Forced MacOS X boot = no CMBB?!?

[karsten]

My take is no matter what happens, there are going to be a number of customers that will be effected.

What is the official word from Battlefront?

[Michael Emrys]

So far the official word from BFC is that they expect to make CMII X-compliant. Some months ago Steve also said that they would look into making CMBB X-compliant, but that he could make no promises and wasn't optimistic. My interpretation is that it didn't happen due to insufficient time to change all the necessary programming.

Michael

[Ignatious J. Fathead]

Originally posted by karch:

I'm sorry, but I just reread your posts. You've been saying that it wouldn't be possible. If you meant otherwise, you weren't clear.

I said Apple could disable booting into OS9 and, within a year, probably would. They are starting with the newest hardware next year. The writing is on the wall -- and could hardly be clearer: OS 9 is dead.

9.0 isn't classic, 8.6 isn't classic. Right now, only 9.2.x is Classic. All the others are just other operating systems sitting on the drive. My guess is Apple doesn't have the time or reason to bother figuring out how to make old computers stop booting old operating systems. they haven't done it yet, why would they start now.

We're kind of going around in circles here.

The point I've been making all along is that Apple could, and probably will, make future versions of the Classic Environment non-bootable. Please understand that OS9 as we knew it is dead. Apple will (and must, really) evolve OS9 into less of a freestanding operating system and more of a seamless application launching environment within OSX. The current method works, but it's jarring and ugly, and confusing to new users. Apple wants it gone. This much is obvious.

That being said, will it always be possible to boot current Macs into OS9.2 as it exists today? Yes, certainly, if you want to keep it on a separate volume that's unmounted during use of OSX. This is mere speculation of course, but OSX may be unhappy with multiple OS9s available as Classic Environments. I would not be the least bit surprised if Apple made if difficult or impossible to have more than one Classic Environment on a mounted volume for this very reason, just as it was problematic to have more than one System Folder on a mounted volume in MacOS's of the past.

[Ignatious J. Fathead]

Originally posted by Jarmo:

Yeah, but about 5 years ago (when CM's developement started), Apple was deeply committed to RAVE for 3D and OSX was nowhere in sight. If CMBB had been a "start from scratch", it would have no doubt been developed for OpenGL and Carbonized. But that's not the case. CMBB was always going to be using CMBO engine.

To expect a games developer to have realized in -97, that 2003 vintage Macs wouldnt be able to boot in OS9 anymore, is expecting quite a lot..

Lots of games publishers got screwed by Apples 180 degree turn, but since the developement cycle of most games (and even most programs in general) is shorter than CM's, most publishers are already over the problem.

Besides, according to Apple there's no problem! Classic apps run in classic environment. Hardly BTS's fault that Apple has done half assed job with classic.

In fact, there isn't a problem with any other application I run -- CM is the only reason I ever boot into OS9.

If we're talking about damaging 180's we might as well talk about Microsoft. They were "totally committed" to OpenGL until they decided to go with their own proprietary graphics API. I suspect that little maneuver created more havoc in the graphics world then Apple's abandonment of RAVE. If Microsoft hadn't pulled that stunt, CM would probably already be written in OpenGL. We should understand that Apple isn't the one calling the shots here.

[ August 05, 2002, 12:40 PM: Message edited by: Ignatious J. Fathead ]

[karsten]

So how does one get the official word from Battlefront?

In searching through the forums I've found different stuff regarding OS X support.

What is the official word? :confused:

[chrisl]

Originally posted by Ignatious J. Fathead:

The point I've been making all along is that Apple could, and probably will, make future versions of the Classic Environment non-bootable. Please understand that OS9 as we knew it is dead. Apple will (and must, really) evolve OS9 into less of a freestanding operating system and more of a seamless application launching environment within OSX. The current method works, but it's jarring and ugly, and confusing to new users. Apple wants it gone. This much is obvious.

