Conference 7.286::atarist

    You are probably talking about Magic Sac by Data Pacific.
    
    This product is hardware/software and uses real Macintosh 64K ROMs.
    The programs you use need to be converted to 'Magic' format. There
    is a large library of MAC programs including the system programs
    (FINDER etc.) available from the Current Notes Library. Each disk
    is $4.
    
    A recent addition to the line is Magic Sac Translator 1. This product
    allows your ST disk drive to read/write Macintosh diskettes directly.
    
    There is one mail-order ad in the current issue of Current Notes
    which has these products. Magic Sac Plus $108 (don't know if it
    includes copies of MAC roms), Translator 1 $249, Professional $379
    (don't know what this is).
    
    A principal of Data Pacific (Dave Small) is now out on his own and
    may soon sell a version of the Sac based on the current 128K Macintosh
    ROM.
    
    I do not have nor have I seen the Magic Sac. All I know is what
    I've read in various places.
    

    
    RE .0
    
         Here is some more info on magic sac.  I believe it works with
    both monochrome and color, though monochrome is recomended.  In
    fact the ST monochrome screen has a higher resolution than that
    of the mac's, so if mac software is written properly, it can make
    use of the extra screen pixels.  Also, programs run faster on the
    ST than they do on the mac due to the ST having a slightly higher
    clock speed.  *NOTE* this is in comparing with a mac with the 64K
    roms also.  I believe the 128K roms give the mac a significant 
    increase in speed due to better coding, in the later roms.  The
    magic sac also has a built in clock.
    
    Bill Powers
    

  RE: MAGIC SAC Professional

	If I remember correctly (typical disclaimer :-) ), this is the 
	Magic Sac and Translator in one carton (shipping, not desk hardware).

CHad

May I ad a few notes about another Macintosh emulator for the AtariST.


Aladin the Macintosh Enhancer
-----------------------------

(I don't know MagicSac by myself so I can't compare MS and Aladin.)

Aladin supports up to 2.5 Mega RAM, a resetproof/bootable RAMdisk up to 
ramsize minus 300k, 1 or 2 floppies, single or double sided, parallel
and serial printer, includes drivers for the Apple imagewriter, Epson
MX and FX printers, and the NEC P6.

The original Aladin need the MacROMs on a little print hooked onto the
Atari ROMport. There is a cracked version that reads the MacROM image 
from disk at boottime.

Aladin runs on any AtariST and MegaST with monochrome monitor.

All software written strictly accoring to Apple's rules run without
any problems (e.g MSWorks, Borlands Turbopascal for the Mac, Kermit,
RedRaider, MacTools 6.0: that's what I use mostly). That's about 90% of all.
Other programs must be patched (patch utility included).

At the moment there is only one problem (worth 1,000,000 German Mark) 
with Aladin: Apple stopped Aladin. Nevertheless Proficomp, the makers of
Aladin are going to release a new version within the next months, they say.

As far as I know (from a phone call to Proficomp I made last winter)
the new Aladin is intended to support the 128k MacROMs, Atari's hard
disk, up to 4Megs of RAM and the MegaST harware clock. Also newer 
versions of system and finder should run without any patches.
They are even working on integrating the Atari laser printer.

I heard that Aladin works better than MacicSac does, but perhaps somebody 
else can provide more information about the differences between Aladin 
and MacicSac.


---markus---
(a very happy Aladin user)

    Re: .-1
    
    > Aladin supports up to 2.5 Mega RAM, 
    
    Magic Sac supports whatever the system has: .5, 1, 2.5 or 4.0 Mb.
    
    > a resetproof/bootable RAMdisk up to ramsize minus 300k, 
    
    If the ramdisk runs on a Mac, it will run on the Sac, too.
    
    > 1 or 2 floppies, single or double sided, parallel
    > and serial printer,
    
    Ditto
    
    > includes drivers for the Apple imagewriter, Epson
    > MX and FX printers, and the NEC P6.
    
    Magic Sac does not _include_ foriegn printer support, but this can
    be had by buying Epstart for Macintosh.
    
