Mini vMac

Feeling nostalgic for your Macintosh Plus, but don't want to risk wearing it out with the daily grind? Emulate it on Linux using Mini vMac instead, so that it can save its precious components from the hazards of coffee spills, power glitches, indigestible floppies and other such life-shortening events.

Mini vMac is an emulator for the Apple Macintosh Plus. It runs on Linux x86 and many other architectures/OSs. Mini vMac is a Macintosh emulator that emulates a Motorola 68000 based Apple Macintosh Plus.

Get the source code

Now you'll need to extract the ROM contents from your Macintosh Plus. It's a little time-consuming to get it done and transfer the image over to Linux, so if you don't want to wake up your peacefully-sleeping Macintosh Plus for this mundane task, then you can download it onto your Linux box and unzip it using: 
unzip vmac-rom.zip

You'll usually need an image of your "Finder" disk as well as images of your application software floppies, but if you're in a hurry to see what the Mini vMac looks like once it's running, you can try these images for example Finder, MacPaint and MacDraw. Unzip them as follows: 

unzip Disk608.zip
unzip MacPaint.zip
unzip MacDraw.zip

To run the emulator on Linux, give the following options on the commandline: 
./MinivMac -r ./vMac.ROM ./Disk608.dsk  ./MacPaint.dsk ./MacDraw.dsk

The system being emulated is: 
CPU         : MC68000
CPU speed   : 8 Mhz
FPU         : none
maximum RAM : 4MB
ROM         : 128 k
Floppy      : 800k 3.25"
HD          : none
CD-ROM      : none
Monitor     : 1 bit (Black & White) 512x384
Introduced  : January 1986
Terminated  : October 1990
Min System Software: 1.1
Max System Software: 7.5.5

Command Line Arguments for Linux version of Mini vMac

If there are any arguments that don't begin with '-', Mini vMac will try to mount them as disk image files. See the 'Floppy Drive' section of the Hardware Reference.

If there are any unrecognized arguments beginning with '-', Mini vMac will print out copyright and usage information and quit. 

-r [romfilename]
--rom [romfilename]
Mini vMac will try to load the ROM file from [romfilename]. See the 'ROM' section of the Hardware Reference. 

-l
Mini vMac will start at 1x speed. See the 'Processor' section of the Hardware Reference. 

-display [display_name]
--display [display_name]
XOpenDisplay() will be called with [display_name] as the argument. See the 'Screen' section of the Hardware Reference.

Keyboard commands

Holding down the "Ctrl" key will pop up a menu, type H for Help. Most useful is Ctrl M to magnify the screen, which makes it look rather more similar to a real Mac Plus especially when running the emulator on a high resolution display.

All the functions of the emulator can be controlled with the Mini vMac "Control Mode". To enter the Control Mode, press and hold down the 'control' key. You will remain in the Control Mode until you release the 'control' key. While in Control Mode, visual feedback is displayed on top of the emulated screen. Type 'H' in Control Mode to display available commands.

The commands are:

Displays version and copyright information.

See the 'Floppy Drive' section of the Hardware Reference.

See the 'Power Switch' section of the Hardware Reference.

See the 'Processor' section of the Hardware Reference.

See the 'Screen' section of the Hardware Reference.

See the 'Screen' section of the Hardware Reference.

See the 'Keyboard' section of the Hardware Reference.

See the 'Reset Button' section of the Hardware Reference.

See the 'Interrupt Button' section of the Hardware Reference.

Shutdown

First, drag any "mounted" disk images into the "Trash" icon, to unmount them. Don't do this for the "System Startup" disk image, though. Then from the menus along the top (inside the Emulator), choose: Special->Shut Down It should show the message: 
  "You may now switch off your Macintosh safely."
Then "Ctrl Q" key will allow you to quit the emulator cleanly. Otherwise, it will warn you, and allow you to cancel the quit.

Reading disks into your Linux system

It's relatively straightforward. You can use any Macintosh machine, even modern ones. Use the Apple operating system's utility "Disk Copy", usually found in the "utilities" folder. Launch it, and insert the floppy. Make sure to select "Read/Write" and not anything with "Compressed". Also be sure to uncheck the "Mount Image" checkbox. "Disk Copy" will make an image of the floppy disk and save it as a file. Transfer the file over to your Linux system somehow. These disk image files can then be mounted on Linux using the "hfs" filesystem file type, to check how they look: 
  mount  -o ro -t hfs ./DiskCopy_ImageName.img /mnt/wherever -o loop