metalbabble.com/technobabble

What’s even cooler than mac/pc emulation on your cellphone? Playstation emulation on your cellphone!

In past articles I’ve looked at PC and Mac emulation on Android phones - both can be a little tricky to accomplish. I’m happy to say getting PSX up and running is a cinch! The app is already in the app store for $5.99. If you’re the shady type you can *ahem* probably find it elsewhere. (I’ll leave it at that.)

Once the PSX 4 droid (Playstation for android) app is installed you need to obtain a copy of the Playstation bios file and any games you intend to play.

As far as the bios file goes, there are plenty of resources for it out there if you google. Just search for “Download Playstation Bios” Try here for starters.

Games are pretty easily to get as well. They are of course online on websites like emuparadise.org or you can pop your existing PS games into your computer and create disk images (ISO files) For example, on a Mac you can use “Disk Utility” and click the “New Image” icon in the toolbar. (the format you’d use is CD/DVD master, just name it .ISO)

There are a couple tricky points I’ve noticed so far:

• There were several files to choose from when you select the bios file for the emulator. It recommended a particular one but when loading a game I received an error message. I switched to SCPH101.bin and it worked. Possibly different games require different bios file settings, might be a regional thing.
• Some games might be in .bin.ecm format, I guess this is an optimized format but I don’t think the android psx emulator can read them. There are utilities out there to convert from and to ecm files. The mac version worked fine from the command line, but not the gui. Here’s the utility: http://www.neillcorlett.com/ecm/
• Since I have a keyboard I used that instead of the annoying on-screen display. It also recommended a particular frame rate but i didn’t notice any difference between that and auto. On my 1st generation Droid it plays at full speed with only occasional choppy sound.

Happy gaming!

This is not to be confused with running Android on Mac. No, that’s easy. What this blog covers is emulating Mac OS ON Android. Read on to find out how you can do it too!

A while back I posted a Technobabble article on running Windows and DOS on Android via DOS BOX, which you can see here. Since then I’ve wanted to run the Mac OS, and now it’s working!

Here’s the link I stumbled on which has everything you need to get started: http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=11650&p=133309

The page includes a link to the Mini vMac package which is the emulator. I’ve used this emulator on other platforms and it’s a lot of fun but it’s pretty bare bones. (Don’t expect anything fancy like sound!) In order to work, the emulator requires a copy of a Macintosh ROM. This means you’ll either need to use a utility to extract a ROM from a Mac.. OR… hit a website like pirate bay for a copy. (You know the “low road”) If in doubt, just google for mac roms.

You’ll also need software, so while you’re googling find a disk image of a Mac OS boot disk. System 7 will do. Fortunately, Apple gives this out free now, it’s just creating or finding the disk image that’d the trick.

One last requirement, you’ll need the Android SDK on your computer. Grab that here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

To get set up and running, get apk from that website and follow these steps:

• Go into your phone settings and under Applications, set your phone to allow installation from untrusted sources, also turn on USB debugging.
• Connect your phone to your computer.
• Using the adb command, install the mini vmac package. Here’s an example command: ./adb install ~/Desktop/minivmac4android-r23.apk The last part is just the location of the apk file. I ran this command from the SDK directory
• The hard part’s over! Now mount your phone and go into the SD card and create a folder called minivmac.
• Put the Mac ROM into this folder (Should be called “vMac.ROM”)
• Get a Mac OS boot disk image and any other disks you’ll use, and put it into this folder as well.
• Disconnect and presto!

And that’s it, look in the App drawer on your phone and you should see the mini vMac emulator icon listed. It uses a physical keyboard and touch-screen for the mouse. The menu button has options to mount disks, which will list any disks in that minivmac folder.

One other note, I have to start the emulator with my phone held sideways/landscape otherwise it only uses half the screen.

Have fun!

Mac OS running on Droid

There’s a lot to love about old Nintendo games, one of the geeky aspects that’s really fascinating is how developers back then made use of the small amount of memory they had to work with. Here are some interesting tricks they did to pack more into their games. Like the 8-bit music of these masterpieces that limitation only lead to more creativity!

The bushes and clouds are the same spites in the original SMB.

You’ve probably heard this one, but it’s true. take a look here: http://elrincondeleo.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/super-mario-bros.jpg Oh the mushrooms and goombas are pretty close too. You might also find it interesting that though the levels are relatively large, they are stored in very little space - because instead of thinking of every square and pixle of the map, the only thing that’s saved is a list of level objects, their coordinates, and their length. That’s why rows of coins and bricks are common.

RPGs often lumped floors, dungeons, towns, and buildings together in one map.

RPGs often stored their maps in a more traditional sense. (Like a list of sprites and locations: tree, tree, water, water, tree, etc) So they had to do other things to make the most of the low amount of storage. In games that had dungeons a lot of times these were put together in one overworld-sized map but spread apart far enough that you wouldn’t (normally) see the tips of other parts of the dungeon. A really awesome example of packing dungeons together can be seen in the original Legend of Zelda: http://www.theginblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/zeldaquilt.jpg and here’s the second quest: http://www.theginblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/zeldadungeonspelling.jpg

Sometimes, it was worth being inefficient.

