For those of you who haven’t studied your Apple history, the Macintosh Plus was the third model in the Macintosh line that was initially released on January 16th, 1986. It had a starting price tag of $2599 and came with 1MB of RAM and an SCSI port.
Mini vMac: This is a Macintosh Plus emulator which has an impressively small footprint on the host system. It has now superseded its predecessor, vMac. It requires a Macintosh Plus BIOS ROM to run, which is not included for copyright reasons. PCE/macplus: PCE/macplus is a Macintosh Plus emulator. 1.4.1) for Android - does not support chip-set emulation higher than a Mac Plus Roms or System 7.5.5, so What this means is NO COLOR on Android Mac emulation. Last edited: Sep 20, 2017.
The operating the Macintosh Plus ran was sophisticated at the time, and served its purpose. Nowadays such an operating system wouldn’t be bearable however, because of what we are used to with Mac OS X Mountain Lion. For those of you who would like to take a trip down memory lane and play around with the old operating system though, you are in luck… if you have an Android device.
A developer has managed to port an emulator by the name of Mini vMac to Android that allows you to emulate almost any prehistoric version of the Macintosh OS. As such, for the purpose of this tutorial you will learn how to install the Mac Plus OS on your Android device.
How To Run Mac OS Plus On Android
Step 1) – The first thing you will need to do is download Mini vMac to your Android device from the Google Play Store by clicking here. It is compatible with almost any Android device running version 1.5 or higher.
Step 2) – Next download the Mac Plus OS by clicking here.
Step 3) – Using a file manager application of your choice, navigate to the SD card on the device and create a new folder called “minivmac“. With the minivmac folder created on your device’s SD card you will want to extract the Mac Plus files to it.
Step 4) – Open the Mini vMac.apk from your App Drawer, then press the menu button on your phone and tap “Insert Disk.” Once you have done this tap on “896K” to boot the Mac Plus operating system. Once the operating system has booted, you can press the menu button on your phone and tap “scale” for a full screen experience.
Congratulations! You are now running an ancient version of the Mac OS on your Android device. Although the uses of such an operating system are limited, you can play a few classic games such as s Shufflepuck Cafe or Dungeon Of Doom.
This guide shows you how to install System 7.5.5 for the Mini vMac emulator. For a video tutorial, watch this Youtube clip (credits to Peak66 for creating this tutorial). Also try out PCE/macplus, a newer and more advanced 68k Macintosh emulator.
Before you start, download Mini vmac and find an appropriate ROM such as this one. Once your installation is completed, refer to my latest article for a list of interesting old Mac applications which you can play with using Mini vMac, Basilisk and SheepShaver.
Method 1: Installing System 7.5.5 from pre-made disk images
This section was added in August 2014 after I received comments from several readers asking for detailed instructions to upgrade to System 7.5.5 from System 7.5.3 using the disk images provided by Apple. In particular, one reader commented that since the upgrade disk images for System 7.5.5 downloaded from Apple are in .sea.bin format, there is no way to convert them into a format readable by Mini vMac, as HFVExplorer only supports .smi.bin format and the instructions provided in the download ask him to extract .sea.bin images using DiskCopy 4.2, which apparently requires an actual floppy disk drive.
While I do not have the time to verify this information, I do recall that Apple’s old software download page has changed over the years. When I first attempted to install System 7.5.5 and wrote this article, I did not have major issues mounting the installer disk images. So I guess it was only recently that the disk images provided by the download page were changed to .sea.bin, making it harder to install them using Mini vMac. A possible way to work with the .sea.bin images provided by Apple now is to use old versions of StuffIt Expander, which I have not attempted due to time constraints.
I therefore decided to make available for download the following files, which I created back in 2008 from the disk images provided by Apple. These images can be mounted directly in Mini vMac for a straight forward installation experience of System 7.0.1, System 7.5.3 and System 7.5.5:
- hfs500M.rar: blank 500MB HFS hard disk image which can be mounted in Mini vMac for installation of System 7.5.5
- Mac701.zip: installation disk images for System 7.0.1
- mac753.zip: disk images for System 7.5.3
- mac755up.zip: upgrade disk images for System 7.5.5
- hfv500M_sys755_clean.zip: pre-made System 7.5.5 boot disk with popular software. Use this to use System 7.5.5 immediately without going through the installation process.
