** 2 page review / 1835 words **

It's a kind of, erm... MagiC!

Mark Wherry buys a MagiCMac, a diet coke but no fries...

** MAGICMAC.GIF here **

If there's one thing all computer enthusiasts have in common, it's the desire for something faster, better and cheaper. I'm never satisfied, always looking to add this or that upgrade trying to convince myself this is the last upgrade I'll "need".

With Atari no longer making hardware, we're forced to look elsewhere for that next machine. The Milan looks tempting but came too late for me and after comparing the price of other TOS clones compared to their performance I was looking for another alternative, MagiCMac offered an ultra fast Atari computing platform with the benefits of Mac computing effectively thrown-in for free.

The MagiCMac solution

MagiCMac is supplied on a single high density disk which is quite an achievement compared to Windows or MacOS - even taking into account many tasks are delegated to the host computer.

The current English MagiCMac release is bundled with the Ease replacement desktop which is totally unnecessary because MagiC includes its own perfectly usable MagxDesk. Ease is also looking a bit long in the tooth these days and, in my opinion, you'd be better off using Thing or jinnee.

The manual is a redeeming factor, beautifully presented as a wirebound A5 booklet. The content is good and there's plenty of detail about the Macintosh side of the program. As with MagiC-Atari, much of the manual is given over to an explanation of MagxDesk - whoppee, I wonder how many Atarians, switching to MagiCMac, really need such a detailed tour of a desktop? There are some good technical details towards the back of the manual but sadly no programming documentation.

Getting Started

Installation is quick and easy and there's little potential for trouble so everyone should be able to get MagiCMac up and running without problems within a few minutes.

The first time MagiCMac is launched a series of dialogs appear to configure MagiCMac to your system. In these dialogs you allocate memory, disk/CD/Zip drives and whether long filenames are allowed, printer and modem ports, and screen resolution.

After completing this procedure, the system boots like any real Atari machine, loading Auto folder programs, accessories, and MagiC's auto-start applications. The desktop then appears, and MagiC users will feel instantly at home.

MagiCMac runs in parallel with MacOS which means you can switch between the two - effectively using two different computers at the same time. MagiC also utilises the MacOS clipboard, which makes it possible to copy and paste text between applications running in either mode - nice.

Two become one

One thing you can't fail to notice immediately is the Mac mouse only has one button compared to the Atari two button mouse. The advantage for Mac users is that you never have to remember which button to press, but for Atari users, the right mouse button can be simulated by left-clicking with a key modifier held down.
Alternatively MagiCMac does support some other Apple compatible pointing devices, including two button rodents, but ask yourself how often you use the right mouse button before parting with your money - I certainly won't be purchasing one.

NVDI - The facts

In the same way NVDI enhances TOS/MagiC on an Atari, NVDI-Mac provides the following functions:

** UL **
* Displaying more than 256 colours at a time. MagiCMac by itself can display any resolution the Mac is capable of, but NVDI-Mac is required if you want to access 16 or 24-bit colour resolutions.
* Printing via GDOS.
* Screen acceleration * Access to TrueType fonts installed on your Mac.
** /UL **

A separate NVDI module is required to access Mac PostScript fonts. NVDI-Atari also works fine so long as you don't require printed GDOS output or resolutions greater than 256 colours.

Printing in practice

The single factor which prevented me opting for MagiCMac sooner was printer support. Most Atarians own printers designed for use on PCs using the parallel interface, whereas Mac printers use a serial interface.
One solution, directly supported my MagiCMac, is PowerPrint.

** POWPRINT.GIF here **

The PowerPrint package includes a cable to connect any PC printer to the Mac serial port along with custom printer driver software which supports hundreds of printers. Although this isn't a cheap solution, especially compared to the cost of new printers, it's tried and tested and works well.

Big Mac?

Choosing a Mac presents a dilemma because MagiC was designed to run on the Motorola 680x0 series of processors - the same processors found in Atari computers.
Up until a couple of years ago all Apple machines were fitted with 680x0 processors and MagiCMac ran native turning in excellent performance figures.
Today all Apple machines are fitted with Power PC processors which run 68k program code under emulation. Although MagiCMac runs fine under emulation they were, until recently, were no match for Apple machines fitted with real 68040 processors. Recent models and Apple's latest G3 machines easily outperform even the fastest 68k Macs which means if you're buying an Apple machine specifically to run MagiCMac the best machines to consider are the outdated 68040 equipped Macs or one of the latest Power Macs.

** MMGB_COM.GIF here - must be big enough to read clearly **

With many Apple users upgrading to Power PC machines there are plenty of 680x0 equipped machines around at bargain prices but do bear in mind you're effective changing from one outdated machine to another!
The 68030/68040 equipped portable Apple Powerbook and Duo models also make ideal MagiCMac platforms and offer truly portable Atari computing on the move.

