I have the latest iMac computer and came across my favorite computer game series X-Wing. Will they simply play or do I have to play around with it?
Or worse?
Can modern Macs run older CD ROM games
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h8b1llg8ts
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Can modern Macs run older CD ROM games
http://www.youtube.com/h8b1llg8ts
Making Love To You Was Never Second Best ...
Current set up: Onlive, 32 GB Wii U , Star Wars Edition Xbox 360, 60GB PS3, soft modded Blue Wii, Mountain Dew Edition Xbox, Indigo Gamecube w/ Gameboy Player, Neo Geo CDZ, Neo Geo X Gold, Sega Sports Edition Dreamcast, Skeleton Saturn.
Making Love To You Was Never Second Best ...
Current set up: Onlive, 32 GB Wii U , Star Wars Edition Xbox 360, 60GB PS3, soft modded Blue Wii, Mountain Dew Edition Xbox, Indigo Gamecube w/ Gameboy Player, Neo Geo CDZ, Neo Geo X Gold, Sega Sports Edition Dreamcast, Skeleton Saturn.
Re: Can modern Macs run older CD ROM games
Well I know one of them is a DOS game, so may be there's DOSbox for Mac?
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h8b1llg8ts
- 128-bit
- Posts: 593
- Joined: Thu Apr 09, 2009 5:12 pm
- Location: Murphys, CA
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Re: Can modern Macs run older CD ROM games
There is Boxer for Mac and just found a YouTube tutorial.
http://www.youtube.com/h8b1llg8ts
Making Love To You Was Never Second Best ...
Current set up: Onlive, 32 GB Wii U , Star Wars Edition Xbox 360, 60GB PS3, soft modded Blue Wii, Mountain Dew Edition Xbox, Indigo Gamecube w/ Gameboy Player, Neo Geo CDZ, Neo Geo X Gold, Sega Sports Edition Dreamcast, Skeleton Saturn.
Making Love To You Was Never Second Best ...
Current set up: Onlive, 32 GB Wii U , Star Wars Edition Xbox 360, 60GB PS3, soft modded Blue Wii, Mountain Dew Edition Xbox, Indigo Gamecube w/ Gameboy Player, Neo Geo CDZ, Neo Geo X Gold, Sega Sports Edition Dreamcast, Skeleton Saturn.
Re: Can modern Macs run older CD ROM games
Short answer: you will need to use a virtual machine or emulator.
Long answer:
The Macintosh platform has undergone several transitions over the years, and Apple tends to drop support for the previous iterations before too long.
Going way back, Macs were based on Motorola 68k based processors, using early versions of what is now termed "classic" Mac OS.
These were used through the 68040 series, which would be comparable to a 486 on the PC side.
After that, Apple moved to PowerPC, which was a different architecture. The OS would still run 68k native code, albeit at a performance penalty. You can find some applications that have a 68k and a PPC executable to address that. Eventually though, things went PPC only. OS 8.1 only supported '040s, and 8.5 dropped 68k support entirely.
Then you had the transition to OS X, which is an entirely different operating system underneath (BSD UNIX).
Apple had a couple ways to work with it. First, they gave developers the ability to build applications that would run natively in either OS ("Carbon"). Second, they had the ability to start up Classic in a VM (or you could reboot into it of course).
Macs stopped supporting the ability to boot into Classic partway through the G4 product lines. 10.4 was the last to support the Classic VM. Carbon stopped receiving updates, so things like transitioning applications to 64-bit required porting them to other APIs.
Then Apple started offering Intel based machines. Just like the MacOS during the 68k->PPC transition, OS X 10.5 had a system level emulation to allow Intel machines to run PPC OS X apps ("Rosetta"), and could still run on PowerPC machines.
10.6 dropped support for PPC machines (and non-64-bit Intel, though that didn't apply to many), though it retained Rosetta as an optional install.
10.7 dropped Rosetta, so a new Mac can't run OS X applications compiled for PowerPC. 10.8 cut out a number of older Intel based machines as well.
I have a Mac version of X-Wing, and it's a 68k/PPC based Classic game on that. It'd likely be easier to run the PC version in DOSBox, but there are emulators out there for the old MacOS. Or you can go buy a nice PPC machine for cheap (I paid about $80 for a loaded Quicksilver G4 tower).
Long answer:
The Macintosh platform has undergone several transitions over the years, and Apple tends to drop support for the previous iterations before too long.
Going way back, Macs were based on Motorola 68k based processors, using early versions of what is now termed "classic" Mac OS.
These were used through the 68040 series, which would be comparable to a 486 on the PC side.
After that, Apple moved to PowerPC, which was a different architecture. The OS would still run 68k native code, albeit at a performance penalty. You can find some applications that have a 68k and a PPC executable to address that. Eventually though, things went PPC only. OS 8.1 only supported '040s, and 8.5 dropped 68k support entirely.
Then you had the transition to OS X, which is an entirely different operating system underneath (BSD UNIX).
Apple had a couple ways to work with it. First, they gave developers the ability to build applications that would run natively in either OS ("Carbon"). Second, they had the ability to start up Classic in a VM (or you could reboot into it of course).
Macs stopped supporting the ability to boot into Classic partway through the G4 product lines. 10.4 was the last to support the Classic VM. Carbon stopped receiving updates, so things like transitioning applications to 64-bit required porting them to other APIs.
Then Apple started offering Intel based machines. Just like the MacOS during the 68k->PPC transition, OS X 10.5 had a system level emulation to allow Intel machines to run PPC OS X apps ("Rosetta"), and could still run on PowerPC machines.
10.6 dropped support for PPC machines (and non-64-bit Intel, though that didn't apply to many), though it retained Rosetta as an optional install.
10.7 dropped Rosetta, so a new Mac can't run OS X applications compiled for PowerPC. 10.8 cut out a number of older Intel based machines as well.
I have a Mac version of X-Wing, and it's a 68k/PPC based Classic game on that. It'd likely be easier to run the PC version in DOSBox, but there are emulators out there for the old MacOS. Or you can go buy a nice PPC machine for cheap (I paid about $80 for a loaded Quicksilver G4 tower).