[Blindapple] A Linux Apple

[Kyle]

I certainly wouldn't mind building a staticly linked version of Mess
from source with Echo speech built in. Then the whole thing could be
downloaded as a zip file and just run from anywhere. It does need the
script though, because for some reason, this version of Mess requires
the full path to each disk image, even if the images are in the same
directory as the executable. At this point, I'm still having problems
getting the script to accept spaces in disk names. Strangely, it seemms
to be passing them to the emulator correctly, but it isn't properly
recognizing them. Some sort of menu-driven script would probably work
much better, but for now,

./apple -s 1 prog2.dsk data.dsk

is much easier to write than

./mess apple2ee -flop1 /full/path/to/prog2.dsk -flop2
/full/path/to/data.dsk -state 1

I'm not sure why the Debian version doesn't include Echo emulation,
unless it's just older than the version that does include it, as this is
a fairly new addition to the program. Either way, it will not be
impossible to build it so that it will run at least on most newer Linux
distros without too much trouble. In fact, I need to take a look at the
executable I have, as I read somewhere that it may already build
statically linked.

Regarding a virtual machine, if the Linux under the hood is minimal
enough, it should be possible to build the emulator into a virtual
machine that can be run with the user's choice of software. If I
understand correctly, VirtualBox can export appliances that appear to be
compatible with several popular virtualization applications, most
notably VirtualBox and VMWare Player. This would certainly eliminate the
need to build different emulator packages for different operating
systems, as one zip file would include all the necessary files to import
into virtual machine software on any OS, which should work the same
everywhere. The only problem with building a virtual machine for this is
that it will need an entire talking OS underneath, including an X window
system, the Orca screen reader and the capability to display video using
SDL. As the screen reader would only be needed to make a menu of disks
talk, it would seem that all this would make a virtual machine
unnecessarily large, possibly even as much as 400 to 500 MB, compared to
a statically linked Mess emulator with the necessary ROMs and disk
files, which is far smaller, and plays with less latency as well. Any
virtual machine appliance would also need to be capable of downloading
disk images from the internet, or would require file sharing
capabilities between the host and the guest, which can be rather
difficult to setup in some situations. Unfortunately, it does seem far
more practical to build a statically linked Mess binary and include it
with all the necessary ROMs and disk images in a zip file that can run
on most Linux distributions than it would be to make a virtual machine
that can run anywhere. Either way, I do need to perfect my Linux
version, because at the present time, it looks for configurations, ROMs,
saved states, etc. in ~/.mess rather than the directory with the mess
executable, which may or may not be desirable. Some of this would appear
to be set at build time however, because the first time I run mess
without a ~/.mess directory, it automatically creates it and populates
it with some default configurations and directories.

In any case, we will definitely have a usable Linux version soon. I know
of at least one person who started programming/gaming on an Apple //e
and jumped immediately to Linux with no DOS, Windows or MacOS in
between, and I myself use only Linux for about 5 years now, but still
enjoy running those old games and programs from back in the day. Who
said Windows and Mac users should have all the fun? <smiles>
~Kyle
http://kyle.tk/
-- 
"Kyle? ... She calls her cake, Kyle?"
Out of This World, season 2 episode 21 - "The Amazing Evie"