    > The original Aladin need the MacROMs on a little print hooked onto the
    > Atari ROMport. 
    
    This is exactly how Magic Sac works. It also includes checks in
    the software (per an agreement with Apple) to verify that the cartridge
    is indeed a real Magic Sac and that it contains genuine Apple ROMs.
    
    > There is a cracked version that reads the MacROM image 
    > from disk at boottime.
    
    WARNING! This is a *severe* infringement on Apple's copyright!! Would
    we (Digital) like it if Sun copied the code from RMS and ran it
    as part of SunOS so their system would code compatible with VAX
    FORTRAN?
    
    > At the moment there is only one problem (worth 1,000,000 German Mark) 
    > with Aladin: Apple stopped Aladin. 
    
    Naturally! See above.
    
    > Nevertheless Proficomp, the makers of
    > Aladin are going to release a new version within the next months, they say.

    I hope Apple sues them right out of business.
    
    > I heard that Aladin works better than MacicSac does, but perhaps somebody 
    > else can provide more information about the differences between Aladin 
    > and MacicSac.
    
    I don't own this product, and I've never seen it. Probably because
    if they tried to sell it around here, Apple would hit the company
    with an injunction so fast it would make your head spin.
    
    I don't know whether it works "better" or not. I do know that virtually
    every Mac program runs on the Sac (unless it's a game :-( ), and
    that Magic Sac supports Winchester disk drives (quite well, too).
    I am willing to test any Mac program on my Magic Sac to see if it
    will work. Just let me know.
    				- HBM

    
    The hacked version with the MAC-ROM on disk has never been made
    by ProfiComp. In fact, the hacked version is essentially a hacked
    SAC! Nothing to do with ProfiComp. So be careful spreading this
    kind of information when you don't know all the facts or when your
    representation of facts can be misinterpreted. No legit software
    manufacturer (like ProfiComp) needs this kind of rumor. ProfiComp's
    Aladin will only run with original Mac ROMs, unless some joker hacked
    it. ( I doubt by the way that Aladin can be hacked because it has
    an extra ROM chip on the cartridge which detect at all times the
    insertion of an Aladin-formatted Macdisk, even under GEM).
    
    BTW, Apple seems to be sueing everybody these days. Next thing we'll
    see is Apple sueing DEC when DEC releases DECwindows, I can hear
    Sculley saying "severe infringement of Apple's copyright" :-)
    
    As a side line: I too have Aladin, I like it but the DISK I/O is
    sooooooooo sloooooowwwwwwwww. The ramdisk included with Aladin is
    a Macintosh application. What I do is I copy the system and finder
    files to the Ramdisk (called SuperDisk) thereby relieving the slow
    disk I/O a bit.  
    
    Marc 

    Just to make some clearifications:
    
    First I never intended to imply that Proficomp made the hack. It's
    a group called TNT (who ever this may be).
    
    Second: Just to see how it's done, I disassembled the TNT-hack and
    found the following, witch seems to me as if there are no special
    tricks of checking the usage of the original ROMs:
    
    - Because the ROM image must be patched anyway all code of the ROM
      must reside in RAM. There is a simple routine that checks if the
      ROMs are inserted and then makes some sort of straight forward
      moves from the ROM port to the RAM.
    
    - In the hacked version the ROM image is loaded on TOS level at
      startup time from disk into the proper place in RAM, and the above
      little routine is patched so that the ROM_inserted_check does
      not give an error. The actual MOVE.L of the mover is replaced
      by NOP.                
    
    - another thing is that recognition of GEM formatted disk:
      The diskinit package must be patched/extended because of the very 
      different  harware of the Atari, so there is no special problem to 
      add some check of what format the inserted disk is.
    
    I really agree with you that one SHOULD NOT use the cracked version.
    (or at least buy the original Aladin and store it in a save place)
    But it is interesting that an approved Appleshop sold Aladin to
    a friend of mine and made available to him the cracked version too!
    
    Anyway the reason for Apple to stop Proficomp and Aladin is NOT
    the cracked version, but as is said in one of the replies : Apple
    fights against the world!
    
