Altirra on macOS (Update Thread)

[atarixle]

Even 1:1 slows down Altirra on WINE on older hardware (Atom, C2D), while the exact same setup (1:1, software only) runs smoothly on native Windows on the very same hardware. That's why I mentioned it in the first place. Honestly and to my surprise, on my i5 Altirra runs pretty fast on ReactOS with maximized Window, and on my other i5 I remember that Altirra ran smoothly on WINE.

 

Yes, it is virtualized ReactOS. ReactOS is something to look at, if you are not satisfied with WINE. Mostly things may run worse, but in case of Altirra, ReactOS seems to let run Altirra slightly better than WINE.

[Mr Robot]

My old dual core i7 runs wine+altirra pretty well, it heats the CPU up pretty good running at 130% ish but it even does all the graphical stuff and VBXE without slowing down. Full screen

 

[Lastic]

6 minutes ago, atarixle said:

Even 1:1 slows down Altirra on WINE on older hardware (Atom, C2D), while the exact same setup (1:1, software only) runs smoothly on native Windows on the very same hardware. That's why I mentioned it in the first place. Honestly and to my surprise, on my i5 Altirra runs pretty fast on ReactOS with maximized Window, and on my other i5 I remember that Altirra ran smoothly on WINE.

 

Yes, it is virtualized ReactOS. ReactOS is something to look at, if you are not satisfied with WINE. Mostly things may run worse, but in case of Altirra, ReactOS seems to let run Altirra slightly better than WINE.

As you might remember from last years Fujiama my fellow Mac collector , still trying to run Altirra on a PowerPC mac , might give ReactOS a try on qemu or VirtualPC7 then.
I got as far as being able to install Eclipse with WUDSN on a Leopard PPC iBook but Windows XP virtualized was too slow to run Altirra.

[flashjazzcat]

Well, if we're talking about janky old computers, I suppose slowdowns are possible. I haven't seen Altirra run sluggishly on WINE since I tried running it on a Core2Duo Hackintosh. Dark days.

[Lastic]

1 minute ago, flashjazzcat said:

Well, if we're talking about janky old computers, I suppose slowdowns are possible. I haven't seen Altirra run sluggishly on WINE since I tried running it on a Core2Duo Hackintosh. Dark days.

Correct, my question was completely unrelated to the topic. My apologies for derailing the topic.

[mikesk8]

Hi All  I have been using Atari800MacX for a long time and its an amazing software for Mac  and its being actively developed these days, so its getting even better  What are the benefits of using Altirra (I was briefly using it via RetroArch and I did not notice any advantages) on Mac? 

[flashjazzcat]

14 minutes ago, mikesk8 said:

What are the benefits of using Altirra (I was briefly using it via RetroArch and I did not notice any advantages) on Mac?

Altirra boasts class-leading emulation accuracy, a huge selection of emulated hardware (Ultimate 1MB, VBXE to name but two) and the best monitor/debugger you're likely to see. I could go on.

[mikesk8]

1 minute ago, flashjazzcat said:

Altirra boasts class-leading emulation accuracy, a huge selection of emulated hardware (Ultimate 1MB, VBXE to name but two) and the best monitor/debugger you're likely to see. I could go on.

Wow, I did not know  I have been using Atari800MacX for casual gaming and it feels/looks similar when I play on my Atari 800  

[+skr]

32 minutes ago, mikesk8 said:

Wow, I did not know  I have been using Atari800MacX for casual gaming and it feels/looks similar when I play on my Atari 800  

Yes, Atari800MacX is all you need for casual Atari stuff on the Mac. It´s based on Atari800 which also gets updated from time to time.

The GUI is extremely nice and I like it much better than Altirra´s GUI.

 

But as FJC said: Altirra is top notch and can emulate nearly every important special hardware that´s out there (like U1MB, VBXE etc.)

And when it comes to debugging, there is no better choice than Altirra, especially when using WUDSN IDE. Atari800MacX has debugging too, but doesn´t even support breakpoints from WUDSN IDE.

 

As a Mac user, you can feel very happy: With Atari800Macx you have a really nice looking and easy to use emulator and can also benefit from Altirra´s superior hardware emulation and debugging functions.

[Gerardo]

On 8/14/2020 at 3:40 PM, flashjazzcat said:

Interesting. Are you saying the emulated machine runs slower? Or how else are you quantifying the slow running of an emulator?

Yes, when I use the 800xl system, if I eat an emerald on Montezuma, the melody goes like "la cu-ca-raa-cha". Faster if I change to a newer model.

