold down Fn to make 789/UIO/JKL act as a numpad.
• Toggling Numlock now displays a notification bezel.
• Send Key menu now indicates the current Numlock and Scroll-lock status.
• Insert key on non-Mac keyboards now properly acts as Insert key in DOS.

Improvements to the DOS prompt:

• You can now paste text into the DOS prompt to execute DOS commands. (Pasting into DOS programs will arrive in a future update.)
• DOS prompt now unpauses when drag-dropping new drives into the window.
• Fixed REVEAL command ignoring the path you specify, and improved its error messages.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed regression in 1.2.1 that caused crashes during gamebox startup.
• (Hopefully) fixed occasional hangs when starting up a DOS session.
• Fixed savegames not getting saved correctly in Seasons of Sakura and 3 Sisters’ Story.
• Fixed MT-32 detection for GOG.com release of Battle Chess II.
• Prevented OS X’s own Ctrl+F7 shortcut from interfering with the DOS window.
• Changed the default games folder location back to [home folder]/DOS Games. This does not affect existing games folders.

Virtual ][ Updated to 6.5

Virtual ][, “The Best Apple II Emulator”, for Mac saw an update and now sits at version 6.5. Get it from the Box File Widget located on the blog homepage, or from their website. Let’s check out the changes.

• Fixed an issue where the Mockingboard card could halt the virtual machine (this happened, for example, in Ultima IV).
• Corrected an issue in the “floating bus” screen rendering, thereby improving compatibility.
• Fixed an issue that could cause stray pixels on the emulated screen when switching from 80-column text to low-resolution graphics.
• Improved screen rendering perfomance by using Apple’s Grand Central Dispatch technology.

SDL MESS for Mac

The same people who bring you all the wonderful SDL MAME updates for Mac now have another offering, SDL MESS. SDL MESS is a HUGE console emulator for Mac. It has everything from Genesis to Nintendo. You can enjoy having the power of several emulators all in one handy dandy spot. You can download it in pieces or from the website. Let’s check out the changes.

0.144

New System Drivers Supported:
-----------------------------
- Sanyo MBC-200 [Matt Dawson,Angelo Salese,Miodrag Milanovic]

Systems Promoted from GAME_NOT_WORKING:
---------------------------------------
- Juicebox [Tim Schuerewegen]
- Avigo [Sandro Ronco]

Skeleton drivers:
-----------------
- BK-8T Terminal [DATAsoft]

System Driver Changes:
----------------------
- ti99: Fixed GROM address counter handling and GRAMKracker's
	wrong RAM pointer [Michael Zapf]
- ti99: Fixed GRAMKracker's write protection [Michael Zapf]
- pc1512: Added a dump of the WD1015 MCU. [John Elliott]
- mac: Further improvements to Quadra 700; System 7.5.0 (and probably 7.1)
	will boot, but system remains NOT_WORKING due to many known flaws.
	Fixed slot interrupts on IIci so 4-head operation is possible. [R. Belmont]
- iq151: Added slot interface and moved video32/video64/disc2
	emulation into slots. [Sandro Ronco]
- iq151: Added emulation of Grafik module. [Sandro Ronco]
- amiga: a number of games seem to get confused when there's two drives
	(they wait for a index pulse on the second) [O. Galibert]
- mac: Fixed name of Asante MC3NB card, added Apple NuBus Ethernet Card
	which the Asante is a perfect clone of, fixed 24-bit mirroring so
	ethernet cards work in all slots [R. Belmont]
- amstrad: Added support for ROMbox, SSA-1 speech synth and DK'Tronics speech
  synth to be used in a daisy-chain of expansion devices.  [Barry Rodewald]
- samcoupe: Hook up the new wd1772, format support incomplete though [O. Galibert]
- abc1600: Added portrait/landscape layouts. [Curt Coder]
- abc800: Refactored the ABC bus to single-slot (as it really is). [Curt Coder]
- aes: cleanup of code, and made aes use neogeo softlist from MAME [David Haywood]
- mac: fix SCC so AppleTalk check fails gracefully instead of locking up;
	removed ROM patch on II/IIx/IIcx since it's no longer necessary [R. Belmont]

Software Lists:
----------------
- snes.xml: new dump added, NHL '97 Revision A [badinsults]
- snes.xml: redumped and profiled arround 100 cartridges [MESSfan]
- lynx.xml: stripped headers of dumps, removed bad dumps, added auto-rotate code [Huygens]
- astrocde.xml: fix errors and add several new or previously missing dumps [ranger_lennier]

Source Changes:
----------------
- amigafdc: Upgrade and fixes [O. Galibert]
- wd1772: Adapt the pll to a 8MHz frequency [O. Galibert]
- ipf: Describe the remaining fields [O. Galibert, SPS]
- floppy,wd1772: First stab at write support, in-memory only for now [O. Galibert]
- ipf: weak bits are usually badly-written/not written zones [O. Galibert]
- floppy: Slot-ize the floppies so that you can choose
	how many are connected [O. Galibert, R. Belmont]
- ami_dsk: ADF write support [O. Galibert]
- refactored the Commodore IEC bus to use slots. You can now connect up
	to 4 IEC floppy drives of your choice (1540/1541/1571/1581) to
	a VIC-20, C64, C128, C16, Plus-4, or C65. [Curt Coder]
- refactored the IEEE-488 bus to use slots. You can now connect up
	to 4 IEEE-488 floppy drives of your choice (C2040/C3040/C4040/
	C8050/C8250/SFD1001) to a Commodore PET or CBMB. [Curt Coder]