Another Fine MESS
The Multi Emulator Super System promises a vast number of computer emulators built into a single program, but so far as software goes it does seem pretty austere to me. Part of that might be that while there are some "front ends" available for it, I just start from Terminal the executable file someone's been thoughtful enough to make available. At the same time, it does offer a hardware feature for the Color Computer 3 that lets me run disk images I made (after about two decades of letting the disks sit in the basement) of my files for a particular "MacWrite clone" word processor (although the stories certainly weren't very good). Beyond that, though, I suppose I have been thinking a bit about the Apple II emulators built into it. While I paid to register a full-featured emulator for that computer and I'm quite of how the Atari and Commodore users proclaimed their computers had better graphics and sound than the Apple II (poised as it was in between "appealing and inexpensive home computers" and "powerful and capable business computers), perhaps its being near the top of an alphabetical list has some small influence there.
However, to get MESS working you need ROM files first of all, and while I have turned up a grey-market archive or two every time I tried to start most of the Apple II emulators from the MESS internal menu I would get an error message that ROM files were missing from the packaged files. In wondering if I was winding up with "old files," though, I eventually came across a list of supported systems with the required files listed for each. By decompressing the downloaded files, I figured out just was missing, and in something like a fit of frustration I searched for the code name of the missing files only to find myself delving deep into a different archive. With the image files renamed and added to new compressions, now I could get the emulator started, and I even happened to discover its Apple II systems can be set between their "fringy" six-colour graphics and a simulated green screen (although the "amber" option looks more just plain orange to me.) As much as I wonder if this was all doing things the hard way, if there's the slightest chance someone else will make their own search in frustration and turn this up I suppose there may be a bit of a point to this post.
This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/230528.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please.
However, to get MESS working you need ROM files first of all, and while I have turned up a grey-market archive or two every time I tried to start most of the Apple II emulators from the MESS internal menu I would get an error message that ROM files were missing from the packaged files. In wondering if I was winding up with "old files," though, I eventually came across a list of supported systems with the required files listed for each. By decompressing the downloaded files, I figured out just was missing, and in something like a fit of frustration I searched for the code name of the missing files only to find myself delving deep into a different archive. With the image files renamed and added to new compressions, now I could get the emulator started, and I even happened to discover its Apple II systems can be set between their "fringy" six-colour graphics and a simulated green screen (although the "amber" option looks more just plain orange to me.) As much as I wonder if this was all doing things the hard way, if there's the slightest chance someone else will make their own search in frustration and turn this up I suppose there may be a bit of a point to this post.
This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/230528.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please.