[atarixle]

On 8/16/2020 at 2:01 PM, mikesk8 said:

Hi All  I have been using Atari800MacX for a long time and its an amazing software for Mac  and its being actively developed these days, so its getting even better  What are the benefits of using Altirra (I was briefly using it via RetroArch and I did not notice any advantages) on Mac? 

Let me try to form another explaination from a little more technical view: Atari800 is trying to mimic the Atari in a way that in the best case all Atari-Software runs smoothly. To reach that goal, in theory, the emulator could shorten the way a real computer works, so that in theory (and proofed practically) more software runs on the emulator than on real hardware. Example: the pre-release-Version of The Numen Demo ran in Atari800 only, while on real hardware it crashed 99 out of 100 times you try to load it. Consider that Atari800 (and Xformer) were created to run native speed on Pentium 133 MHz (or even 386 @25 MHz) so shortcuts were needed.

 

Altirra on the other hand tries to emulate chip by chip, it would love to emulate every single part, down to a capacitor, or the length of a ladder track - obviously not needed on system operating at 1.77 or 1.79 MHz. But the main goal is to run not only all existing Atari Software, but also forbid running software that would crash on real hardware.

 

Altirra isn't even supposed to be an emulator to just runs games and demos, but be a fully featured developer tool that helps you analyse the runtime of code down to the exact cathode ray position within the fraction of a CPU cycle (Atari800 is only accurate to either one CPU cycle or less, e.g. a CPU command, idk exactly).

[Sinjinhawke]

I have Altirra 3.9 running on my old High Sierra mac.  Unfortunately the built in manual does not seem to display so I'm having a hard time getting keyboard to work.  No idea where START OPTION SELECT are and cannot seem to map it.  Probably doing something terribly noobish.

[jamm]

12 minutes ago, Sinjinhawke said:

I have Altirra 3.9 running on my old High Sierra mac.  Unfortunately the built in manual does not seem to display so I'm having a hard time getting keyboard to work.  No idea where START OPTION SELECT are and cannot seem to map it.  Probably doing something terribly noobish.

Here is the relevant page from the help file:

 

 

[toddtmw]

On 3/29/2020 at 9:00 AM, a_netanel said:

FYI, wine supports 64 bit now.
I was able to install wine running the following:

brew cask install xquartz
brew cask install wine-stable

created a simple app with Automator (set shell to /bin/bash, and Pass input as arguments):

IMAGE="${1//\//\\}"
/usr/local/bin/wine64 /Users/myuser/Atari/Altirra-3.20/Altirra64.exe "$IMAGE"

And now I can double click an xex file and run it with Altirra.

I created an Automater and made it a shell script and when I try to drag a .xex file to it, it won't take it. If I make the xex open with it, it says there was no argument. What type of action did you use for your script?

 

Thanks.

[+skr]

On 8/12/2020 at 7:17 PM, Mr Robot said:

3.90 runs fine on Catalina if you install wine-dev via homebrew. Altirra 4 does not work under wine-dev on Catalina yet. There is a bug in the dev version of wine that needs to be fixed before Altirra 4 will start.

 

I´ve unsinstalled wine-devel and did a

 

brew install --cask wine-stable

 

which reports to be wine 5.0 and gives me this:

 

While Altirra 4 now seems to run, I still have no success with MadStudio so far.

[santoscork]

I am still on High Sierra but here is what I did.

 

1 Installed PlayOnMac 4.3.4 (Later OSs will allow for newer versions)

2 Lauched PlayOnMac

3 Clicked the + (Install a Program)

4 Chose to "Install a non-listed program" (clicked that option)

5 Clicked Next (3 times) until I see the options offered by the question "What would you like to do?". I chose "Install a program in a new virtual drive"

6 Clicked Next

7 The next step takes me to a the request: "Please type a name for you application's virtual drive. This name shouldn't contain spaces."

