[MiNT] Mac emulator

[Johan Klockars <rand@cd.chalmers.se>]

> JK>Speaking of projects like this, by the way:
> JK>
> JK>   Anyone interested in a Mac emulator?
> 
> yes

Ah, that's already more responses than I got the last time I mentioned
this possibility (that was not on this list).  ;-)

> JK>I've been in touch with the author of a ShareWare one for the Amiga,
> JK>the ShapeShifter, and we would indeed be allowed to attempt a port of that
...
> how much work would it need? How well is the emulator source organized?
> How much is it portable? Would it be possible to have a look at the
> source before one decides to do the actual work on the port?

There would likely be a relatively substantial amount of work involved in
porting ShapeShifter, but the same person is apparently at work on a
portable emulator now.

I don't have any sources, so I can't comment on how well they are organized.

As for the portability, ShapeShifter was not written with that in mind.
I'd imagine that parts of the file system code and most of the keyboard,
mouse, serial, parallel etc interface routines would need to be rewritten.
To have any chance of making it work, I think we would have to let it run
under MiNT to make access to the standard system possible. The Mac part
might well need its own memory space, though, so some hacking of the low
level parts of MiNT may also be needed.
I don't think there's any hope of making an emulator like this work on
MMU-less Ataris and there really wouldn't be much point anyway since
those machines are too slow for most modern Mac software.

As for looking at the sources before beginning the actual work, I don't
see why that would be a problem, given that we're reasonably serious about
actually going for it.

Another thing I should perhaps mention is that in the few emails I've
exchanged with the author, I have assumed that he should still get his
entire ShareWare fee even for the Atari version (it is after all his program).
I don't know if that's negotiable (lower or split fee).

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