Sometimes to get the WOW factor, games would throw in an really “expensive” bit of multimedia to wow players. For example, the musical “SE-GA” in the original Sonic (see here: http://tinyurl.com/2duey26) And in Sonic 3 there was even a quick FMV! Graphics alone take up some space, check out this neat visualization of SMB3’s actual bits… http://i.imgur.com/PG1fq.gif

But wait! There’s more!

There are many, many creative examples of how developers squeezed the most content into games. Everything from the creative re-use of sprites, to pallet swapping, to primitive compression… it’s pretty amazing really!

Yes, these pictures are showing a Motorola Droid running Windows. Here’s how to pull it off…

First off, think of all the cool uses for x86 emulation on an Android phone. All those old PC games that ran under DOS or older versions of Windows, and just the pure nerdyness of it all… it’s too much to resist.

First step: Android SDK

To get started, you will need to install the Android SDK. The reason being is you’ll need the program “adb” which essentially allows you in debug mode to issue commands to the phone (like installing programs) you can get and install the sdk here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

Actually getting set up with a working development environment for Android is a whole other story - you’ll need a IDE like Eclipse. But for now, all we’re concerned about is that adb program in the tools subdirectory.

Get your phone ready

Your phone will need some settings set up, go into your settings application and then “applications” you’ll see a section for development settings. You’ll want debug mode on, you’ll want the phone to stay awake on usb, and you’ll also want the setting in applications to allow installation from unknown sources. After this is all set, plug the phone in via usb, and mount it.

Getting the emulator set up

For this, we’re using DOSBOX - which is a handy emulator for many, many platforms. The android version is available here: http://androiddosbox.appspot.com/

The instructions for installing DOSBOX are on this page. Essentially you’ll be using adb to send the .apk file to your phone. It’s simple, just navigate to the tools directory and type “adb install” followed by the name of the apk you get from the downloaded zip file.

Example, on the mac terminal: ./adb install ~/Desktop/WVGA/aDosBox.apk  (In this example I’m in the tools directory running adb and pointing to the extracted zip file on my desktop - a folder called WVGA containing aDosBox.apk

Next, we need to copy a configuration file for dosbox. Use adb followed by “push” and the name of the file and then the destination. For example: ./adb push ~/Desktop/WVGA/dosbox.conf /sdcard/dosbox.conf (first is adp, then push, then the source, then the destination)

Edits

You can use phone itself if you have a file manager program like ASTRO, or just use your computer - but you’ll want to make some tweaks to the dosbox.conf file. First off, give it additional memory. 8, 16mb — enough to run windows 3.1 or 9x. (Sorry I hope you weren’t expecting Windows 7 here!) Also feel free to add your own commands to the autoexec.bat section of the config file. Old skool users will remember that autoexec.bat is just a batch file that runs at startup.

Also, on the phone I made a dosbox directory organize all the x86 stuff.

Windozing

Well, at this point you should have the DOSBOX application on your phone which will fire right up into DOS. You can technically but any executables and run them from the prompt. I really cheated, what I did was install the Windows environment in a virtual machine on my laptop and then, copy the windows directory onto the phone. Nothing is stopping you from copying the setup files to your phone and running setup.exe — but do you really want the pleasure of sitting through a windows installation on a cell phone? Well maybe you do, since you’ve gone this far!

Final Thoughts

Launching windows is done with the “win” command, you can add this to the configuration file under the autoexec section or just run it manually at the prompt. Enjoy!

The classic Final Fantasy on NES provides fond memories for some, and frustrations for other. Often times, the amount of grinding it takes to proceed is a major turn-off to some players. Others are turned off by the dated graphics. So, to address both of these roadblocks - here are some nifty tools that will crack open this classic.

Final Fantasy Save Game Editor

http://games.technoplaza.net/ffse/

For Linux, Mac, and Windows is this easy-to-use save game editor. With it you’ll be able to fudge the amount of money, experience, items, and magic your characters have.

Hacks and patches

http://www.derok.net/emulation0/finalfantasy.html

This page contains just a few patches that can be applied to the Final Fantasy ROM to update the game in various ways. My favorites here are “Final Fantasy Plus” which follows the original game but with updated graphics, enemies, items, and skill/gameplay. Also, is “Final Fantasy World of Chaos” which uses the original engine but gives the players a whole new world and storyline to explore. These patches can be applied using any IPS patching tool.

Check out the screenshots for both.

Some things get better with age, and if you’re a retro game fan like me - then you’re in luck.

What is Abandonware?

Abandonware refers to software that is old, abandoned, and usually no longer supported or protected by the creators. It can be a gray area because companies are usually very protective about their copyrights - even those that are quite old. Nintendo, for example, has traditionally held a tight grip on their copyrights to older titles. Now that we have Virtual Console, we can understand why.

Old computer games are a little different.  (Sometimes) There are many games that have gone free, open source, or just fallen out of the interest of the orginating companies - if they even still exist. If you grew up with DOS or MAC you may have some old favorites you might like to play again.

