Planets on a Mac
David Silberman mentioned to me that he is playing VGAP4 on a Mac. I asked him how this is possible and he replied as below (in October 2005 - it's taken me some time to post it up). This is basically an email conversation, repeated more or less verbatim. I'd like to thank David for his patience in explaining and sharing this. Since then Macs have evolved a bit - see his addendum after the screenshots below
I use emulation software - Virtual PC - Microsoft now makes it and load into my Mac. I then install planets that way.
Any Mac user will need to get an external floppy drive in order to install the game, at least until Tim puts the game on CDs. There are other types of emulation software - such as to emulate the DOS part of the system - but I've never tried those emulators.
I just found a site for getting a Virtual PC software emulator that is a whole lot cheaper than the Virtual PC made by Microsoft:
http://www.lismoresystems.com/
I am waiting to get the okay to download the software and will tell you about how it works later.
[I'd asked, concerning using a floppy to install the game: Wow. How long does that take?!]
Depends, if one can get a registration number from Tim without needing the floppies then one can just download the file (high speed line take a few minutes) and install it from a shared directory (folder). That's how I got the updates after all, Depending on the circumstances, one can do it directly into Windows or download it in Mac (into that shared folder). Due to my fooling around with the colour depth in Windows I was able to speed it up so it operated at 85-90% of a Windows native machine. If a person has the Windows 98 up to XP OS disk one can use this other emulator that lets you install it - you need its unlock code key for that.
All said and done it doesn't take to long to install the emulating software and the game - maybe 30 minutes depending on the person.
It's hard to explain some of the things I refer too, so I am attaching two .pdf documents that are screen shots of the emulators. One is of a portion of the Virtual PC desktop showing shared folders as network drives and a sub-folder as a folder. I have three shared folders: Named H, I and G. The other shows the Guest PC ready to install a Win XP OS. As you can see, you need to have the proper code Key to do this which means a Mac user would need to buy or borrow a install an Win XP disk. All that can be done with CDs - Macs no longer come with a floppy drive in it and that's not such a bad thing.
I hope you do encourage Mac users to take steps to get Emulating SW so they can play this great game! Within 2 years, all Macs will be equipped with an Intel chip which will change everything as far as Emulating SW goes.
Further info - April 2006
With the new Macs and their Intel chips coming out and the application, "Boot Camp," you can put XP and OSX on the same computer: make a partition, install OSX on one and then (using Boot Camp and an original XP disk that must be a new XP and not from someone elses computer) you can install XP on the second partition. That way - for the price of one and a third computers - you get two computers in one. Both work native and all your ports function.
A few months later, David purchased an Intel based Mac with the "Boot Camp" software and reported: it allows me to format (without erasing) a portion of the HD to install Windows XP (or Win 2000), native, on the Mac. Now I play the game as though I were using a regular PC and there is no loss of speed anymore as there was with the emulation software on the PowerPC.
As Mac extends its lines of Intels (MacIntels is what I call them) there will be cheaper models than the MacBook Pro I bought and when you combine that with Boot Camp, you get two computers for the price of one and a third. With a Mac you get to see planets in colours you never thought a computer could achieve so you can watch in awesome reality your ships getting blown up on the ol' VCR!
Final note: A new combat simulator has been developed by alkirej, available at http://vgaplanets.us . This is different to the Diplomat simulator I developed - it is Web based. Your PC no longer has to run Master.exe, Host.exe etc; it's done by the server at this URL. I noticed one comment of particular interest to Mac users: "I play planets on my PowerPC Mac with Virtual PC. Running host was a pain in the butt..."
