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Altirra on macOS (Update Thread)


Ripdubski

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Since most of us Mac users like single clicky launch thingies, I thought it might be a good idea to have a single thread for macOS Altirra to make it easier to find all relevant information and files for each release.

 

Altirra 2.8

Lets start with Peters original thread for a Wine bottled Altirra 2.8 (32 bit):

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/256928-altirra-28-wine-port-for-macos-sierra/?hl=%2Baltirra+%2B2.9&do=findComment&comment=4081583

 

 

Altirra 3.0

Then move to the his Wine bottled Altirra 3.0 thread:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/278822-altirra-30-mac-wine-port/

 

I polluted that thread (my bad) with an update for 3.1, including all the instructions for what it took to get it both 3.0 and 3.1 running under macOS 10.14 Mojave. Instructions that were cobbled together from the threads:

 

1) Take Peters original 2.8 download (bottle) and extract it.

2) Move the "altirra.app" (from extraction) to Applications folder. I also renamed it to "Altirra" from "altirra".
3) Take the download from post #15 (in the 2.8 thread above) for MacOS >= 10.13, and extract it.
4) Open Applications folder, and choose "Show Package Contents" from the context menu (right click) of "Altirra".
5) Open folder where post #15 (2.8 thread) was extracted, and choose "Show Package Contents" from the context menu of "Altirra.app".
6) In both windows navigate to the Resources folder.
7) Copy the following files from the post #15 Altirra.app Resources folder into the Altirra.app Resources folder from Petes bottle:
- File: Wine.bundle
- Folder: wineprefix
8) Close Finder windows.
Launch Altirra, run through setup. You'll need to navigate to your ROMS and CARTs folders using the / folder and then the tree where its stored. Seems the Wine stuff doesn't respect any aliases.

I zipped the 3.0 release Wine/Altirra Application (package) in a zip that can be extracted and run as is, without having to go through all those steps. Here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n8q30oexq5ymrju/Altirra30_Mojave.zip?dl=0

 

 

Altirra 3.1

I then updated the package for the 3.1 release by performing these steps:

To get this, I took the 3.10 binaries from the Altirra site, and copied them to the folder "Altirra.app/Contents/Resources/wineprefix/drive_c/winebottler". Files:
- Additions.atr
- Altirra.chm
- Copying
- Altirra.exe
- Altirra64.exe
Just replacing the files still launched the 3.0 version. I did some additional thread digging and found that I also had to remove the following (one or more of these had cached data). Your install may vary in name:
~/Library/Application Support/Wine
~/Library/Application Support/Avery Lee_152528885525251
~/Library/Application Support/com.altirra_15264834116685 (current bundle identifier)

 

I then zipped the 3.1 release Wine/Altirra Application (package) in a zip file that can be extracted and run as is, without having to perform the additional steps. Here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xhsvfxs38y3z1vi/Altirra31_Mojave.zip?dl=0

 

 

Alternate location in 7z format with smaller size (thanks Roland). Remove the .txt after downloading. See post #12 for details on extraction:

Altirra31_Mojave.7z.txt

 

 

Status

2018.12.14: This was working fine before the 10.14.2 update. With 10.14.2, it still works but will generate a warning about application compatibility in a future macOS release.

2018.12.14: Updated the 3.1 zip after editing the package metadata. Altirra in macOS application title now shows as proper case. Package version info also shows as 3.1 instead of 3.0, and Avery is credited.

2018.12.20: Added 7z version of Altirra 3.1, served directly from AtariAge.

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Using the methods you are for bottling Altirra you cannot associate files with the application - so you cannot just double click an ATR or XEX and it boots the emulator and runs.

 

I may be swimming against the tide, but if you use PlayOn - https://www.playonmac.com/en/- you can associate files with Altirra in MacOS which makes it work like a native App which I find very useful.

 

Added to which the the handling of full screen and file requesters is subjectively better IMHO.

 

Setting up Altirra in PlayOn is super simple (and it supports a huge array of other Windows software)...

