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Myst III On Leopard Intel

Posted on Tuesday, 08 April 2008 at 10:18.

Myst III Exile

This article explains how to install Myst III Exile on Mac OS X. You will need the 4-CD version of the game, as well as 2.5 GB of free disk space.

If you have any difficulties, please leave a comment below.

Myst III Exile is an awesome adventure game. Unfortunately, its installer is a Classic Application which cannot be run on Intel Macs. Matthew Harper used to have a very helpful guide to working around this problem and installing Myst III Exile on Intel Macs anyway, but unfortunately his tutorial is no longer available. This page aims to replace Matthew’s instructions. We will do a full install of the game; you won’t need to switch the CDs around while playing the game.

Step 1: Create a disk image

The first step is to create a disk image that will contain your installation of Myst III: Exile. Running the game from a disk image prevents any problems with case-sensitivity of the filesystem installed on your hard disk. The disk image is virtual and exists only on your hard disk: you will not need to burn it to a physical CD.

We will do some work in Terminal, but don’t worry, it won’t be difficult. Just be careful you enter the commands exactly as listed: copy them here and paste them in your Terminal window to be sure.

First, open the Terminal application. You can find it in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder. Now enter the following command:

hdiutil create -size 3g -type SPARSE -fs HFS+J -volname Myst3Exile -attach Myst3Exile.sparseimage

Wait until the command finishes; this will take a few seconds. You can tell the command has finished running when your prompt appears again. Verify that your home folder contains a file called Myst3Exile.sparseimage and that your Finder window shows that disk image attached in the left sidebar.

Step 2: Downloading the Mac OS X version of the Myst III Exile application

Download M3OSX1.sit; it’s available near the bottom of that page. Unpack the file; you can use Stuffit Expander for this. Now drag the two files that were in the archive (Bink Carbon Library and Myst3 OS X US) to the mounted Myst3Exile disk image. When the copying finishes, you can delete the downloaded and extracted files.

Step 3: Copying the data from the disks

Insert disc 1 of your copy of the game and wait until the CD shows up in Finder. Then enter the following commands in Terminal, each time waiting for the command to finish before entering the next command:

mkdir "/Volumes/Myst3Exile/EXILE Disc 1"
cp -Rv /Volumes/EXILE\ Disc\ 1/M3Data /Volumes/Myst3Exile/
cp -Rv /Volumes/EXILE\ Disc\ 1/Data /Volumes/Myst3Exile/EXILE\ Disc\ 1/

Eject disc 1 and insert disc 2. Wait for the CD to show up in Finder. Then enter the following commands in Terminal:

mkdir "/Volumes/Myst3Exile/EXILE Disc 2"
cp -Rv /Volumes/EXILE\ Disc\ 2/Data /Volumes/Myst3Exile/EXILE\ Disc\ 2/

Eject disc 2 and insert disc 3. Wait for the CD to show up in Finder. Then enter the following commands in Terminal:

mkdir "/Volumes/Myst3Exile/EXILE Disc 3"
cp -Rv /Volumes/EXILE\ Disc\ 3/Data /Volumes/Myst3Exile/EXILE\ Disc\ 3/

Eject disc 3 and insert disc 4. Wait for the CD to show up in Finder. Then enter the following commands in Terminal:

mkdir "/Volumes/Myst3Exile/EXILE Disc 4"
cp -Rv /Volumes/EXILE\ Disc\ 4/Data /Volumes/Myst3Exile/EXILE\ Disc\ 4/

Eject disc 4.

Congratulations! You’ve installed Myst III Exile. Whenever you want to play, simple double-click the Myst3Exile.sparseimage file in your home, then double-click the application from the disk image.

Myst will save your game preferences and save files on the disk image next to the application.

If you experience sound problems while playing the game, read on.

Step 4: Fixing the sound problems

On duo-core computers, the game’s sounds has glitches about every second, making for a very annoying experience. You can fix this by disabling one of the cores in your processor.

To disable one of the cores, you need the Processor preference pane. By default, this preference pane is not installed, but it comes with the Developer tools available on the installation disk you got with your computer. Alternatively, you can create an Apple account and download the tools from their website.

When you’ve installed the Developer tools, go back to Terminal and enter:

open /Developer/Extras/PreferencePanes/Processor.prefPane

If you do this for the first time, you will be asked whether to install this preference pane for everyone or just for your account. If you don’t know which one to choose and you have administrator access to your computer, choose to install for everyone.

You can then disable one of the cores by unchecking the CPU 2 checkbox. This fixes the sound problems, but makes your computer somewhat slower, so remember to enable it again when you finish playing.

Happy adventuring!

Comments

By Tamar on Sunday, 13 April 2008 at 10:46:

Yay! Myst ftw :)

Does this mean you can solve the case sensitivity problem with Photoshop as well?

By Martijn on Sunday, 13 April 2008 at 10:47:

Good question! Must try.

One problem is installing won’t work — just like with Myst, I have to take an existing installation to see if it will work.

By Ian on Wednesday, 29 October 2008 at 18:38:

I was reading this, and i found a cost-free way of deactivating a CPU core. On the leopard disk, go to developer tools, and install the CHUD tools (it’s about an 85 MB install). There’s a program in /Library/Application Support/HWPrefs called CPUPalette. Start it up, and you can deactivate a core.

Conversely, to make it easier, go to System/library/CoreServices/Menu Extras, then double click on CPU.menu to have a convenient icon in your menu bar. This makes it much easier to deactivate/reactivate a core at any time.