Most likely Apple will do no further development whatsoever on OS9, and will continue to support it running in Classic mode for several years into the future. As far as I can tell, you can't buy OS9 separately from 10 already (I wanted to, since I don't care that much about running 10), and with Jaguar it won't include a version of OS9 at all. Why should they even bother with further development? Within 3 years very few people will be running anything at all in Classic mode, and they really don't need to do anything more than stop supporting boot into 9 on new machines to ensure that. Why keep developing something you dropped?

That being said, will it always be possible to boot current Macs into OS9.2 as it exists today? Yes, certainly, if you want to keep it on a separate volume that's unmounted during use of OSX. This is mere speculation of course, but OSX may be unhappy with multiple OS9s available as Classic Environments. I would not be the least bit surprised if Apple made if difficult or impossible to have more than one Classic Environment on a mounted volume for this very reason, just as it was problematic to have more than one System Folder on a mounted volume in MacOS's of the past.

I really don't understand why you make a big deal about multiple partitions, and multiple boot systems. It's not unusual, it's not difficult, and there's really nothing Apple can do to make it not work. Faking out computers by installing new boot routines to allow a person to select what they boot into is hardly new, and very difficult to prevent without making the machine unusable. Even the X-box boot code has been hacked, so linux geeks can write loaders to boot into linux (it's a pretty decent machine available cheap, since they make the money on the software licenses).

I also don't understand where you get the idea that the OS9 boot volume can't be mounted when 10 is running. HFS+ is HFS+, and the OS won't care what's on any volume unless you try to launch something that won't run under 10, and then that process will crash, harming exactly nothing. Apple would really have to work very hard to check a volume for the presence of OS9 and render it unmountable, and then it would be a pretty easy thing for a mildly clever person to spoof and mount anyway.

As noted previously, I have four system folders spread over 3 volumes, and all of them mount at boot. You may not remember, but way back when you could only have one system on each mounted volume, there was a utility (called system switcher or something like that) that let you switch between versions of the OS. I used it because I had data acq stuff that wanted to be on 6.08, and other software that wanted 7. It was easy then, and is unlikely to ever become impossible. Even if it does, so what. Large hard drives are cheap, as is software that can repartition drives that are already in use. You can always tack in an extra partition to boot anything you want, and get a little piece of boot code that will pause at startup and let you select where you boot. That's how dual-boot MacOS/Linux machines work, with a program called Boot X.

[Ignatious J. Fathead]

You seem to misunderstand my point, which is not nearly so complicated as you make it out to be. Apple would not have to prevent volumes from mounting to make maintaining multiple Classic Environments on mounted volumes inadvisable.

Upon launching a classic application, OSX looks for and launches a Classic Environment, which is generally installed on a separate volume. What happens if two Classic Environments are present? Don't know myself, because I've never tried this setup, but I suspect it would not be a good idea.

In any event... the latest "word" from Apple comes in the form of a brief e-mail Steve Jobs supposedly sent to someone asking a question about new Mac hardware not booting into OS9. He said there was no truth to the story. So we shall see.

[Ignatious J. Fathead]

You seem to misunderstand my point, which is not nearly so complicated as you make it out to be. Apple would not have to prevent volumes from mounting to make maintaining multiple Classic Environments on mounted volumes inadvisable.

Upon launching a classic application, OSX looks for and launches a Classic Environment, which is generally installed on a separate volume. What happens if two Classic Environments are present? Don't know myself, because I've never tried this setup, but I suspect it would not be a good idea.

In any event... the latest "word" from Apple comes in the form of a brief e-mail Steve Jobs supposedly sent to someone asking a question about new Mac hardware not booting into OS9. He said there was no truth to the story. So we shall see.

[chrisl]

Originally posted by Ignatious J. Fathead:

You seem to misunderstand my point, which is not nearly so complicated as you make it out to be. Apple would not have to prevent volumes from mounting to make maintaining multiple Classic Environments on mounted volumes inadvisable.

Upon launching a classic application, OSX looks for and launches a Classic Environment, which is generally installed on a separate volume. What happens if two Classic Environments are present? Don't know myself, because I've never tried this setup, but I suspect it would not be a good idea.

I didn't misunderstand your point at all. It's just that you don't show a good understanding of how multiple boot systems work, and how the OS interacts with them. Try running 3 or 4 or 5 different boot volumes and see what happens. It's not a big deal, and the tools to make it happen aren't terrible obscure or arcane.

OS9 is not the Classic environment. OS9 is OS9, and the Classic environment is how OS9 runs on top of OSX. It would be difficult (and not a good idea, from an OSX robustness point of view) for Apple to make OSX behave badly in the presence of multiple OS9 installs. There are plenty of legitimate reasons why OSX users would have multiple volumes with OSX and/or OS9 on them mounted at the same time. Laptop users might want to run with their laptop in slave mode to a desktop machine, or a person might have multiple removable drives (for security and/or backup reasons) and have bootable partitions on each of them. Anyone who develops OS software is aware of this, and OSs have (and will continue to) become better behaved at this over the years, rather than worse.

As for what OS 10.1 does when it sees multiple copies of OS9: it asks you which you want to use. Try it. I use my dirty OS9 on a separate volume (partition) and keep my clean copy of 9 on the same partition as OSX, because it's essentially an OSX utility on that drive.

[Ignatious J. Fathead]

Yes, I do understand what you are talking about, but the relationship between OS9 running in the Classic Environment of OSX is unique. Apple can do quite a bit to manage that relationship.

As for what would be a "bad idea" for Apple, I don't pretend to know. They are in the difficult position of having to migrate users to OSX as quickly as possible, while at the same time tending to those who'd abandon the Mac platform if forced into OSX. It's a knife-edge dance with pits of fire on both sides.

[Ignatious J. Fathead]

Originally posted by chrisl:

As for what OS 10.1 does when it sees multiple copies of OS9: it asks you which you want to use. Try it. I use my dirty OS9 on a separate volume (partition) and keep my clean copy of 9 on the same partition as OSX, because it's essentially an OSX utility on that drive.

I did. Apparently OS9 can't be on a CD (or a locked volume?). While an OS9 CD is recognized as a legitimate startup disk in the Startup Disk control panel, it is not recognized as a legitimate OS9 for use in the Classic Environment.

[Ignatious J. Fathead]

Originally posted by chrisl:

As for what OS 10.1 does when it sees multiple copies of OS9: it asks you which you want to use. Try it. I use my dirty OS9 on a separate volume (partition) and keep my clean copy of 9 on the same partition as OSX, because it's essentially an OSX utility on that drive.

I did. Apparently OS9 can't be on a CD (or a locked volume?). While an OS9 CD is recognized as a legitimate startup disk in the Startup Disk control panel, it is not recognized as a legitimate OS9 for use in the Classic Environment.

[chrisl]

Originally posted by Ignatious J. Fathead:

Yes, I do understand what you are talking about, but the relationship between OS9 running in the Classic Environment of OSX is unique. Apple can do quite a bit to manage that relationship.

Which doesn't matter as far as one's ability to play CMBB, which is what really matters here. You will probably be able to play CMBB with software rendering in whatever version of OS9 classic supports, but it will have a low framerate. Apple really can't do much to keep a machine that can boot into 9 today from booting into 9 in the future, so if you have (or get) a machine that boots into 9, you will be able to play CMBB with RAVE rendering on it until it dies.

[karsten]

Well - the main question will be, whatever Apple does - can we run CMBB not in software graphics mode.

As far as multiple boots:

- Apple can easily disable Open Firmware's abilty to boot into an OS 9 volume.

- They can also disable the 'C' boot into an OS 9 CD Volume.

- They can disable the Startup Volume selection on any computer that has OS X 10.2 installed on it.

- The can update firmware to disallow booting of an OS 9 volume.

- They can modify boot blocks to prevent existing boot utilities from even finding a valid OS 9 volume.

- They could even go as far as auto-updating, via the software update or other hidden feature, your copy of OS 9 to prevent it from being a bootable OS.

I can think of some even nastier ways that Apple could do it, but I doubt that even Steve would stoop that low.

[chrisl]

Originally posted by karsten:

As far as multiple boots:

- Apple can easily disable Open Firmware's abilty to boot into an OS 9 volume.

