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Introducing scuzEMU, a SCSI Emulator Utility
Posted by: robin-fo on 2024-07-03 02:42:05
I think what makes it unfortunate, apart the string itself, is that if anybody would like to be compatibile with the Toolbox Software in their scsi emulator, they need to add the string "BlueSCSI is the BEST STOLEN FROM BLUESCSI" to make it work. Doesn't seem all that friendly to me.
I don‘t exactly know how this works.. but can‘t you just compare to „BlueSCSI“ and ignore the rest of the string? Or do you need to send this to the device?
Posted by: Daniël on 2024-07-03 02:45:43
I don‘t exactly know how this works.. but can‘t you just compare to „BlueSCSI“ and ignore the rest of the string? Or do you need to send this to the device?

The closed source official BlueSCSI Toolbox software checks for the entire string, as far as anyone can tell.
It means that if you want to be able to make your firmware work with said utility, you have to seemingly proclaim that you "stole" open source, GPL code.

Hence why scuzEMU does not check at all for such strings, to be agnostic to the emulator while working with the same underlying "toolbox" code.
I do hope more third party developers will ignore the instruction to check for that string, especially as it ensures their apps will work with a wider range of hardware, once again benefiting more end users in our community.
Posted by: robin-fo on 2024-07-03 03:46:47
I see.. Well you could store the entire string as, for example, hex-encoded binary and decode it on the fly to avoid having the literal string in your executable 😅
Posted by: robin-fo on 2024-07-03 03:50:01
I still wonder why the creators of BlueSCSI chose to make the code open source except for the ability to „steal“ the work from others.. (I still like and appreciate the BlueSCSI v2 (not the v1) to be fair)
Posted by: Big Ben on 2024-07-03 13:45:39
I was hoping for a tool like this few days ago, incredible work!

I wish I could help you on this project, but I don't know a single think about Classic development.
Maybe it's the opportunity to try diving into this!
Posted by: saybur on 2024-07-05 09:21:57
Version 0.2 is now available, featuring:
  • Batch file downloads! You can now select multiple files and fetch them all at once.
  • A progress bar dialog to monitor the transfer, with a Stop button for the impatient.
  • The list of file/image names will now be alphabetized instead of whatever order the emulator returns.
A compiled release in .sit format can be found here. As noted before, this is pre-release software so use caution with data you cannot replace.

I was hoping for a tool like this few days ago, incredible work!

I wish I could help you on this project, but I don't know a single think about Classic development.
Maybe it's the opportunity to try diving into this!

Thank you! For what it's worth this is the first thing I've written for the Mac. There is a good learning curve, but if you have any experience with C, resources like https://jcs.org/system6c and the excellent Macintosh C Programming by Example are quite approachable.
Posted by: Iesca on 2024-07-05 11:40:27
This is very cool! So if I understand correctly, this basically gives access to the SD card itself?
Posted by: saybur on 2024-07-05 11:53:14
Parts of the card, yes. The files come from a folder you can create called "shared" in the base of the SD card. After you've copied stuff in, all you need to do is pick any SCSI ID assigned to the emulator, pick Files, and they should show up. Double-click anything to download.
Posted by: saybur on 2024-07-08 20:27:19
Version 0.3 is up on Github, featuring some general quality of life improvements:
  • Automatic disk switching! No more dragging CDs to the Trash, that's handled for you: just double-click and the new disk should appear.
  • Type/creator will be automatically assigned to downloaded files matching a couple popular formats, based on suffix and magic numbers: bin/hqx and the more common Stuffit variants for now. Over time I'm planning to expand this to a few other types that are common Internet denizens and won't get wrecked by being on the SD card's FAT filesystem. If there are specific requests let me know.
  • Downloads now proceed while the program is in the background.
Compiled version is here. Still considering this to be pre-release software, continue to use it with caution.
Posted by: Iesca on 2024-07-08 20:58:01
Compact Pro cpt archives?
Posted by: saybur on 2024-07-09 08:06:45
Good idea, I'll add that format. I haven't used them much myself, is the general consensus that Compact Pro itself is the best at handling the files?
Posted by: Iesca on 2024-07-09 08:33:32
I don't know about that, but it was a rival to Stuffit and so a number of Compact archives are still floating around
Posted by: saybur on 2024-07-09 08:54:59
I'll try it out, it'll be a good excuse to explore the non-Stuffit world 🙂
Posted by: Juror22 on 2024-07-09 17:18:53
Good luck with that and I am really happy to see this potential, additional support! That product saved so many of my original Mac files, and their resource forks as self-expanding archives so they weren't completely lost. I had archived a bunch of things with CompactPro back in the day, because it was easy to use, fast and it never, ever, ever failed.
Posted by: 3lectr1cPPC on 2024-07-09 19:13:42
I'm just glad the worst drama this community has is two feuding teams of SCSI device developers. Sure, it would be nice if they could just put that all aside (we'd all love that), but as far as community drama goes, it could be a lot worse!

@saybur - great work on this awesome tool! Will benefit a lot of people 🙂
Posted by: saybur on 2024-07-09 20:39:29
Good luck with that and I am really happy to see this potential, additional support!
Looks simple, just one magic number and files with the .cpt suffix according to this reference; the other pages in there have been a gold mine of data for anyone who needs to dig into the internals of Mac archives.

@saybur - great work on this awesome tool! Will benefit a lot of people 🙂
Thank you!


To help streamline installation, I've attached a disk image that can be unzipped, copied to an SD card, and renamed to something like "hd5.img" to get picked up as a hard drive. The image contains scuzEMU and binUnpk to extract the first few pieces of software you'll likely want on a new system. I'll be including this with future Github releases as well.
Posted by: saybur on 2024-07-13 12:20:20
Version 0.4 is ready! This includes:
  • Support for uploading files to the memory card,
  • Keyboard navigation of the list,
  • Mode page parsing of the API version (see below),
  • Included support for Compact Pro archives.
Future versions of the toolbox API may break backwards compatibility so I've added parsing of the mode page in this release to get ready. Right now it just looks at the version byte, not the rest of the string. I've left a suggestion on the BlueSCSI Github that the other parts of the mode page check be relaxed, hopefully that is considered in the next version. Regardless, if something doesn't quite line up with the program's expectations it will just issue a warning, ask if you want to proceed and let you make the call.

Get your updated copy here. Some parts of the code may be full of bees: don't use this with data you can't afford to lose.
Posted by: saybur on 2024-07-20 18:38:28
Version 0.5 is up, including:
  • Fixes for bugs I discovered during testing on older systems,
  • Minor user interface tweaks.
Available here. At this point most features I want are present and I'm OK calling this the first 'beta' release (for whatever that's worth). If you try it let me know how it goes.
Posted by: CC_333 on 2024-08-01 21:01:44

Embrace, extend, and extinguish - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
That article is very apt to this BlueSCSI vs. Everyone Else nonsense.

I'm just glad the worst drama this community has is two feuding teams of SCSI device developers. Sure, it would be nice if they could just put that all aside (we'd all love that), but as far as community drama goes, it could be a lot worse!
Yeah. To see a glimpse of how ugly it could be, look at the Amiga community. Compared to that, things don't look so bad here, even at their worst.

c
Posted by: djhaloeight on 2024-08-01 21:11:11
Very cool piece of software! I'll be installing it on my Macs that use ZuluSCSI.
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