8 I typed "Altirra3.90" which reflects the version I downloaded from https://virtualdub.org/altirra and clicked Next

9 The following screen offers 3 options, I left all of them blank and clicked on Next

10 The next screen asks "What kind of virtual drive do you want to create", I chose 32 bit and clicked Next

11 Then it takes a moment or so to complete a process, you just need to wait a minute or so.

12 I am then asked to "Please select the install file to run". I need to click on the Browse button

14 After clicking Browse, a window titled "Select a file" comes up. As illustrated below, it is on top of my Applications window where I have the Altirra3.90 download I made. I drag the Altirra.exe file and drop it on top of the "Select a file" window. I do this to drag and drop to avoid navigating my file system through the "Select a file" window - it's quicker to drag and drop. I then click the Open window to complete the previous window's instruction to "Please select the install file to run" 

 

 

15 Now I click Next and Altirra opens. You can configure it now if you wish.

16 I now exit out of Altirra and the window below comes up.

17 I chose the "Browse" option above and clicked Next

18 A "Select a file" window appears

19 I dragged and dropped the Altirra.exe (inside my /Applications folder) file over the window that just opened and clicked Open 

20 I click Next

21 Then I chose "I don't want to make another shortcut"

22 I then get this in my PlayOnMac window, an Altirra icon.

 

Sorry for all the steps but that's how I set this all up. Now when I quit and relaunch PlayOnMac Altirra3.90 is persistently available to run. Just like in a real PC, you can double click the Altirra item more than once to open up multiple instances.

 

Hope this helps.

PS I imagine the process looks identical or very similar in later version of PlayOnMac.

 

Edited July 22, 2021 by santoscork

[luckybuck]

WOW! Thank you very much santoscork! That is great. :-)))

 

Such step by step instructions are gold! ?

[santoscork]

16 minutes ago, luckybuck said:

step by step instructions

If you find any trouble, please let me know.

[freetz]

On 3/29/2020 at 3:00 PM, a_netanel said:

FYI, wine supports 64 bit now.
I was able to install wine running the following:

brew cask install xquartz
brew cask install wine-stable

created a simple app with Automator (set shell to /bin/bash, and Pass input as arguments):

IMAGE="${1//\//\\}"
/usr/local/bin/wine64 /Users/myuser/Atari/Altirra-3.20/Altirra64.exe "$IMAGE"

And now I can double click an xex file and run it with Altirra.

After searching for a solution for my Silicon M1 Macbook Pro (2021), I found the two brew commands to do the job for me. Thanks a lot!

 

Edited August 14, 2022 by freetz
Found the reason myself :)

[luckybuck]

Sometimes it may help to go a 'little' deeper into Mark's marvelous and outstanding emulator, which without, I couldn't raised up the wiki and all the jobs in a flash...

 

Mark is a living legend period.

[freetz]

Hmm, does this relate to my post or something else?

[luckybuck]

No to 1st and yes to 2nd: 12 post above yours. Btw, the number of the posts are not shown, because due to the new forum, the index is not made yet.

 

[scottinNH]

On 3/29/2020 at 9:00 AM, a_netanel said:

 

created a simple app with Automator (set shell to /bin/bash, and Pass input as arguments):

IMAGE="${1//\//\\}"
/usr/local/bin/wine64 /Users/myuser/Atari/Altirra-3.20/Altirra64.exe "$IMAGE"

And now I can double click an xex file and run it with Altirra.

Sorry but I haven't used Automator, could I ask for Automator specifics?
 

I created a shell script named `altirra.sh` in my $HOME/altirra dir. That script has the #!/bin/bash header, and correct paths to my wine64 and Altirra64.exe. Did chmod +x on it.

 

I run Automator... do I choose "Run Shell Script"? I don't see any option anywhere for "Pass input as arguments".
Ignoring that, if I "Add" this script using Run SHell Script, and press the "Run" icon, I get a warning:

 

"This application will not receive input when run inside Automator."

 

If I say OK to that, I get an audio note and "Workflow completed".

I'm able to run altirra using `wine64 ./Altirra64.exe` just fine.

 

thanks!

[scottinNH]

Sorry if I was not too clear about the problem, I mean to say I Altirra + Wine work OK together, but I seem to get a error when trying to wrap it in Automator. 

being able to just double-click on a XEX would be great. Thanks.

[freetz]

Well, double-clicking an XEX file won't run Automator (or you might try "Open with..." and then select the Automator-generated app there), but what should be possible is this:

In Automator, use "Ask for Finder Items" as your first element in the workflow. The message you mentioned above only means that when you press "Play" inside Automator, the script won't really work because you can't drop a Finder file to it, but it will work when you run the Automator-generated app later as a standalone app. If you click "Add", you can manually select a (XEX-)file that the rest of the workflow is going to use, but remove that later once the app works as you like.

 

Then as the second element in your workflow, use Run Shell Script and set "Pass input as: arguments". Then you should be able to paste your script (or make a call to it) and use $1 or whatever your shell uses to refer to the arguments passed on the command line.

 

I haven't tried creating an Automator workflow as a service, maybe that could make your XEX files double-clickable?