- They can also disable the 'C' boot into an OS 9 CD Volume.

Probably not. At least some Apple machines out there have required that you boot into OS9 in order to update the firmware (from applecare document 120068).

- They can disable the Startup Volume selection on any computer that has OS X 10.2 installed on it.

This is unlikely and not very productive. Someone else would write a startup volume tool that would allow changing the startup volume. There are also plenty of reasons why people (especially developers) would want to have multiple startup volumes readily available.

- The can update firmware to disallow booting of an OS 9 volume.

Unlikely, if even possible. See above.

- They can modify boot blocks to prevent existing boot utilities from even finding a valid OS 9 volume.

The great satan tried this with the X-box. It was hacked in short order. A machine's got to boot, and short of adding some kind of encrypted authentication scheme it's hard to keep people from figuring out how that happens. Even if you control it in single chip hardware up to the drive controller, you've got to be able to talk to off-the-shelf drives. Doing this successfully would be more than a little expensive, and not very valuable. If you don't do a really good job of it, it will get hacked in short order. If you do a really good job it will probably take a little longer but get hacked anyway.

- They could even go as far as auto-updating, via the software update or other hidden feature, your copy of OS 9 to prevent it from being a bootable OS.

Aside from being a fast track to a class-action lawsuit, this would be a PR disaster, and effective only long enough for me to reinstall from a CD. I almost forgot to mention that doing this would make Apple very unpopular with corporate and gov't IT security people, and hurt mac sales to those markets.

There also exist macs that can run OSX, but whose firmware can't be updated. I'm typing this on one right now.

It's very unlikely that any machine that can boot into OS9 will ever be rendered incapable of booting into 9, short of becoming unbootable altogether (e.g you drive over it in your steamroller).

[ August 07, 2002, 12:58 AM: Message edited by: chrisl ]

[Jarmo]

[karch]

Originally posted by karsten:

Well - the main question will be, whatever Apple does - can we run CMBB not in software graphics mode.

Any machine that can right now run OS9 and run CM with hardware RAVE will be able to forever. You can bank on it. It's not worth their time to bother with old machines. Period.

- Apple can easily disable Open Firmware's abilty to boot into an OS 9 volume.

No, you're wrong. It's not easy and it's absurd to think they will do this.

- They can also disable the 'C' boot into an OS 9 CD Volume.

Yes, if they create ROM updates for every different ROM in every different computer and spend thousands and thousands of man hours developing and testing this just so they can get more PR and stop people from ever booting their computers back into 9. As I've said, No, you're wrong. It ain't gonna happen and you're silly to think it will.

- They can disable the Startup Volume selection on any computer that has OS X 10.2 installed on it.

Sure, and they can also auto reformat any non boot drives and erase all Microsoft software too if they want. But they won't. It's not worth their time and energy. They gain nothing from it.

- The can update firmware to disallow booting of an OS 9 volume.[/QB]

[Ignatious J. Fathead]

I'm going to make an effort to cut through some of the goop.

(1) Apple is currently denying that they will imminently release new hardware which is incapable of booting into OS9. Followers of the ongoing Apple saga know that this doesn't rule out such a move, but does put it further down the list of likelihoods. So personally, I'm not going to worry about it. For now.

(2) When Uncle Steve says OS9 is dead "for developers," he means it's dead for users too, later if not sooner.

How is this going to be handled? I think it's obvious that within a year or so, OS9 will cease to exist as a freestanding operating system and its functionality will be integrated more cleanly into OSX. At that point, the OSX Startup Disk control panel won't recognize OS9 as a bootable system, mainly because the version installed with OSX won't be one.

Users wishing to run OS9 will most probably be forced to install a legacy version on a separate volume and use one of the third-party tools (like BootX) to start the Mac on that volume. I don't see any reason for Apple to disable this capability, which is essentially a kludgy for propeller-heads. I can't see many software vendors relying on such a method.

Bottom line: Apple needs to push the migration of the existing user-base to OSX, if only to satisfy their developers, who they've convinced to invest in OSX software development. As we know, Microsoft is already complaining about the migration rate. I would not be surprised if Adobe was too -- but privately.