If you decide to buy a new Mac look for models fitted with a 200MHz 604e processor or faster. Many of the recently discontinued Mac-clones exceed this spec and are on offer at bargain basement prices but do bear in mind Apple doesn't support these machines directly. If your budget allows the recently launched Apple models like my G3 266MHz machine is quite, quite lovely!

I want some more

I would like to see better support for music software, so the Mac MIDI system could be used. If the MagiCMac programmers supported Opcode's Open MIDI System (OMS), a MIDI management utility supported by most major Mac music programs, they wouldn't even have to write their own routines. Alternatively, or via OMS, the internal QuickTime sound synthesizer could be supported, basically providing a sound module (with sounds provided by Roland) inside the computer without any additional hardware.

In my opinion NVDI-Mac should be an integral part of MagiCMac - in preference to the pointless inclusion of Ease. The omens are promising because MagiCMac 2.2.4 (the current German release) includes an Epson Stylus Colour 600/800 driver which doesn't require NVDI-Mac.

Conclusions

As you can see from the GEMBench results MagiCMac is fast - many times faster than a Falcon on suitable machines. If the software you use regularly runs under MagiC and doesn't require access to the Falcon's DSP or the cartridge port the MagiCMac option is well worth considering.

MagiCMac is a mature product still undergoing development with updates to keep pace with the changing face of the Mac OS. Now what do I do with my Falcon? - if only that door stayed open on its own!


** boxout **
Long term view

Joe Connor has been using MagiCMac since early releases on various portable and desktop 68k Mac models. Here's his comments...

MagiCMac offers me portable Atari computing which is many times faster than the real thing and makes available memory above the 14Mb limit of the Falcon providing an ideal multitasking environment.

However, nothing is perfect and one of the common problems encountered running any Atari emulator is forcing Auto folder programs to run in the desired order. It's bad enough on real Atari machines where you either have to manually move files into and out of the Auto folder to juggle the running order or use utilities such as Dirsort, AutoSort or Xboot.
None of these methods work reliably under MagiCMac so the MagiC programmers came up with an AUTOEXEC.BAT file (not to be confused with the DOS batch file) which should be located in the Auto folder.
This AUTOEXEC.BAT file is simply a list of your Auto folder programs, in ASCII format, which MagiC reads to determine the desired execution order - it also works under MagiC-PC and MagiC-Atari.

When I switched from my Falcon to MagiCMac I was amazed the system didn't seem to noticeably slow down whatever resolution/colour depth I ran. On the Falcon the system can be slowed to a crawl because the same data bus is shared between graphics and normal memory operations. As more graphics data is piped through this bus the bandwidth available for everything else decreases. The Falcon designers also decided not to include any fast Video RAM (VRAM) - probably because it was very expensive at the time, but this means much slower normal memory has to be used instead.

MagiCMac floppy disk handling has never very good compared to MagiC-PC or the real thing. Pretty much anything other than standard IBM compatible 720Kb or 1.44Mb disks are, at best, not recognised, or in some cases can crash the system.
Happily the German release 2.2.4 I'm using (or maybe the Mac OS 8.1 upgrade I installed recently) seems to have cured the problems and although MagiCMac still can't access non-standard floppy formats it I haven't experienced a floppy disk related crash since.
** /boxout **


** boxout **
Floating Numbers...

Floating Point Unit (FPU) support was never handled very well on real Atari machines so it's no surprise to find a similar situation when running MagiCMac:

** UL **
* Machines with 68000, 68020 and 68030 CPUs fitted with separate 68882 FPU units are fully supported by MagiCMac.
* Machines with 68040 CPUs include integrated floating point routines but these are not 100% 68882 compatible. MagiCMac offers an Auto folder utility, FPU_M686.PRG, to enable floating point support.
* Machines with 68040LC CPUs do not include any floating point routines.
* The Power PC version for MagiCMac does not support the FPU. Software programmed using Pure C or Pure Pascal may include code which checks for the presence of an ST FPU and this check causes such programs to hang.
A utility called FPUPATCH.TOS is included to patch problem programs. Kandinsky is such a program. To patch it simply drag the Kandinsky icon onto the FPUPATCH.TOS icon and, if the operation was successful, the original program is renamed with a BAK extension, and a new PPC compatible program is created. Kandinsky will now work fine.
There's also a separate utility called FPU_SL.TOS to patch Calamus S/SL.
** /UL **
** /boxout **


** product boxout **
MagiCMac 2.1.5

Publisher
ASH

UK Distributor
System Solutions

Contact
Tel: +44 (0)181 693 3355
Fax: +44 (0)181 693 6936
Email: info-software@system_solutions.co.uk
URL: www.system.solutions.co.uk/cafe/

Cost
œ129.95 (including Ease)
œ99.95 Upgrade from MagiC Atari
PowerPrint: œ149.95
NVDI-Mac: œ69.95 (œ39.95, upgrade from NVDI-Atari)

Required
Mac with 8Mb memory or more

Pros
Fast and compatible

Cons
Bundled with Ease, NVDI-Mac required for GDOS output, non-standard floppy disk formats are not supported.

93%
** /product boxout **