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0 pointscmrdporcupine3y ago0 comments

Yeah, slightly higher clock and bus rate.

That and it ran at 640x400, so more screen real estate.

So people would use the Macintosh emulators on them (piece of hardware that plugged in the Mac ROMs and some floppy adapter stuff) and get a machine far cheaper than (and superior to) a standard Mac of the time. Biggest problem was getting the ROMs.

If I recall the products were SpectreGCR & Magic Sac.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_GCR

I never did it, but knew people who did, and they were very happy with it.

0 comments

LargoLasskhyfv3y ago

Hrm. Had no problem with the ROMs at all. They came integrated into the cracked version which also eliminated the need for hardware. Just two floppies. Made the rounds in schoolyards at the time ;->

cmrdporcupineOP3y ago

Interesting. I hadn't heard of anybody running without the cartridge before. I surely would have tried this :-)

Without the hardware you wouldn't have been able to read Macintosh floppies (SpectreGCR included some hardware to adapt the frequencies etc on the floppy drive to be able to read Mac floppies), and you'd have to give up a bunch of RAM, no?

LargoLasskhyfv3y ago

Uhm yes, there was that. But in the circles where that crack made the rounds, there were sources which had that hardware, converted and distributed anything which was available as normal floppies :-)

Which really wasn't that much, at the time. But very impressive nonetheless. Mac Write, Paint, Draw, few DTP which I can't remember anymore, Hypercard, few gadgets and tools, few games, and ...errrm... Virtual Valerie...

Was even more fun with a HDD, no more DJing floppies!

timbit423y ago

I've heard people say Mac emulators on the Amiga were faster than a real Mac at the same clock rate, apparently something to do with the graphics being drawn faster. Perhaps it was the hardware blitter making moving pixels around faster than the software blitter, but I've never seen actual benchmarks.

CWuestefeld3y ago

> people would use the Macintosh emulators on them

Can confirm, my roomie and I both did.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointscmrdporcupine3y ago0 comments

Yeah, slightly higher clock and bus rate.

That and it ran at 640x400, so more screen real estate.

If I recall the products were SpectreGCR & Magic Sac.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_GCR

I never did it, but knew people who did, and they were very happy with it.

0 comments

LargoLasskhyfv3y ago

Hrm. Had no problem with the ROMs at all. They came integrated into the cracked version which also eliminated the need for hardware. Just two floppies. Made the rounds in schoolyards at the time ;->

cmrdporcupineOP3y ago

Interesting. I hadn't heard of anybody running without the cartridge before. I surely would have tried this :-)

LargoLasskhyfv3y ago

Was even more fun with a HDD, no more DJing floppies!

timbit423y ago

CWuestefeld3y ago

> people would use the Macintosh emulators on them

Can confirm, my roomie and I both did.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse