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Possibility to emulator Portable Book
Posted by: chip-64bit on 2025-01-31 10:36:33
Hi all, I was wondering why there aren't any emulators that can emulate PB and I was hoping to touch on this.
All I know is that it uses the 68000 PMU ASC and I would like to know how much it differs from the Mac Classic and if I can continue this work based on the MacSE emulation. Thanks guys.
Posted by: Arbee on 2025-01-31 16:14:47
Hi chip, the latest version of MAME (https://mamedev.org/) supports the Portable, PowerBook 100, PowerBook 140, PowerBook 145, PowerBook 160, PowerBook 165, PowerBook 165c, PowerBook 170, PowerBook 180, and PowerBook 180c. All machines correctly identify with the right BoxFlags and Gestalt selectors.

The 68030 and 68040 based PowerBook Duos will be in the next version in about a month.

If you want to emulate these machines yourself you'll need to emulate the Mitsubishi M50753 microcontroller which is used as the PMU. The instruction set is similar to 6502 but with a lot of extensions.
Posted by: chip-64bit on 2025-01-31 21:10:00
Hi chip, the latest version of MAME (https://mamedev.org/) supports the Portable, PowerBook 100, PowerBook 140, PowerBook 145, PowerBook 160, PowerBook 165, PowerBook 165c, PowerBook 170, PowerBook 180, and PowerBook 180c. All machines correctly identify with the right BoxFlags and Gestalt selectors.
Thanks, I spent a lot of time searching for MAME but came up empty handed, Google doesn't seem to have any info on MAME supporting PB.
Posted by: chip-64bit on 2025-01-31 21:15:21
If you want to emulate these machines yourself you'll need to emulate the Mitsubishi M50753 microcontroller which is used as the PMU. The instruction set is similar to 6502 but with a lot of extensions.
Is this microcontroller an extension of the 6502? I wrote my own emulator because the MAME code is just too complex and I wish I could get to know this machine by writing a emulator.

Thank you, I hope this stupid question didn't bother you.
Posted by: Arbee on 2025-02-01 08:04:36
Yes, the microcontroller is an extended 6502. Mitsubishi calls the architecture "MELPS 740" or "740 Series", there's good documentation here: https://bitsavers.org/components/mitsubishi/melps/
Posted by: Arbee on 2025-02-01 16:17:30
I have updated MAME's list of emulated Macs on the wiki page here: https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php?title=Driver:Mac_68K

Hopefully Google will pick that up and be more helpful in the future.
Posted by: chip-64bit on 2025-02-02 13:41:18
I have updated MAME's list of emulated Macs on the wiki page here: https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php?title=Driver:Mac_68K

Hopefully Google will pick that up and be more helpful in the future.
Thank you
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