Installing System 7.5.5 on Mini vMac is now assimple as downloading and extracting the disk images from the above files and following the steps below:
- Start Mini vMac with “Install 1″ disk image of System 7.0.1
- From Mini vMac’s File menu, mount the empty 500MB hard disk image
- Choose to install System 7.0.1 on the 500MB hard disk image
- When prompted, use Mini vMac’s File menu to switch to “Install 2″ and other System 7.0.1 installation disk images
- Upon completion of System 7.0.1 installation, reboot to System 7.0.1 and mount the System 7.5.3 installation image
- Proceed to install System 7.5.3 and reboot after completion.
- Mount the System 7.5.5 installation image and again, choose to install System 7.5.5 onto the 500MB hard disk image
- Installation of System 7.5.5 should finish without issues, After a final reboot, you will have a fully functional Mini vMac running System 7.5.5
For those who wish to try out System 7.5.5 without spending the time on installation, get the file hfv500M_sys755_clean.zip also from the above download link. Extract the zip file and boot Mini vMac with the extracted disk image to run System 7.5.5.
Method 2: Using Apple’s original System 7.5.5 installer images
The following guide, written in 2008, shows you how to install System 7.5.5 on Mini vMac using the original installer images supplied by Apple.
To start, you must first install System 7.0.1 on Mini vMac:
1. Boot Mini vMac with System 7.0.1 boot disk, download from here. In Explorer, drag the boot disk to minivMac.exe and the system should boot up.
2. Download System 7.0.1 installation disk images from here
3. Use HFV Explorer to create an empty 10MB disk image
4. Click “File” —> “Open Volume.” Browse to the empty hard disk image and open it. The disk image
should show up at the top of the left hand column.
5. Now browse your system with HFVExplorer and find the .smi.bin file that you downloaded earlier. Drag it over to the
Macintosh disk image. Just click “OK” at the prompt. This will extract the original .smi into your disk image.
6. Create another empty 20MB disk image.
7. Quit HFVExplorer and with System 7.0.1 running on Mini VMac, use Mini Vmac’s File menu > Open disk image and mount
the disk images created in step (5) and ()
8. Inside Mac OS, open the installer disk image (now mounted) created in step (5) and click on the SMI file.
9. Accept the terms and conditions. You may choose to skip the disk verification. A folder named 7.0.1 (1440k images)
should be shown on desktop.
10. Open the empty disk image mouted in Mac OS, and copy the entire folder in step 9 over.
11. Shut down Mini vMac and use HFVExplorer to open the hard disk image in order to copy the .image file out. Select
the .image file and choose Edit->Copy
12. Navigate to any folder you want on your Windows machine and choose Edit->Paste to copy the files to that folder. When prompted, paste it as Raw copy, data fork. Make sure you only paste the data fork, or else you’re going to end up with MacBinary files that you can’t boot with.
13. When you are done, you may want to remove the .image files from the disk image, leaving out an empty hard disk image.
14. Now start Mini vMac with the image “Install 1.image” created in step (12). Mount the empty hard disk image, where System 7.0.1 will be installed to.
15. Start the installation process. When prompted, click on Switch Disk and choose the empty hard disk image to install to.
Mini Vmac Iphone
16. When prompted for next disk, mount the required disk image. The installation will finish in around 15 minutes:
17. When installation is done, reboot with the hard disk image and you should see System 7.0.1
Mini Vmac Android Emulator
Now we install System 7.5.3
1. Download it from here
2. Use HFVExplorer to extract all 19 SMI files into a new hard disk image.
3. With Mini VMac boot up with System 7.0.1, mount the hard disk image in step (1). Double click on the firstpart, choose to skip verification and you will see a the System 7.5.3 Install CD mounted on your desktop:
4. Double click on the installer CD and select Installer to start installation. The process should take another 15 minutes
Mini Vmac Android Device
Finally we upgrade to System 7.5.5
Mini Vmac Ds
1. Download it from here
2. Repeat what we disk for System 7.5.3 to create a disk image with System 7.5.5 installer. Mount the hard disk image and start the installation.
3. When the installation is finished, reboot miniVmac with the hard disk where System 7.5.5 is installed to. You should see the 7.5.5 screen: