Emulation idea...

[nd2003grad]

...I've been toying with the idea of having an Apple IIGS for some time, and I did have a II/C briefly. It is the glaring and terrible void in my classic computer collection. However, peripherals, accelerators, mass storage solutions, etc are far more expensive and painful for the system than, let's say, my Amiga 500. And that's been a pain enough.

 

The IIGS is so unique, and that is its attraction...in addition to the dual mode. However, when I was in college in 1999 era I used a G3 Power PC quite a bit (there were never lines for Mac's at the computer labs vs. PC's). My question is this: If I were to acquire said G3, are there emulation solutions to play II, IIGS, and vintage Mac games? I'm not sure how backwards compatibility worked on these machines, but I'm making a wild assumption that it's possible with correct software. In that way, I could get my Apple fix from one "mid-era" machine instead of the fully empty feeling I get from emulation on a modern non-Apple. Thoughts?

[thorr]

On an Apple IIGS, you can play pretty much all Apple II and IIGS games, but not Mac games as far as I know. The other option is to get a Mac LC III or equivalent with an Apple IIe card and it can play Mac games and Apple II games, but not IIGS games. For several reasons, I would rather have the IIGS. If you want software emulation, I don't really see why you wouldn't just do that on a modern PC because it would probably be better than on an older computer.

Edited November 19, 2017 by thorr

[Iamgroot]

On a Mac G3 you can use Bernie2TheRescue, which is still the most accurate IIGS emulator to date.

 

A IIGS can run 99% of all Apple II/IIe software as well as all IIGS software.

 

On the Mac side, the G3 can play pretty much any game that was created for a 68030 and up, and has at least 16 shades of gray or colors.

 

"The Mac Garden" has quite a few cd based games for older Macs, and what is nice about the G3, it can be suped up pretty good.

 

I have mine suped up to 1 Ghz, usb card, cd writer, 384 Mb of memory, 128 GB hard drive and it includes ethernet and can still be connected to the internet for game downloads.

 

[nd2003grad]

Thank you for the input, yes I think this is going to be my solution it seems to cover a lot.

On a Mac G3 you can use Bernie2TheRescue, which is still the most accurate IIGS emulator to date.

 

A IIGS can run 99% of all Apple II/IIe software as well as all IIGS software.

 

On the Mac side, the G3 can play pretty much any game that was created for a 68030 and up, and has at least 16 shades of gray or colors.

 

"The Mac Garden" has quite a few cd based games for older Macs, and what is nice about the G3, it can be suped up pretty good.

 

I have mine suped up to 1 Ghz, usb card, cd writer, 384 Mb of memory, 128 GB hard drive and it includes ethernet and can still be connected to the internet for game downloads.

 

[nd2003grad]

I’m having some trouble finding a G3, is there any reason a G4 would not work for this?

[Iamgroot]

On my G4 tower I had two system folders. One to boot into MacOSX 10.2.9 and the other to boot into MacOS 9.2.2. I preferred playing Bernie on my G3 but I think that was because it was quite a bit faster, more Ram and larger hard drive. My G3 had 1 Ghz, 384 Mb Ram, 128 Gb hard drive compared to my lowly G4 with 400 Mhz, 64 Mb Ram, 8 Gb hard drive.

 

I don't think I had any issues with the G4 other than it was way too slow. Plus I had other cool programs to work with Bernie. With the extra Ram in the G3, I could create multiple Ram drives of 32 Mb each, right in memory. This helped a lot for collecting and sorting Apple II and IIGS games. And one Ramdrive had both Prodos 8 and GSOS which made it very easy and very quick to boot from one to the other.

 

A G4 will work, but I recommend an upgrade to at least 600 Mhz, 256 Mb Ram, 32 Gb hard drive. MacOS9.2.2 supports up to 128 Gb hard drives, and you can install larger hard drives. I had a 256 Gb installed in my G3, but it should be partitioned so that the first partition is only 128 Gb or less.