[King_Rat]

I have been trying to get some old mac games working; Dark Castle (1986, Silicon Beach Software) and Beyond Dark Castle (1987, Silicon Beach Software). I have tried them on a LCIII and on a IIfx. On both of them Dark Castle and Beyond Dark castle will open up, but they then crash at some point early in the game (always at the same point) and give the error: "Data A" bad F-Line instruction. The two ideas that I have are that they are not compatible with these computers (the only ones that I have seen them work on were a SE and a Classic), or my copy is corrupted. Does anyone have an idea what the problem is?

[eyadams]

I have tried them on a LCIII and on a IIfx

So, you're trying to run a pair of antique computer games on a pair of slightly less antique computers?

You could upgrade Beyond Dark Castle to the Color version now available from Delta Tao software (web site). This is a completely new version that will probably run on your LC III - they say in the FAQ that it runs really well on an LC.

You could also get a modern Mac and run both games in emulation. There is an emulator called vMac
that emulates the original Macintosh's hardware; their web page specifically
mentions that both Dark Castle and Beyond Dark Castle work fine. I can't personally vouch for this solution myself.

You could also get an antique Mac to run your antique games. I see a Macintosh Classic on eBay for only $10.

[-Q-]

What system(s) are you running on your old macs? In trying to do that myself, I've found that a lot of the older games really don't like System 7. If you're running System 6 or earlier, I'm not sure what the problem would be...

[superlarry]

if you're in system 7, go to the memory control panel and make sure the computer's on 24-bit addressing. the lciii (and maybe the iifx) use 32-bit addressing in system 7 but this breaks some older applictaions.

[King_Rat]

I turned off the 32-bit addressing; that seems to have fixed the problem. I may try to get that color Dark Castle, but I will have to think about it. Also, I will try that vMac emulator; I have a newer mac which it should work on it. Thank's for your help.

[erise]

Here are my (negative) experiences at trying to run Dark Castle on my G4. If anyone knows of a solution to any of these, I'd love to hear it :

Unfortunately, both Dark Castle and Beyond Dark Castle don't work on vMac with USB Keyboards. If you play them on a Mac with an ADB keyboard under vMac, I think it might work. I asked about if this would be fixed here but not anytime soon.

There is another emulator that doesn't have the usb keyboard problems called Mini vMac, however Mini vMac has no sound, which isn't much fun.

I do have the Color Dark Castle version also, but it doesn't run under Classic mode of Mac OS X. I tried it under Basilisk II (a 68k Mac emulator) but it won't work there either because Color Dark Castle requires sound, which the Mac OS X port of Basilisk II doesn't support.