    ---markus---
    
    ps. one other reason for me to disassemble Aladin is finding out
        what the system does between receiving the command for a
        diskoperation and doing the IO. Perhaps some time I'll be able
        to speed things up... 
                
    ps.2. Whatever will go on with Aladin/Apple/Proficomp...
        The Apple Macintosh leaves that bl... GEM/TOS lightyears behind
        
    

    
    re. 7:
    
    I'm sure you didn't want to imply that ProfiComp made the hack.
    I'm just cautioning everybody 'bout such statements. Rumors die
    hard and travel fast in computerland (thanks to networking among
    other things!).
    
   > - another thing is that recognition of GEM formatted disk:
    
    Yep that's right. But Aladin does it in ROM, not in the emulator
    running the MAC itself. In other words, you don't have to load &
    run Aladin. You can see this when you try to cold boot from an Aladin
    formatted disk. This is the reason why you can't use the
    Aladin cartridge with the Magic Sack (at least the earlier sacks
    don't know about recent versions).
    
    There are a lot of those hacked Sacks around, I didn't know about
    TNT's (those guys also make fantastic demo's for the ST) but I've
    seen "MacBongo" and "Bytepower Mac", both hacks of the Magic Sack.
    
    I saw an ad for the new Aladin version (2.01): no 128K ROM support,
    but HD support, more software runs without patching etc. Pretty
    steep in price, though. 
    
    >        The Apple Macintosh leaves that bl... GEM/TOS lightyears behind

    Well, the Mac's operating software does, but as the ST shows, not
    the hardware! Apart from disk I/O, even in emulation mode the ST
    does pratically everything a lot faster than the Mac (in MAC mode).
    This is not solely due to the higher clock speed of the ST (MAC
    7,14 MHz, ST 8 MHz). 
    
    Talking about machine independent code!
    
    Marc
    

    Re: copy-right infringments, and suits.
    
    I would prefer if y'all avoided this sort of discussion altogether.
    Use a less ``enduring'' (or at least less ``public'') medium if
    you really want to talk about it.  The future reader probably won't
    benefit much from the info anyway.
    
    We've managed to mostly avoid topics like this thus far, so simply
    continue in your excellent form.
    
    Steph (a moderator)

    Marc, where did you see the ad for Aladin V2.01?
    What is 'preety steep in price'?
    Does MagicSack support the MacPlus with 128k?
    How mutch is MagicSack? Who sells it?
    
    Thanks
    ---markus---

    
    re. 10
    
    I saw the ad for Aladin 2.01 in a Dutch ST-magazine. I don't
    think it supports the 128K Macintosh Roms. The price is about
    700 Dutch guilders (about 650 DM). Maybe it's cheaper in Germany.
    I don't know about update services, I plan to migrate from my version
    (V1.3) to the new version but I have still to check with my dealer.
    
    I know that Dave Small, the author of the original Magic Sac, has
    now started his own business and is working on a 128/256K ROM version
    of the Sac. I can imagine that the ROMS for that thing will be much
    more expensive and harder to get than the 64K ROMS.  
    
    Aladin used to be cheaper (400 Dutch Guilders) in Holland 
    (the previous 1.3 version) I don't know why it's gone up so much. 
    
    The Magic Sac was also about 400 Dutch guilders. I think the European
    distributor for the Sac was Robtek in England. I haven't seen it
    on sale since a year. Maybe they dropped the Sac because of Aladin.
    The Sac cost about the same as Aladin. 
    
    Anyway, there's a lot of public domain software especially for
    Aladin-format Macintosh programs to be had from user groups.
    
    I'm still having trouble getting the Aladin Mac to talk with modems.
    I think I need a special cable. The cable I use for GEM/TOS
    communication software doesn't work for Aladin/Mac. Do you have
    any experience with it, Markus?
    
    Marc

	I own the Magic Sac + and the Translator 1.  The translator 1 uses
3 cables (1 to wach midi port and 1 to the external drive connector).  In
conjunction with the Magic Sac +, it will read and write Macintosh disks.
However, it does this extremely slow.  As an example, I timed the loading of
MacWrite using the Translator and a Mac SE.  The translator took approx. 3
minutes to load where the SE took about 15 secs.

