Rhapsody Developer Release Copyright 1997 by Apple Computer, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These notes are for the Developer Release of the Blue Box. The Blue Box enables the execution of Mac OS applications in a Mac OS 8 environment. This document is primarily a list of Mac OS features that require interaction with the underlying Rhapsody operating system. As this is the first release, many of these features are not fully functional.
The Blue Box is a standard Rhapsody application located in /NextApps/MacOS.app. This directory contains the binary Mac OS, the TruBlueRomImage, and the Resources folder. The default startup disk image is /NextLibrary/MacOS/StartupDisk.img. A PRAM file and other user-specific files are stored in ~/Library/MacOS.
To launch the Blue Box (in full-screen mode), double-click the MacOS.app icon in the /NextApps folder. You can also launch the binary from a Terminal.app command line. In general, applications that don't access hardware or peripherals should work.
To quit the Blue Box, chose Shutdown from the Special menu in the Blue Box (Mac OS 8) Finder. To switch to the Yellow Box workspace, press Command-Shift-y. To return to the Blue Box, double-click on the Mac OS icon in the Yellow workspace. To force-quit from Blue Box (if Blue Box is hung, but Yellow is not), press Command-Shift-q.
The following features do not work:
The following items identify the features that make up the Blue Box and contain other useful information for the Developer Release. Known problems are integrated into descriptions below.
Sound is not be supported in Blue Box for Developer Release. Lack of sound support causes the Jigsaw Puzzle DA to fail with a -50 system error when it starts a new puzzle. You can work around this by deselecting the "Use Sound Effects" option in the Options menu.
Copy and paste operations between the Blue Box and the Yellow Box environments are not supported in either direction for the Developer Release. These features will be supported in the Premier Release. It is unclear how well direct manipulation of the scrap (not using GetScrap and PutScrap) will be handled.
Disk image files created with utilities such as DiskCopy or ShrinkWrap are supported. A single, read-only disk image file named StartupDisk.img, which contains the boot disk and System Folder, is located in /NextLibrary/MacOS. On startup, the user is asked if they want a read-write copy of the startup disk image. Answering Yes causes a copy to be created in the user's home directory in ~/Library/MacOS. This image is then subsequently used as the startup disk. MacOS.app mounts (read-only) any other disk images in the /NextLibrary/MacOS directory with a .img file extension. Similarly, disk images in ~/Library/MacOS with names ending in .img are also mounted. These volumes can be locked by removing UNIX write permission from the disk image file. It is recommended that the system disk image, StartupDisk.img, have read-only permissions.
HFS partitions on SCSI hard drives (internal and external bus) are supported in the Developer Release. These partitions are writable. It might not be possible to mount an HFS partition that is mounted through the core operating system's HFS file system (this restriction will probably extend to all partitions on the same disk).
There is a file named "KEEP_THIS_ON_THE_DESKTOP" that must be maintained on the Desktop on read-only, startup filesystems. This is because the Mac OS 8 Finder requires the Desktop Folder to exist and the Finder removes the Desktop Folder if there is nothing on the Desktop. If the Desktop Folder isn't there and the startup disk is locked (so the Finder can't create one), startup fails. If the user copies the startup disk (making it read-write), the file can be removed. HOWEVER, if that volume is locked and used for startup again, booting problems will occur.
Networking does not work in the Developer Release.
800 KB and 1.4 MB floppies are not yet supported.
HFS-formatted CD ROMs are supported. They behave like (locked) SCSI hard drives. The CD must be in HFS volume format (Valid HFS block 0 followed by valid HFS partition maps). Non-HFS CDs (for example, Audio, Photo, ISO 9660) are not supported in the Developer Release.
You cannot mount and unmount CDs from within Mac OS. To mount a CD, you must shut down Mac OS, insert the CD and start Mac OS again.
