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This article first appeared in the July 2000 issue of the Louisville Computer News. It was written by Lee Larson.
Connectix, the people behind Virtual PC have another, lesser-known emulation program called Virtual Game Station (VGS) that makes your Mac think it's a Sony PlayStation. VGS has actually been out since January 1999, but its fate has been clouded by a series of lawsuits from Sony, which doesn't think emulation is the most sincere form of flattery.
Finally, last May 16, a San Francisco Federal Court dismissed all Sony copyright and trademark claims against Connectix. Moving before the ink dried on the decision, Connectix released VGS 1.4, supporting more games and newer hardware.
When I decided to try out the VGS 1.4 upgrade a few weeks ago, there was a problem. Although we've had a real PlayStation in the house since a couple of Christmases ago, I've not really used it very much. Fortunately, there's an in-house expert-a five-year-old named Matthew- who believes PlayStation is one of the things making life worthwhile. He's logged as many hours as the authorities allow with various games. His favorite by far is Spyro the Dragon from Sony Entertainment, so that's what we started with.
Matthew, amazed that one of the authorities actually wanted him to play Spyro, sat in front of a 333 MHz. grape-flavored iMac, wondering what was really going on. Although games can be played with the keyboard and mouse, we chose instead to use a Gravis Gamepad Pro, USB, which has its controls laid out almost the same as a real PlayStation controller. Because the iMac has a 24x CD-ROM drive versus the 2x drive in a real PlayStation, the game loaded a lot faster.
To my eyes, the game seemed to play perfectly, although there were several random annoying hitches in the music. Matthew's critique was that "Spyro flies funny." There are several difficult places in the game where Spyro has to glide around corners and land on top of platforms. Matthew has spent countless hours on a real PlayStation perfecting these glides. Sometimes the VGS Spyro fell short. The reason may have been the controller, or a slightly different frame rate. This seems to be more a question of how familiar the pilot is with the hardware than a problem with the program.
The next game we tried was Croc II, another selection Matthew knows very well. This one seemed to work flawlessly, although to me, the rendering of the background sometimes seemed to lag a bit more than it does on a real PlayStation. Matthew claimed some of the complicated traps were running faster than on the real PlayStation, and the " ...buttons on the controller aren't as fast, so I get killed!"
Another favorite, Rugrats II: The Search for Reptar played perfectly. This is probably because it's an easy and slow game that doesn't push the PlayStation hardware. It's so slow that even I can win.
Later, I tried Tomb Raider II--a game the authorities don't let Matthew play. Its scenes and action are considerably more complicated than those in Spyro, and the lag in background rendering was noticeable. Some scenes in which Lara Croft is swimming don't have the rippling water effects of a real PlayStation. These are minor quibbles. The game is very playable.
All told, the VGS is an impressive piece of software that does give the feel of a real PlayStation on the right equipment. An iMac/333 with 128 megabytes of RAM is certainly fast enough to handle the program. But, I had less luck with an original 233 MHz iMac. On the older machine, the backgrounds rendered less quickly, and motion was occasionally jerky. The random hitches in sound occurred more frequently. The games were still playable, but weren't enjoyable to anyone who's used to seeing them on a real PlayStation. On the other hand, a 450 MHz G4 actually felt smoother than a real PlayStation.
Connectix says the program requires a Mac with a "factory original G3 or G4 processor." This is because older machines upgraded with a G3 processor board do not have fast enough memory speeds, and may not have the ATI RAGE video hardware required by VGS. It will actually run on a 604e machine with an ATI RAGE video card, but the experience is not pleasant, with jerky motion and breaking sound.
Although VGS plays most PlayStation games well, there are a few, mostly older, games that give it trouble. The Connectix Web site contains an extensive list of games that have been tested.
Matthew pretty well sums it up by saying "They're better on my PlayStation." If you don't already have a PlayStation, and have the requisite hardware, the VGS is a viable choice. Of course, serious gamers will note a real PlayStation can be had these days for under $80 and VGS costs about $25, so there's no good reason not to get the real thing. And, of course, the PlayStation II will be here before Christmas. It plays all the old games, has killer graphics for the new games, and plays DVD movies besides.