 

sTeVE

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I said this a while ago but it bears repeating. Apple have depreciated 32-bit in Mojave, all previous builds of wine are 32-bit. 64-bit wine doesn't (yet) work with macOS. In future versions of macOS 32-bit wont run at all so wine has to get 64-bit working on mac.

 

The winedevs have said that the changes Apple introduced in Mojave have made wine incompatible with macOS, while it is possible to use older builds, new compiles will not work, trying to compile older versions will not work. The winedevs have stated that they expect wine to have a macOS compatible build ready for the NEXT release of macOS.

 

Winebottler is not wine, its a self contained build of wine in an app bundle. If you have wine installed on your mac you can continue to use it but places like homebrew have disabled wine updates because they compile and that is now broken. If you have a winebottler app installed you can updated the contents of the bundle but you can't build a new one unless the bottler only uses pre-compiled binaries. A future update to macOS will make those not work too.

 

If you havent upgraded to Mojave yet, don't. If you have and your wine version of altirra is working, stop doing macOS updates until a new mac compatible 64-bit version of wine is released.

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Noted and noted. I don't particularly care about double clicking to launch an XEX any more. I generally play games on real hardware. I did this ONLY so there was an easy way for Mac users to just unzip the emulator application and be able to launch it (and have sound). It's working for me now and I don't have Wine installed or any bottler. Thats really all I care about. If you don't like this, don't use it. I looked at PlayOnMac, guess what, its Wine too. Maybe they have magic voodoo that lets it work now and in the future on Mac despite Wine itself not being in the same state.

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Theres no voodoo, Playonmac is just another bottler. Its 32-bit and the binary they build apps with was compiled in a pre-Mojave version of Clang. When Apple removes 32-bit in a future release of macOS it will stop working and you will need to build a new playonmac app with the new (hopefully released by then) wine 64-bit for Mac that a newer version of playonmac has hopefully released.

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Absolutely - given the catastrophic delay in the last version of Crossover (whilst I have paid I rather detest) I do not have my hopes up of a rapid solution for Wine in general on OSX when we go 100% 64bit.

 

But I suspect that cliff edge is a fair way off, there is no 100% solid indication of a hard deadline, yet.

 

Ripdubski - my intention was not to rubbish your work, but rather to point out that those of us that do use emulation on OSX have options, which work in a more integrated way in finder at the cost of some extra effort.

 

Also it is perfectly possible to have the native Atari800 emulator working under Mojave with sound - so bottled Altirra is not the only option.

 

And recompiling Atari800 for 64bit might be a much more rapid solution that waiting for Wine :-)

 

sTeVE

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What Ripdubski has done here is a great solution to a problem that a lot of people are having and the playonmac solution is another way to achieve the same result but people should know that both of these solutions are temporary fixes to a problem that has no permanent fix available yet.

 

It will be interesting to see how people react to an ARM based mac

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I am aware. I personally don't use Altirra on a mac, I prefer the simpler way atari800 works and I build a personal custom version of atari800 from source which I keep synced with the official github repo and I run it using an automator app with some custom python deciding what switches are required to run an image. I associate Atari filetypes with the automator app and have designed custom icons for those file types. I'm also fully aware that most people don't know how to do most of that.

 

All the above is off topic, this is supposed to be about running altirra on a mac, not what other options are available.

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I think that's the first time I've ever been described as 'curt', even my twitter profile says "A bit wordy" and my reply was actually longer than your comment!

 

I'm very open to discussion, especially about 'Emulating Atari 8-bit on Mac' (being three of my favorite things all in one topic!) but maybe this isn't the thread for it.

 

Any perceived rudeness in my reply to you probably leaked in due to me responding to what I considered a condescending comment repeating a previous comment, but this time in bold, to make sure I'd got it, when in fact I'd read the comment, ignored that bit as off-topic, and responded to the on-topic content. I was aggravated by the repeat in bold and that probably showed, I'm sorry about that.

 

I'm not a moderator, I think the word above my avatar is currently 'Moonsweeper', I am but a lowly noob around these parts.