By Guido from Italy on Monday, 12 January 2009 at 18:09:

Dear Martijn,
the link for Matthew Harper’s instructions is now dead. Could you supply an alternative link for these valuable infos?
Thanx in advance,
Guido

By Martijn on Monday, 12 January 2009 at 18:42:

Hi Guido,

Google still has the page cached.

By Guido from Italy on Tuesday, 13 January 2009 at 19:29:

“Matthew’s instructions tell you to create a folder called Myst III Exile and move all other data in there, but instead drag all data into your mounted disk image. ”
Are you saying to put all Data folder contents from the three CDs in one single huge Data folder to burn on the disk image?
What about the “id.m3i” files, different for each Data folder on each disk? Do I have to skip those?
Thanx a ton,
g

By Guido from Italy on Tuesday, 13 January 2009 at 20:41:

ok, sorry, sorted it out…
Thx,
g

By Stone on Tuesday, 17 March 2009 at 08:48:

Wait, I have the same question as Guido… What do I do with the id.m3i files??? I’m totally confused. How do I create a mounted disk image? Googles cache is gone…. I’m pretty intelligent and I understand computers, but I’m new to the Mac platform so I’m not sure how it all functions… any help would be appreciated, I want to play Myst!

By Corine on Monday, 13 July 2009 at 17:14:

Hi Martijn,

Thank you for this great help. I did the installation and used the CHUD tools from Ian for the sound, and all works fine … except that I cannot save the game. It says disk full. What can be done?
Thanx for your help !

By Anahi on Tuesday, 04 August 2009 at 20:03:

i was so happy when I found your page, I just can’t wait to start playing Exile again, after several yearss…
But I got this error message when I double cliked on the disk image

m35 error: $M3data\TEXT\ENGLISH.m3t

I wonder if it’s related to the fact that the language defined in my computer is Spanish, not English ?

Thanks in advance for your help.

By Martijn on Tuesday, 04 August 2009 at 21:01:

Hi Anahi,

I got that error at first too because it couldn’t find the file on my case-sensitive file system. Is your file system case sensitive? You can check this in Disk Utility.

Also check if the file it is looking for is actually present in the M3data folder. You can use Terminal to explore these folders.

Hope this helps!

Martijn.

By Martijn on Tuesday, 04 August 2009 at 21:02:

Hi Corine,

I’m not sure at all—can you give a bit more information on what you did and how you got that error message?

By Megan on Saturday, 08 August 2009 at 23:51:

Hi! Thank you for these instructions. I’m trying to figure this out, but I’m running into a snag; when I download and unpack M3OSX1.sit, it gives me an unintelligible script in TextEdit instead of Bink Carbon Library and Myst3 OS X like I’d hoped it would. Oh no! I’m a new Mac user; do you know what the problem is?

Also, everywhere else I read says that in order for this to work you need an OS 9 partition. Do these steps make it so that that’s not necessary?

Thank you =)

By Martijn on Monday, 10 August 2009 at 10:40:

Hi Megan,

Megan wrote:
> Hi! Thank you for these instructions. I’m trying to figure this out, but I’m running into a snag; when I download and unpack M3OSX1.sit, it gives me an unintelligible script in TextEdit instead of Bink Carbon Library and Myst3 OS X like I’d hoped it would. Oh no! I’m a new Mac user; do you know what the problem is?

Have you tried opening the file with StuffIt Expander? If you have that program installed and it still opens with TextEdit, try opening it directly from the application, or choosing Open With from the Finder window.

> Also, everywhere else I read says that in order for this to work you need an OS 9 partition. Do these steps make it so that that’s not necessary?

That’s right, you won’t need an OS 9 partition for this. :-)

Hope this helps!

Martijn.

By ray on Tuesday, 15 September 2009 at 21:08:

Hi,
Does this work with Myst III included in the 10th anniversary DVD version?
If so, are all the steps I have to follow the same?

By Martijn on Tuesday, 15 September 2009 at 22:28:

Hi Ray,

I’m not sure about that. I don’t have that edition, so I can’t verify it for you. It’s worth a try, though! Let me know how it goes.

Cheers,

Martijn.

By Gary on Friday, 13 November 2009 at 03:39:

Ray and Martijn, I can confirm that this procedure does not work with the DVD version I have included with Myst IV Revelation, sadly. After dragging the data and M3T folders into the disk image, the Exile app crashes with a JPEG error, suggesting an issue with the latest Quicktime version. I don’t think it will be easily solved.
Even the OSX Exile installer on the DVD does not work :(

Gary

By Cecily on Sunday, 03 January 2010 at 20:09:

Hi Martijn,
Thank you so much for this information ! However, I went to the Apple site to download the developer tools, and they only have them for Snow Leopard (10.6). I am currently running 10.5. Do you know of another place that would have the tools just for 10.5 ? Thank you !
-Cecily

By Sam on Saturday, 26 June 2010 at 14:58:

I’ve installed Myst III and shut off the second CPU on my 2006 dual core MacBook but crucial ambient sounds are missing from J’nanin (the whistling rock, indeed any ambient sounds except those in the glasshouse at the base of the main tusk. This is infuriating – especially as entrance to one of the tusks is dependent on sound identification (the ‘flower antenna’, which is completely silent)!

HELP!

By Sam on Saturday, 26 June 2010 at 14:59:

Oh, and I’m running 10.5.8 on a 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo.

By Nikki on Tuesday, 20 July 2010 at 02:16:

I’ve created a DVD installation version for this as well, which I’ve used to work on two Mac Intel machines:
http://buttershug.com/everything/myst-3-exile-working-on-snow-leopard

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