[Note that I have removed my build of MikMod from my software page, as it is now mostly-maintainable from Raphael’s builds, however, if you still want it, here it is.]

I’ve been asked this a couple times, and each time it’s given me a smile. A user who previously downloaded my build of MikMod wants to take their favorite songs, and import them into iTunes, or burn to CD.

It’s pretty easy, actually. My libmikmod build includes the ‘AIFF’ and ‘RAW’ disk writers, so you can just tell mikmod to create a file which you can import into iTunes. The WAV writer is broken in all MikMod releases to date with big endian systems. I’ve only recently discovered this – but my old releases are unlikely to be patched.

I usually use something similar to this construction (for Bourne compatible shells) from the Terminal:

%for n in *.mod *.s3m *.it; do mikmod -d 4 -F -l -X $n; mv music.aiff $n.aiff; done

This will leave you with much less disk space, and several files, such as ‘panic.s3m.aiff’. You can use iTunes to create MP3s, and/or burn them to your CDs.

This is my first MacOS X 10.4 native release, however, it has been tested, and worked fine on a G3 with 10.3.9. Primarily a bugfix version, it still stays crunchy in milk.

I’m presented with a difficult decision, and I’d like some feedback.

First, the status: DOSBox 0.63, as it currently stands, is G3 optimized, and will work with MacOS 10.2.6+.

I was contacted earlier today by Aubin Paul, a rather nice fellow developer who asked me if I wanted to host his build of CVS (bleeding edge) DOSBox. His is G4 optimized, and being CVS, is much, much faster. Sadly, I don’t have the bandwidth to host both builds, so I had to refer him to Qbix, to see what Qbix wished to do.

Aubin’s build essentially (ab)uses several gcc/g++ optimizations – and they do make a difference. However, one of the options which decreases overhead (if gprof is to be believed) is gcc 4.0 centric.

Currently, my builds are for/with gcc 3.3, which work with MacOS X 10.2.6 and higher, as noted above. gcc 4.0 is 10.4 specific; there’s no way of ‘backporting’ it to work without doing things which are not benificial for development – or your computer. Basically, at best, it’d probably make DOSBox a 50MB program, since EVERYTHING would have to be self contained – and then there would still be horrid debugging issues since the system libraries wouldn’t match up.

Should I drop future support for MacOS 10.3 so soon? Should 0.6.3 be the last G3/10.2&10.3 release – or do I release a slower, yet more compatible version?

Recently I’ve wanted to send some new data to my rather cheap mobile phone.

It was represented to me as supporting WML 1. Guess what? It doesn’t. This sent me looking for a prerolled system – since I honestly don’t even know where to start, I was hoping to find something.

I did. It’s called HAWHAW!. While reminding me of Nelson, from the Simpsons, laughing at me for undertaking such a silly project, this HAWHAW framework is pretty stable – and it’s GPL. My old system was hard-coded WML 1. I never bothered to learn HDML, or MML – and trying to parse the phones’ abilities would drive me insane.

So far, I’ve put up a small test framework that I can toy with, and finally get my pictures and ringtones onto my Nokia 6010. I hope.

I’ve finally obtained my 1Ghz G4 eMac, and with it, Tiger. It’s low on memory as the memory sent to take it to 1GB does not work with my eMac. Oh well. I can try to limp by at 256M until MemoryX replaces it, right?

One of the first things that I’ve noticed is the lack of Startup Items and /etc/hostconfig presets for BIND that are still there in MacOS X 10.3.x.

A short list of no-longer-there-as-startup-items-but-still-installed programs which are no longer controlled via /etc/hostconfig:

DNSSERVER (Bind) MAILSERVER (Postfix) RPCSERVER (NFS)

The support software is still there, but the Startup Scripts are not. They’ve been moved to the new ‘LaunchDaemons’ system, which is basically a hybrid idea of djb’s daemontools, xinetd, and far too many drugs. I know everyone’s jumped onto the XML train, but COME ON, PEOPLE.. EVEN CRON? Ahem, anyow..

Being that I run a nameserver on my iMac (which will now be secondary to my eMac), I find this a bit disappointing. For the last few years, I’ve usually used djbdns on my other UNIX hosts, but in an effort to be more compliant (and to play with encryption for subdomain transfers, etc), I’ve opted to drop back to BIND.

[Update:]

I had ended up re-setting the DNSSERVER variable in my /etc/hostconfig, and copying across the startup script structure from /System/Library/StartupItems/BIND/ – This wasn’‘t the ‘Tiger’ way to do things, but it worked. However, I generally want to do things ‘right’, so… After doing a bit of further research, I discovered that these services are now managed by YET ANOTHER Apple tool, specifically ‘LaunchDaemons’.

Since someone’s already written the article on how to do it properly, I’ll link to Dan’s “Bind on Tiger” article rather than making my own.