Virtual Game Station is just one of a number of console game emulators for the Mac. Because the newer G3 and G4 processors are so fast, older game consoles can be emulated at full speed-or faster. A dozen or so are listed at the Emulation.Net site. Included are programs for the older Atari and Coleco consoles, and even newer machines such as the Nintendo GameBoy.
An e-mail from Louisville asked the following. "When I load the LinkSys home page with Internet Explorer 4.5, the thermometer moves as though the site is loading, but nothing appears. What's wrong?"
It seems the problem you are running into is that Explorer 4.5 is getting fairly old, and new Web standards are coming of age. Looking at the source code for the main page, we see the line , showing that the site wants to use version 4.0 of the HTML markup language, and later >link rel="STYLESHEET" type="text/css" href="maconceagain.css"< shows that it's using cascading style sheets, a feature of HTML 4.0. Neither of these standards were around when Explorer 4.5 was written.
Indeed, the newer browsers, Communicator 4.7 and Explorer 5 both have no trouble with the site because both of them have some support for cascading style sheets.
iCab Pre2.0 beta does have problems with the site because it does not yet support cascading style sheets. Cascading style sheet support is promised for the real 2.0 release.
Another question received by e-mail was "My PowerWave clone has been acting really goofy lately-freezing and the time is always off-and the video settings don't stay where I want them. I've reinstalled Mac OS 9 and tested the hard drive with TechTool Pro. Any ideas?"
As a shot in the dark, I'd suggest this is a PRAM problem. PRAM stands for parameter RAM. This is a few bytes of RAM that contains system settings you want to maintain between restarts, such as the drive to start from and how to network. You can reset the PRAM by restarting your Mac and immediately holding down command+option+P+R all at the same time until your Mac bongs. (Rumor has it this works a lot better, if you do it with one hand.) There are utilities that do this for you. TechTool is a good one because it resets areas of the PRAM not reached by the "four finger salute."
But, your problem may be deeper than this, because you also have video symptoms. The video settings on PCI Macs are stored in a deeper area called NVRAM, short for non-volatile RAM. To clear the NVRAM, do as above, but actually shut down the machine, hit the power button and immediately hold down command+option+P+R until it bongs twice.
Your problem may be even deeper than this. The clock symptom points at a discharged battery. The PRAM settings are maintained between restarts by a small battery on your mainboard. The battery also runs the clock. I think you should replace it as a first resort. If you pop the case on your machine, the battery is pretty easy to spot. It can be replaced without expert supervision and charges.
Another of the useful programs that seemingly vanished with Claris Corporation was a useful little utility called Organizer. It was a personal information manager, a nice little program for keeping track of names, addresses, events, schedules and quick notes. Nothing really exactly replaced it.
Organizer does survive. It was bought by 3Com and turned into Palm Desktop, with added features for synchronizing data with the their Palm hand-held personal organizer. Not only did they add features to synchronize with a their hand-held, but they made the program smaller, faster and more customizable.
Even if you have no Palm handheld, Palm Desktop is still a useful program. It immediately imports the old Organizer files, and old hands at Organizer will feel right at home working with Palm Desktop. They've added an always-active menu item, so Palm Desktop is never more than a click away.
Best of all, it's free!
Version 2.5 can be found on Mac OS 9 install disks from Apple. Recently, Palm, newly spun off from 3Com, released Palm Desktop 2.6.1. You can grab the seven megabyte download from their Web site (www.palm.com/support/downloads).
The Summer MacWorld Expo is being held July 21-23 in New York City and Shoun Regan will tell all about it at the July 25 meeting of the Louisville Computer Society.
The Louisville Computer Society meets from 7:00-9:00 P.M. at Pitt Academy, 4605 Poplar Level Road, at the intersection of Poplar Level Road and Gilmore Lane. Everyone is welcome to attend. For more information, on the Web go to the LCS Web site, or e-mail lcs@aye.net.
The LCS also sponsors an e-mail discussion list devoted to Macintosh topics. To join, send e-mail containing only the word "subscribe" to macgroup-request@erdos.math.louisville.edu.
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