It is not clear whether auto-detection and auto-ejection will be supported in the Developer Release. It is unknown whether 3rd party SCSI devices, like Zip and Jaz drives, will be supported in the Developer Release. If they are, they will most likely behave like generic SCSI hard drives; that is, without the ability to recognize media inserted after system startup and without the ability to auto-eject.
Note that although SCSI drives are supported as disk drives, direct SCSI access through the SCSI Manager is not supported in the Developer Release.
To change the time or date, use /NextApps/Clock.app rather than the Date and Time control panel in the Blue Box. If you change the date or time in Yellow, the change might not be reflected in the Blue Box. Any changes made using the Date and Time control panel are internal to the Blue Box, and have no effect on the Rhapsody system clock.
Warning: If you make your boot disk image read-only (the default), using the Date and Time control panel may result in memory corruption. Symptoms are garbage characters in the "Time Format" dialog, missing dialog items, and an eventual Blue Box crash. So, it is highly recommended that you not use this control panel at all.
When the Blue Box starts up, it loads SCSI Manager 4.3. In the Developer Release, no buses are present (that is, no SIMs are loaded) so most SCSI Manager calls fail and return an "invalid SCSI bus" error (this is true with both current and earlier versions of SCSI Manager).
In a subsequent releases, SCSI Manager 4.3 will represent each bus that is present in the machine as a SIM. A subset of the devices that are physically present—those that the user designates as being "owned by Blue"—will be controllable by device drivers or applications in the Blue Box through the existing Mac OS APIs. Third-party Mac OS SIMs, however, will not be supported.
SystemTask() time. So, if you are hung in Blue, or
running a game that doesn't call SystemTask() or
WaitNextEvent(), or even sitting in Macsbug, you
can't jump. Similarly, if you jump to the Yellow Box and then the
Blue Box hangs, you can't jump back./NextApps/MacOS.app/MacOS -showcursor
Apple events are the preferred mechanism for sending events and data between Blue Box and Yellow Box applications. The Yellow AppKit APIs will be extended to incorporate Apple events. The API is under development and will be released to developers in the future. Apple will make extensive use of this functionality in its implementation of the Blue Box.
The Apple event functionality has not been implemented for the Developer Release. Apple events inside the Blue Box remain unchanged from MacOS 8.
Mac OS 8 is the only supported system software for Developer Release.
Since users can access internal HFS filesystems from inside the Blue Box, you can use files from there or copy them to writable disk images. The only way to get external items into the Blue Box is by rebooting the machine into Mac OS, copying the files to the internal drive, and rebooting back into Rhapsody. Then you must restart MacOS.app to access the files.
To increase the size of a disk-image volume, you must use a utility such as Disk Copy to increase the size of the image file. Since the Disk Copy file is only visible as a disk partition on the desktop from within MacOS.app, you must modify the file on a non-Rhapsody Mac OS system. First move the file to a Mac OS system; for example, you can use ftp to copy the file from the Rhapsody file system (/NextLibrary/MacOS/StartupDisk.img, or ~/Library/MacOS/StartupDisk.img) to a Macintosh running Mac OS. On Mac OS, start Disk Copy and chose Convert Image from the Image menu. Set the "Size:" pop-up to the desired size for the partition. After Disk Copy has finished copying the file, use ftp to upload the disk image to the Rhapsody machine and replace your old image file with the new one. MacOS.app should not be running when you do this. Start up the MacOS.app and you now have a larger disk partition.
The native I/O model, including the Name Registry, DriverServicesLib, and associated libraries are present in Blue. However, since the Blue Box cannot detect hardware, there are no devices in the device tree. As a result, no native drivers are loaded.
The Developer Release of the Blue Box does not include serial
support. The Rhapsody serial services are not implemented in the
Developer Release. Clients that attempt to open either port will
receive a notInitErr (-900). Full serial support in the
Rhapsody Blue Box is planned for the Premier release.
Report new bugs to Apple Developer Relations.