About Mini vMac

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copyright (c) 2002 Paul C. Pratt - last update 7/17/02

ABOUT

> "... he was a Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology, and it was frequently said of him, behind his back, that he regarded it not so much as a serious academic study, more as a chance to relive his childhood." *

Mini vMac is a minor spin off of the program vMac. Its goal is to provide the simplest usable emulation of a Macintosh, instead of the fastest or most usable emulation. It can serve as a programmers introduction to vMac, having only about one tenth as much source code.

Mini vMac, like vMac, emulates a Mac Plus, a Macintosh computer sold between 1986 and 1990. They both can be used to run old software that otherwise couldn't be used on recent machines, including nearly all of the earliest Macintosh software. And so they can help to preserve history, from the era when the modern user interface for computers was being defined.

Mini vMac is designed to be portable, and so far works on Macintosh OS, Microsoft Windows, and the X Window System. Like vMac, it requires a ROM image file to run, and so can be legally used only by those who own a Mac Plus.

Mini vMac is smaller than vMac because it uses a much simpler, though slower, emulation of the 68000 processor, and strips out all extra features, such as printing or saving screen images.

(*) Douglas Adams, "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency", pg. 19, 1987. This quote is especially appropriate because the Author's Note at the front of the book mentions it was written on a Mac Plus. And the book incidentally has a good view of the computer industry of the time. Accurate view or not, it's great fun. Douglas Adams was involved in the making of a computer game from his book "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".

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