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Added 7z version of the Altirra 3.1 macOS package. Thanks Roland for the repackage. This one is smaller and hosted directly from AtariAge. You will need to do the rename at the command prompt:

mv Altirra31_Mojave.7z.txt Altirra31_Mojove.7z

 

Then you need something that will extract 7z on macOS. Unarchiver is free, in the app store, and does a good job without any annoyance.

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@Jetboot Jack:

You have done a right click on an atr image and have selected the right way installed Altirra as default for all?

 

@all Mac-users:

http://www.7-zip.de/download.html

Please find above a drag & drop 7z IDE.

 

But I must acknowledge to Kr0tki, he is dam right, the official Mac version is > 10.5 years(!) old... no comment here. But see the results in Altirra, from > 70 MB zip file down to 40 MB 7z file of the same(!) file. The new version for Mac is even better! But still not in double click version... so much to do over Christmas... ;-)

 

Newest version, please see attachment.

p7zip_16.02.zip

Edited by luckybuck
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 year later...
On 1/2/2019 at 6:29 PM, Jetboot Jack said:

Yes luckyduck I have Altirra associated with all exclusive Atari file types (ATR/ATX/XEX) under OSX - so I can run games from their files in finder...

 

 

Tried that but got an error message that Wine can't open this file type.

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On 1/27/2020 at 2:48 PM, slx said:

Tried that but got an error message that Wine can't open this file type.

 

Yes that is exactly what happened with vanilla wine, only with PlayOn did I manage to get file associations working (it also works with CrossoOver created bottled apps).

 

I tried to wrap the wine app in an AppleScript shell to get file associations working, and that failed too...

 

However since I shifted to Catalina I have abandoned using Wine/PlayOn and instead use full Windows 10 to access Altirra.

 

Perhaps when PlayOn is 64bit I will return to this, but to be honest having a Wintel box for games is a great Mac peripheral ?

 

       sTeVE

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On 1/28/2020 at 4:00 PM, Jetboot Jack said:

However since I shifted to Catalina I have abandoned using Wine/PlayOn and instead use full Windows 10 to access Altirra.

 

Waiting for a WINE update here. Don't want to go the Parallels route again with chargeable upgrades after every MacOS update. Gave that up after about 3 iterations although it was quite neat.

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  • 1 month later...

FYI, wine supports 64 bit now.
I was able to install wine running the following:

brew cask install xquartz
brew cask install wine-stable

created a simple app with Automator (set shell to /bin/bash, and Pass input as arguments):

IMAGE="${1//\//\\}"
/usr/local/bin/wine64 /Users/myuser/Atari/Altirra-3.20/Altirra64.exe "$IMAGE"

And now I can double click an xex file and run it with Altirra.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I was successfull with another approach. Opened Terminal.app and typed

 

brew install homebrew/cask-versions/wine-devel

Before starting it, first make sure to delete the ".wine/" folder in your user folder. Now Altirra can be started from the Terminal with "wine64 <path_to_Altirra64.exe>"

 

Now I´m goign to update my sh-scripts to have Altirra integrated in WUDSN IDE again. :)

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I've just tried wine-stable under 10.15.4 on a 2014 Retina and there are some issues:

  • Debugger was a mess; screen corruption, incongruous scroll bars, etc.
  • Directory selector (e.g. when setting up a virtual disk drive) didn't work properly.
  • File system change notifications STILL aren't working (therefore Altirra virtual disks don't update dynamically with newly added content in the host folder; this renders the whole thing unusable for me).
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Somewhere I´ve read about issues with the stable release, this is why I´ve chosen devel.

 

AltirraDebugAndDrive.thumb.jpg.f0016d7ce4c09e4e190883e92114baf3.jpg

 

As I´m not really good with debugging, I don´t know exactly, what´s wrong here. For me it´s fine so far. But I´m simple. ;)

Will keep on testing, but for now I focus on getting it connected with WUDSN IDE again.

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1 hour ago, skr said:

Somewhere I´ve read about issues with the stable release, this is why I´ve chosen devel.

OK - I might gave that a try (I just uninstalled stable). I don't expect the virtual disk issue to have vanished, though (someone assured me file system change notifications now work, but perhaps this was on a Linux system... I am not sure).

Edited by flashjazzcat
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