Five years ago I would have laughed at the idea, but now I am happy to say that I am running the classic PC game, Total Annihilation, on my Mac OS X:
This is a screenshot of my Mac running Sun Virtual Box and a copy of Ubuntu 8.08. Within Ubuntu, I setup the image like so:
- Base Memory: 258 MB
- Video Memory: 16 MB
- ACPI: Disabled
- IO APIC: Disabled
- VT-x/AMD-V: Disabled
- PAE/NX: Disabled
- Hard Disks: 1x 8GB
- CD/DVD-ROM: PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-K06 (what my Mac Mini is installed with)
- Host Driver (audio): CoreAudio
- Controller: ICH AC97
- Network, Adapter 1: PCnet-FAST III (NAT)
Ubuntu as a virtual server runs quite well under this setup on the Mac, using the latest Virtual Box version. I was pleased to see how seamless the hardware worked overall. Inside of Ubuntu I then installed the program wine (the Windows Emulator). Wine has come a long ways since I first used it. In the old days you had to manually setup the directory tree, and there was a lot of hackery required just to run a game. Few games worked well, except StarCraft, which has always worked. 
In the newest version of Wine on Ubuntu, I simply run:
wine /media/cdrom0/SETUP.EXE.
That will automatically create the necessary files under $HOME/.wine/, and install the game. Next, to run the game, I just ran:
wine $HOME/.wine/drive_c/CAVEDOG/TOTALA/totala.exe
The game runs quite well, though for some reason the music won’t play (though sounds effects will). The speed is good though, and I haven’t had a crash yet.
So, through a wasted evening, I’ve managed to make a Windows 95 game run under a virtual copy of Linux, which runs on my mac.
Virtual game on a virtual host, in other worse. Amazing how far technology and free software has come. 
Namuamidabu
P.S. Sometime this week I will waste another evening to see if I can get my PC-copy of Final Fantasy VII to work. It’s always been extremely finicky on anything that isn’t Windows 95, so we’ll see how far Wine has really come.
What a screen!
And yes, it is astounding how far we have come!
Can’t you just run Wine on top of Mac OS X?
I’m pretty sure its possible.
Arun: Astounding indeed.
Stranger: Nope, see http://www.winehq.org/site/download. No Mac OS X ports, or free ones at least.
I installed Wine on the Mac OSX 10.6.8 directly.
I first got an error: “Unable to find readme.txt Install Failed!”
and had to run wine from the CD-ROM
SHELL$ cd /Volumes/Total\ Annihilati\
SHELL$ wine SETUP.exe
SHELL$ wine ~/.wine/drive_c\CAVEDOG\Totala\totala.exe
then got error: “HAPI Environment Init Failed (check yer screen depth)”
so I installed 3.1cPatch (http://www.gamefront.com/files/3784773/Official_Total_Annihilation_1_x____3_1c_Patch)
then got error “Environmental Initialization Failed Check your DirectX setup”
then installed winetricks ( I should have followed instructions from the wine install link I gave)
sudo port install winetricks
That didn’t fix it.
So I downloaded DirectX (http://www.tucows.com/preview/194328)
and tried to install using wine, when that didn’t work I found to:
http://www.dedoimedo.com/games/wine-directx.html
and began following instructions.
I think this will work but I am tied and heading to bed.
Hi ARM and welcome! Thanks for the tip. I just might try it myself.
Let me know how it goes. I’m still stuck at getting DirectX to work. I wish I could give instructions in a more direct fashion but you should know how hack-y installations go. I’m just going to include what I did so hopefully they’ll be useful to everyone else.
I took care of the “Common Issues” given by David Baumgold: http://www.davidbaumgold.com/tutorials/wine-mac/
I checked out: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=7306
and followed the main instructions “I am giving it a silver because you need to install…happy gaming!”
NOTE: “Emulate a virtual desktop” causes a great decrease in resolution, I suggest unselecting.
I also unselected “Automatically capture the mouse in full-screen mode” but left the two “Allow…windows” messages to remain selected
I can run TA via the CD by
SHELL$ wine /Volumes/Total\ Annihilati\SETUP.EXE
It gives a nice looking window but then still crashes looking for DirectX. I clicked on the INSTALL DIRECTX which gives some information but then crashes with “The program dxsetup.exe has encountered a serious problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.” Gah.
I tried installing Direct3D (which the TA “INSTALL DIRECTX” said wasn’t installed) via http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1942622 which said to run:
SHELL$ winetricks d3dx9
This may be why it’s better to run through Virtual Box and Ubuntu, i.e. the DirectX is better integrated for Ubuntu than running directly from a Mac. I had trouble getting Virtual Box going.
I found: http://www.ta3d.org/ta-en.php which looks promising.
WHY CAN’T I GET THE DIRECTX STUFF WORKING! Geeze
VICTORY!
Alright. So in the end I used MacPorts to get Wine (http://www.davidbaumgold.com/tutorials/wine-mac/)
and then installed PlayOnMac (http://www.playonmac.com/en/download.html)
It prompted me to download Xquartz
Using PlayOnMac I went to “Install a program”>”Install a non-listed program” and used the Total Annihilation CD1 to install. IMPORTANT: From previous posts I decided to select “Multiplayer Spawn” *NOT* “Regular Install”.
And finally got it working! So excited!
One draw back is that it only functions in Full Screen Mode. But at least it’s working
Well done and congrats!