PCE-MacPlus is a nifty Macintosh Plus emulator. It emulates a Macintosh 128K, Macintosh 512k, Macintosh 512ke or a Macintosh Plus. Making it the third Apple emulator to support Linux, joining SheepShaver and Basilisk, both of which appear to be somewhat dormant when it comes to development, although I could be wrong, since Emaculation Forums announced that a 2010 build of SheepShaver which supports SDL is available. The powerpc emulator appears to get patched periodically, but could really do with an overhaul and proper version management, there is currently no source code available of the latest builds. Nevertheless, the news presents us with hope and at least we can feast our eyes on PCE-MacPlus which is a welcome addition. Ubuntu devs can learn a lot from the emphasis on productivity and user-friendliness that characterised much of the classic macintosh era.
Emulated parts
| Part | Status |
|---|---|
| CPU | A complete MC68000 emulator. |
| ROM | An unmodified ROM image from a Macintosh Plus is needed. |
| RAM | Memory configurations of 128K, 512K, 1M, 2.5M and 4M are supported. |
| Video | Supported (512*342*2) |
| Sound | Not yet supported |
| Floppy disks | Supported by a custom driver. For this to work the ROM is patched at runtime. |
| SCSI | Up to 7 SCSI harddisks are supported. |
| Serial ports | Supported |
| Mouse | Supported |
| Keyboard | Supported |
| AppleTalk | Not supported |
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="422" caption="pce-macplus on linux xfce"]
[/caption]Source code
| File name | Description |
|---|---|
| pce-20100920-36bf765.tar.gz | PCE 20100920-36bf765 sources |
| pce-0.2.0.tar.gz | PCE 0.2.0 sources |
| pce-0.1.8.tar.gz | PCE 0.1.8 sources |
The Latest Source code can be checked out via git
git clone git://git.hampa.ch/pce.git
VISIT PCE-MacPlus home page for disk images and MacPLus ROMS.
System 6 and 7 is still available from Apple.Com
Macintosh Garden is a great place to pick up free Apple Software and Abandonware.