	The ST does run the software faster than the Mac+ but a little
slower than the SE once loaded.  If you can stand the wait for the load,
then the Translator will meet most of your needs for running Mac S/W.

	It has a very hard time running a lot of the copy protected S/W
for the Mac.  Most of the time it bombs the system and I have to reboot the
ST.  On the good side, a lot of the major programs for the Mac like MacWrite,
MacPaint, MacDraw, etc run once loaded.

	There is another option available for using the Mac S/W.  You can
load the mac S/W with the Translator and then write it to a Magic Sac formatted
disc if you have an external drive.  The subsequent loading of the S/W from the
Magic Sac formatted disc is fairly fast, possibly faster than loading a normal
ST program.

	The documentation says it will also work with hard disks attached to the
ST.  Since I don't own one, I can't verify this.  Also, it IS supposed to work
on both the color and B/W monitors.  I have only used the B/W because of the
pixel density (the mac screen image occupies about 2/3 of the screen).
Once the image is on screen, you can use the click and drag technique for
resizing the window to any size you like.

	I found the load time to be too much of a drag to find it very
convenient for heavy use so I went out and got an SE.  I still use the ST
but not for running Mac S/W.

    strange thing with those prices for a 'mac clone'...
    
    anyway...
    
    I never used a modem with Aladin but right now Aladin is
    downloadingsome Macintosh public domain software from the net without
    any problem.
    Either Kermit or RedRider with xmodem and kermit protocol work fine.
    I just plugged the DB25 serial connector normally used with the
    vt220 into my Atari serial port and set the parameters (9600, no
    parity, 1 stop, xon/xoff) and on it goes. Isn't a modem just a sort
    of a terminalserver? (I know it is not...but...) Perhaps someone
    else can help you.
    (I think you must interconnect pins 4 and 5 on the Atari port)
    
    ---markus---
    

    
    re. 13                                
    
    Hmmm, strange. Once I used a MAClink cable (for communication
    between Macs and PC's) to link my ST running Aladin to a Mac directly 
    and I had no problem whatsoever. I ran Red Ryder and Macterminal
    at both sides at 19.200 baud! 
    
    The D25 connector in that cable had some strange connections. It
    had pins 4 en 5 shorted and pins 6 and 8 as well. Now my normal
    modem cable doesn't have that. Can anyone tell me if I can short
    pins 4/5 and 6/8 in my standard modem cable without blowing up my serial
    port and still be able to use the ST with modem running ordinary
    GEM/TOS with the modified cable?
    
    My modem is a straight Rixon 1200 baud FD modem (sold by Digital 
    in the Netherlands under the name Repko), apart from auto-answer
    it has no automatic functions.
    
    Marc

    re: .-1
    
    > had pins 4 en 5 shorted and pins 6 and 8 as well. Now my normal
    > modem cable doesn't have that. Can anyone tell me if I can short
    > pins 4/5 and 6/8 in my standard modem cable without blowing up my serial
    > port 
    
    Absolutely, positively.
    
    > and still be able to use the ST with modem running ordinary
    > GEM/TOS with the modified cable?
    
    Probably, but I'm not certain.
    				- HBM

    Here is some addition to the techn specs of the serial port:
                 
    The RS232 standard says that ANY input and output terminal on the
    port MUST be protected against any shortening to any other portpin!
    So you can do whatever you want, if the standard is well implemented
    (as is as far as I know), without blowing your port, even if you
    connect a pin to +/- 12V or ground.
    
    pin 4: RTS Request to send
           tells the modem I (the terminal) am ready to send
    
    pin 5: CTS clear to send
           ...is the modem's answer: ok, send to me
    
    pin 6: DSR data set ready
           the modem tells to terminal that it is ready to 'shake hands'
           via the RTS/CTS signals 
    
    pin 8: RLSD receive signal line detect
           the modem tells the terminal that it had detected a modulation
           on the receiving inputline
    
    The simplest way of communication over the serial line is to use
    only 3 pins : 3 and 4 for receive and transmit and 7 as signal ground.
    All the handshaking is done with software (XON/XOFF) or isn't done
    at all. So you have to foul your harware in some way. If you connect
    pins 4 and 5 together on the terminalside, your terminal tells itself
    that is is ready.
    Of course there are more sophisticated handshaking methods using
    either CTS/RTS or others.
    