This article will focus on old DOS games and getting them to play - not just on Windows but also Mac and Linux.

First up, you need something that can run the games. In many cases emulation or virtualization will do the trick. For old DOS games many people turn to DOSBOX. It’s a great little program that is available on various platforms.

Get DOS BOX here: http://www.dosbox.com/

Other ideas include VirtualBox, Virtual PC, VM Ware Fusion, or Parallels

If you’re using DOS BOX you have some configuration to do. When you run the program you get a usual DOS prompt. To get at your files, you have to mount the location. So, if in Windows you have a directory of games at c:\games you can type “mount c: c:\games” to get that directory into DOS BOX.

Other useful things will be going full screen (alt-enter) and adjusting the speed of emulation: ctrl-f11, ctrl-f12. Many old games will run extremely fast on newer machines, so some throttling will be necissary.

DOS BOX also has many front ends available for it, dosshell, boxer, and so forth. These make it easier to have multiple configurations for multiple games. It also simplifies the loading proess for your programs. If you enjoy tweaking your system, you can locate the DOS BOX configuration file (in Windows it’s in your install directory) — in the configuration file you can change defaults such as starting full screen, sound/graphics options, speed, and so forht.

All you need now is some programs. There are many sites out there with Abandonware galore. One I used to find some of my old favorites was: TheOldComputer.com

Here’s a bit more detail on setting up your Palm Centro smartphone to play video games. The program we’re using is LJP (available here: http://www.little-john.net/) 

What you’ll need

• A Palm smartphone
• A micro SD card to store the games
• A reader and/or adapter for the SD card

First off, download and install LJP. Pop in the SD card into the reader. You’ll have to either put it in the /palm/launcher folder, or use the installation process that comes with Palm Desktop.

You also need to put the libraries for the emulators in the correct folders on the SD card, the documentation describes this: “Download the ZIP archive, unzip and put the .ZEM files in “/Palm/Programs/LJP” and the .prc file in main memory. ROMs go in /PALM/Programs/LJP/[system]/roms/, where [system] is SNES, NES, GB, WS, NGP, SMS, GG, etc”

The last bit is to put the ROMs in the appropriate folders on the SD card as well. As you’ve seen above, the folder structure is pretty organized for each system. NES for NES, etc. Check their very detailed documentation if this doesn’t make sense so far. It’s not THAT bad. Here.

Ok - now to play, you just have to fire up LJP on the Palm and pick a system/game. Be sure to set up the controls in preferences to whatever is most comfortable.

Now there is a problem that I’ve experienced where the phone will randomly reset. I am not sure what the cause is, but nothing will work until I delete the configuration file. I recommend getting a copy of FILEZ for the palm to do this - that way you don’t need your card reader and computer every time you have to fix it. The configuration file I am referring to is: /palm/programs/ljp/ljp.ini

GOOD LUCK

The Palm Centro is a Smartphone by Palm which can be used on most major networks: Sprint, Verizon, AT&T - for those of us without an iPhone - I say it’s the next best thing!

Hack #1 - Custom ring tones

One of the stupidest things cell providers do to us is make us pay $2.99 or more for 30-second ring tones of songs we probably already own. It’s like they print money. Well the Centro is your phone and you can make YOUR own ringtones. Here’s how. First grab MiniTones here: http://software.palminfocenter.com/product.asp?id=11197 - Now, copy whatever MP3s you wish to use as ringtones to a micro SD card. MiniTones on your Palm will walk you through cropping and installing the mp3s as ringtones.

Hack #2 - Playing GOOD games on your Phone

Well, you can pay $4.99 for Bejeweled or some crap like that or get tons of free games for Palm - just do a little googling for palm os games, and you’ll find some real jems. My personal favorite time waster is LJP -Little john plam, available here: http://www.little-john.net/ - the process is download & install this app to your phone. Be sure to read through their documentation to, you’ll have to do some of the installation manually. Once it’s set up, copy your video game roms to appropriate folders on your SD - and you’re good to go. (Stay tuned for more in LJP)

This isn’t an article about creating a “Hackintosh” - we’ll save that for later. This was accomplished using just an emulator and an unaltered Mac OS X CD. (This was from the powerpc days!)

Software required: Pear PC, Mac OS X

Mimi

This is a PowerMac 7600 upgraded with a Sonnet Crescendo G3 card and LOTS of ram. It has 4 hard drives, a cd, zip, and a floppy. Extra hard drives are cooled by two fans all on a seperate power supply in the lower case. One computer, four hard drives, two cases, unlimited fun.

Running

• Mac OS X
• Voice Recognition

Lessons Learned

• You can install OS X on an older machine, or at least an older machine with a G3 upgrade card.
• A 300mhz mac can run Mac OS 9 running Windows 98 running Mac OS 7 running Apple II running DOS. EMULATORS RUNNING EMULATORS! See Larger Screenshot

ABOVE: Mac running Windows running Mac running AppleII running DOS