Software that relies on running OS9 outside of the Classic Environment is historical, and eventually will be left behind. Apple has provided a long, respectable period for moving away from OS9. It's a shame that our favorite game developer, for what ever reason, hasn't been able to avail themselves of that transition period. No matter how you look at it, this leaves us with the unpleasant prospect of implementing progressively more difficult work-arounds in order to keep running the game on what is essentially an obsolete operating system.

[ August 07, 2002, 12:41 PM: Message edited by: Ignatious J. Fathead ]

[karch]

Originally posted by Ignatious J. Fathead:...............

[/QB]

Yes. I agree 99%

[karsten]

Nailed it on the head. I think we've all been saying basically the same thing.

Unfortunately, it still leaves one question yet unanswered: What's the official word on CMBB and OS X / Classic compatibility?

I guess I can't quite understand why, with OS X being around in one flavor or another for a long time now, why haven't they developed CMBB to use the version of RAVE that is supported in Classic?

It may be a small step back (1.7 to 1.6), but 1.6 is obviously more than enough to handle 3D games much more complex than CMBO/CMBB.

It sure would solve a lot of issues!

[ August 07, 2002, 01:26 PM: Message edited by: karsten ]

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by karsten:

Unfortunately, it still leaves one question yet unanswered: What's the official word on CMBB and OS X / Classic compatibility?

I believe Steve mentioned about a year ago that X-compatibility was something planned for the engine rewrite. If you don'e want to take my word for it (and really you shouldn't), you are cordially invited to DO A SEARCH.

I guess I can't quite understand why, with OS X being around in one flavor or another for a long time now, why haven't they developed CMBB to use the version of RAVE that is supported in Classic?

This is something else that Steve and other members of the BFC team have gone over more than once, so that search you are going to do should turn up plenty of information on this as well.

It may be a small step back (1.7 to 1.6), but 1.6 is obviously more than enough to handle 3D games much more complex than CMBO/CMBB.

I believe Schrullenhaft went over this in the last week or so, so you shouldn't have any trouble at all in finding his post on the subject.

Cheers,

Michael

[Ignatious J. Fathead]

Originally posted by karsten:

Unfortunately, it still leaves one question yet unanswered: What's the official word on CMBB and OS X / Classic compatibility?

I've searched these boards for a definitive answer to this question. It seems a new thread on this topic is opened every couple of weeks (how's that for no real interest?), but I found only one containing any "official" word:

Here

I'll leave you to determine the reason for the lack of OSX support, but the thing that popped right out for me was Steve saying he hadn't tried OSX yet (?!) and was still working in (circa 1997) OS 8.6 and BTS was not a member of the Apple developer's network.

In the course of these frequent discussions I've seen several suggestions for more rapidly addressing the lack of complete RAVE support in OSX, but no "official" reply to these suggestions.

So there we have it. Or don't.

[karch]

They don't have time to rewrite any of the game if they want to get CMBB out the door in time.

It MIGHT be only tens of hours to get it to work in classic, but it might be hundreds. And until they get the game done and start getting money back in the coffers, they just don' thave the resources to do it.

Do you want Steve to quit development on CMBB for 4 months while he learns the ins and outs of an entirely new OS or weeks to figuure out what features Classic RAVE supports and the differences between it and whatever RAVE we are using.

This isn't because they don't care, they don't have the time.

[Jarmo]

Originally posted by Michael emrys: </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />It may be a small step back (1.7 to 1.6), but 1.6 is obviously more than enough to handle 3D games much more complex than CMBO/CMBB.

I believe Schrullenhaft went over this in the last week or so, so you shouldn't have any trouble at all in finding his post on the subject.

Cheers,

Michael</font>

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Jarmo:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael emrys: </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />It may be a small step back (1.7 to 1.6), but 1.6 is obviously more than enough to handle 3D games much more complex than CMBO/CMBB.

I believe Schrullenhaft went over this in the last week or so, so you shouldn't have any trouble at all in finding his post on the subject.

Cheers,

Michael</font>