    So yust experiment with your port and connectors, nothing can go
    wrong...
    
    ---markus---
    

    Where I come from we use pins 2 and 3 for transmit/receive.
    
    Peter.

    sorry, you're right of course
    
    ---murphy---

    re:  Magic Sac versus Aladin
    
    	I spent about 120 pounds (sterling), and MUCH time and hassle
    (eg. getting the Mac ROMs) getting the MacEmulator (UK version of 
    Magic Sac) to work. It was a COMPLETE waste of time and money. 
    The keyboard mapping seems to be different, it hangs frequently, etc.
     Absolutely unusable. I don't even have the nerve to attempt to sell 
    it (I really mean that).
    The distribution firm in the UK was Robtek. They are now out of
    business as a result of the Postal strike (Sep-88). Talk about sailing
    close to the wind !
    
    
    	I received the TNT version of Aladin. This works very well -
    no MacROMs necessary. If I could get some of my money back from
    the MacEmulator fiasco (impossible), then I would buy Aladin.
    Simple as that.
    
    Jim Burke
    

    Re: .-1
    
    ...problems with Magic Sac...
    
    What version of the driver software are you running? I'm running
    V5.9 and it _never_ hangs. You might get 'system error' when running
    programs that need system 5.0 or better (this is like 'ident mismatch
    with shareable image').
    
    Early versions _did_ have these kinds of problems, but not anymore.
    
    Please get an updated copy of the Sac software and try it. It works.
    Really. Please do not support Alladin, who is ripping off the software
    engineering efforts of Apple in a big way.
    				- HBM

    
    I saw an ad in this month's START for a Magic Sac Plus *with ROMs* for
    $80.  This seems awfully cheap.  What's the story here?  How much
    better does the Spectre (which is considerably more $) emulate the Mac?
    
    							Brian

    Magic Sack: Old (but good) emulator. Because it uses the older ROMs
    with only 64k much of the newer software does not run (eg Hypercard).
    It depends on what you want to do. The older Macs are great machines
    with lot of very powerful programs available for them (Applications as
    text processors, DTP, programming languages)

    Spectre (GCR): Emulates the Mac plus with the newer 128k ROMs. This Mac
    is the 'reference' and will probably still be for some more time (the
    Mac II family is closer to the workstation segment). If you bye the GCR
    version of Spectre you get some additional hardware that allows you to
    access *real* Mac floppies *at runtime*.

    If you want the new features, if you want Hypercard, if you want the
    latest system software to run, then go with the Spectre. If you want
    the Atari just to be a Mac and run most (but not all) of the Mac
    software then you go with the cheaper Magic Sack


    ---markus---

What is in the 256kb roms on the SE?  I thought SE also had 128kb ROMs.  But
I don;t really know.
Color-whatever-their-graphics-system-is-called in the the 256kb ROMS I think.
Anyway, I don;t follow Mac (yet) so I don;t know.

However, the 128kb ROMs are the standard (do the software manufacturers
want to shut out the multitude of Macplus machines out of
their customer base? -- no).  For an emulator, you want the GCR.

Chad

Yes, I misspoke when talking about the 128k roms and SE.

Chad

  The ALADIN emulator is supposed to be no longer available as Apple
  Germany successfully went to court to stop its production/selling.
  Could something like that have happened to the SAC too, which is
  why remaining copies are sold off cheap without support?

  Theo

The Magic Sac is an old 64K ROM emulator.  That is why it is not being sold 
anymore (also the developer, Dave Small, is not on the best of terms with the
Magic Sac distributors).  Anyway, Dave Small also came out with the Spectre 128 
and Spectre GCR emulators that use 128K ROMS.  The Spectre is kind of Son-of-
Magic-Sac and is well supported and not under attack from Apple.

Chad