XSkat on MacOS

Maybe the first game I ever played on Linux is XSkat. The other day I wondered, if it would build on MacOS, and - yes, it does.

 

 Here the patch:

diff --git a/Imakefile b/Imakefile
index ab1b892..06fd031 100644
--- a/Imakefile
+++ b/Imakefile
@@ -19,13 +19,28 @@
 */
 
 /*DEFL=-DDEFAULT_LANGUAGE=\"german\"*/
+/* macOS-specific adjustments */
+#ifdef Darwin
+   # Use clang instead of gcc
+   CC = clang
+   # X11 paths for Homebrew
+   X11_BASE = /opt/X11
+   X11_INCLUDES = -I$(X11_BASE)/include
+   X11_LIBDIR = -L$(X11_BASE)/lib
+   # SDK paths
+   SDK_PATH = $(shell xcrun --show-sdk-path)
+   EXTRA_CFLAGS = -isysroot $(SDK_PATH) $(X11_INCLUDES)
+   EXTRA_LDFLAGS = $(X11_LIBDIR)
+#endif
+
+/* Language selection */
 DEFL=-DDEFAULT_LANGUAGE=\"english\"
 
 DEFI=-DDEFAULT_IRC_SERVER=\"irc.fu-berlin.de\"
 
 DEFINES=$(DEFL) $(DEFI)
 
-LOCAL_LIBRARIES=$(XLIBONLY)
+LOCAL_LIBRARIES=$(XLIBONLY) $(EXTRA_LDFLAGS)
 
 OBJS=skat.o ramsch.o null.o bitmaps.o xio.o xdial.o irc.o text.o
 SRCS=skat.c ramsch.c null.c bitmaps.c xio.c xdial.c irc.c text.c

I had to install a few brew packages.

brew install imake xorgproto libx11 libxext libxt

Keen on M1

Recently I came across Commander Genius, which [..] let's just say is a way to play Commander Keen on modern machines.

Since I am on ARM64 Darwin, a bit of tweaking needs to be done to run this x86_64 solftware. Here my notes:

 

• You need Rosetta installed
• You need to install openssl for x86_64. To not conflict with Homebrew for arm64, install it in a separate directory.

Open a x86_64 shell: 

> arch -x86_64 zsh

Install homebrew in a different directory (I use /Volumes/1TBSSD/opt/homebrew-x86_64, choose what fits your need)

> mkdir /Volumes/1TBSSD/opt/homebrew-x86_64
> curl -L https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/tarball/master | tar xz --strip 1 -C/Volumes/1TBSSD/opt/homebrew-x86_64
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
100 3812k  100 3812k    0     0  3721k      0  0:00:01  0:00:01 --:--:-- 9451k
> export PATH="/Volumes/1TBSSD/opt/homebrew-x86_64/bin:$PATH"
> which brew
/Volumes/1TBSSD/opt/homebrew-x86_64/bin/brew
> brew install openssl@3

• change line 3 of the install script as below

DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/Volumes/1TBSSD/opt/homebrew-x86_64/lib:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH ./CGeniusExe

That is it.

Downgrading the G4

I could no longer take the pure performance of my G4 PowerMac, so when I saw this old ATI card in　the Junk section of the local Hard-Off for 100円, I had to pick it up.

Before the down-grade, I was running a hacked Nvidia GeForce, which replaced the original ATI (that I still have). 

Firstly I was surprised that the card actually works. I guess I (or it) was lucky that it was only in the Junk bin without protection for long.

Test-setup:

• MacOS 10.4.11 (Tiger)
• Cinebench 2003
• GeekBench3

Results

Geekbench results where identical, since it doesn't test GPU in that version.

Cinebench, impact was high:

 But hey, I don't keep that thing around for performance computing.

As a bonus, my MacOS 9.2 partition is now usable again. I could not for the love of god get it to work with the Geforce.

So finally I can enjoy errors like this again :-)

"I'll finish you like Macintosh does floppy disks."
 

Benchmarking old crap (continued)

 Apple PowerBook G4 15-inch (15-inch 1.5/1.33 GHz)

 

PPC - the future of computing, unless it's get beaten by SPARC

Specs

• OS: Mac OS X 10.4.11 /  MacOS 9.2
  
• CPU:  PowerPC G4 (7447A)
• GPU: ATI RV360M11 (64MB)
  
• RAM: 1.00 GB PC2700U-25330 DDR SDRAM
• Sound: Texas Instruments TA53004
• HDD: Fujitsu MHT208DAT 80GB
  
• Optical Drive: Matshita DVD-R UJ-825
  
• AirPort Extreme Japan
• Bluetooth
• WiFi
• Modem: Jump J2S V.92
  
• FireWire
• Monitor: LCD 1280x854
• External Connectors:
• Modem
• 3mm Audio IN / OUT
• PCMCIA
• DVI-Analog/Digital
• S-Video
• Ethernet
• Firewire
• Firewire IEEE 1394 (FireWire)
• Firewire IEEE 1394b (FireWire 800)
• Weird Display Port
• USB (2x)
  

Results

• Geekbench 2 Score: 879
• Integer Performance (Score: 1042)
• Floating Point Performance (Score: 1086)
• Memory Performance (Score: 518)
• Stream Performance (Score: 312)
  

Why?

Why? One Link:  https://macintoshgarden.org/

Why not?

Unfortunately the display is slowly dying. I might have to replace this at some point. But knowing how it is to work on those PowerBooks - I'm not sure both, the Mac and I will survive this.

Pictures