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Executor (old Mac emulator) source code released
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CharlesS
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Nov 12, 2008, 06:04 AM
 
Clifford Matthews, the founder of ARDI, the company which made Executor, has released the source code:

http://github.com/ctm

Executor was an app for Windows that allowed Windows users to run 68k Mac apps without requiring any Apple intellectual property - you didn't need a ROM or a Mac OS install disk. They did this by reverse engineering the Mac Toolbox and creating their own reimplemented version. In this way, it was sort of like WINE, but for Mac software, and with a 68k emulator thrown in. It didn't have a PPC emulator, unfortunately, but apparently the version for PPC Linux was able to run PPC Mac apps too.

The release of the source code opens the door for someone to port it to Darwin, possibly creating another possible solution for running old Mac apps on Intel OS X.

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- - e r i k - -
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Nov 12, 2008, 07:21 AM
 
Oh my god. I remember using Executor to play Escape Velocity on my mate's PC back in the mid-nineties.

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Eriamjh
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Nov 12, 2008, 08:06 AM
 
I found Executor to be barely useable, but going open source is great news!

I think that a cunning group of programmers could implement a decent 68K and PPC emulator for those cool games that existed back in the classic days.

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Nov 12, 2008, 08:53 AM
 
Originally Posted by Eriamjh View Post
I found Executor to be barely useable, but going open source is great news!
I'm not sure what you are saying here.

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analogika
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Nov 12, 2008, 09:38 AM
 
I parse that as

"Executor sucked, but now that it's open-source, it may result in a viable option for playing with ancient Mac apps! Yay!"

Seems clear enough to me.
     
CharlesS  (op)
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Nov 12, 2008, 06:05 PM
 
Originally Posted by Eriamjh View Post
I think that a cunning group of programmers could implement a decent 68K and PPC emulator for those cool games that existed back in the classic days.
The 68K part is already there - someone would "just" need to write a PPC emulator (the word "just" in quotes because that's by no means an easy task).

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Nov 13, 2008, 01:19 AM
 
Originally Posted by analogika View Post
I parse that as

"Executor sucked, but now that it's open-source, it may result in a viable option for playing with ancient Mac apps! Yay!"

Seems clear enough to me.
Ah yes. The magic sprinkle of "Open Source". Watch this project dwindle away like so many others who thought Open Source would save their software as they abandoned it. (I'm looking at you PlayerPRO!)

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CharlesS  (op)
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Nov 13, 2008, 04:34 AM
 
Dude, it's been abandoned for years. The website in 2005 said that it hadn't been updated for years. If even one developer contributes something to the project, it'll be way better than it has been for most of the 21st century. And if someone ports the project to Darwin, then there's a very noticeable and tangible benefit that you never would have had without it being made open-source.

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CharlesS  (op)
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Jul 29, 2009, 01:00 PM
 
Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - View Post
Ah yes. The magic sprinkle of "Open Source". Watch this project dwindle away like so many others who thought Open Source would save their software as they abandoned it. (I'm looking at you PlayerPRO!)
So after a few months, I decided to have a look to see if any progress had been made, and lo and behold, it compiles, and it works!



Sound doesn't seem to be working yet, and it's not exactly stable, but it seems to be actively maintained, for the first time in a decade.

EDIT: scratch that, sound is working! You just have to turn it on by typing ⇧⌘5 to get into Executor's preferences.

Score one for the "magic sprinkle" of open source.
( Last edited by CharlesS; Jul 29, 2009 at 01:27 PM. )

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kaseydevine
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Aug 5, 2009, 04:51 PM
 
I know very little about how to use Executor, but I'm trying to run the game Taskmaker. I MUST play this game. I got the file from http://www.robotroom.com/stormimpact.html -- it's now freeware. Can anyone tell me how to get this program running on Executor? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have Executor up and running on my XP, I just have no clue how to make the program run in it.

I also have basiliskII on a Mac OS X, and I have the same problem, --the emulator is up and running, but I have no idea how to make this program work.
     
CharlesS  (op)
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Aug 5, 2009, 10:52 PM
 
Ah, TaskMaker. That brings back childhood memories. I just tried it in Basilisk and Executor, and it seems to work acceptably in both. If you're on Windows, though, you're going to have a bit of a problem because of the resource forks - old Mac apps need to have their resource forks in order to work, and of course Windows doesn't handle them natively. Basilisk and Executor take different approaches to dealing with the resource forks.

The solution Basilisk takes is using disk images. There is a tool called HFVExplorer on Windows that I believe is able to create and work with Mac disk images. If you're using Basilisk, check to see if the disk image you're booting from has StuffIt Expander on it anywhere. If it does, you can just download the .sit file for TaskMaker, get it into the disk image, open it with StuffIt Expander in the emulated environment, and you should end up with the files and all their resource forks intact on the disk image. If you don't have StuffIt Expander, it'll be tricker. Probably the easiest way to do it in that case is to bring the disk image over to a real Mac, mount it, and use the OS X version of StuffIt Expander to expand the .sit file and put the files on the disk image.

On Executor, it's a little different. Executor uses AppleDouble files to emulate resource forks. AppleDouble is basically an extra file that encodes a bunch of Mac-specific info, including the resource forks. With Executor, you want the AppleDouble to have the same name as the file it goes with, but with a % character in front of its name. For example, if a file is called "Foo", you want the AppleDouble file that goes with it to be called "%Foo". You also want the AppleDouble file to be in the same folder as the regular file. The first thing I'd probably try would be to download the Windows version of StuffIt Expander and see what happens when you try to extract the .sit file for TaskMaker on Windows. StuffIt's gotta do something to encode the resource fork, and AppleDouble is the logical choice. If that doesn't work, and you have access to a real Mac, you can expand the files with StuffIt Expander on OS X, and then either copy the files to a Windows-formatted flash drive, or make a ZIP file of them using the "Compress" option in the File menu and then decompress the ZIP file on Windows. In either case, OS X will use AppleDouble to encode the extra information. If you copied it to a Windows-formatted disk, the AppleDouble files will be in the same directory as the originals - if you used a ZIP file, there'll be a "__MACOSX" folder containing the AppleDouble files. The AppleDouble files will have "._" in front of their names - just change that to "%" - i.e. "._Foo" becomes "%Foo" - and then drag them into the same folder the original files reside in if you used a ZIP file to transfer them. Once you do this, you'll be all prepped and ready to go for Executor.

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