Silverwand Software

A collection of freely downloadable software developed by Brendan Bellina. This software is made available for download for individual usage only. It cannot be re-distributed, modified, or included in any distributed works without the express permission of the author.

Currently Active Software Locations

Silverwand Software (hosted at Google Drive) (all of my free software is available here)

Software Categories

Web Browser Enhancements (Bookmarklets)

All Macintosh Software
- AppleScripts
- Apple Dashboard Widgets - A number of Apple Dashboard Widgets primarily for LDAP searches against public LDAP directories. These may no longer function.
 - HyperCard stacks including HyperBattleship! patched for Mac OS 9, MacBalloonMaker, and MacMerlin
- Kaleidoscope Themes (Mac OS 9) including Corwin of Amber

- Wineskin for CiderPress (added 5/27/20)

All Apple IIGS Software
- Hypercard IIGS stacks including:

• BalloonMaker - Add Balloon Help to your HyperCard GS stacks
• Color Click - An educational stack for learning colors
• Extras v1.1 - Adds an Extras menu to your HyperCard Home stack
• GSOS Splash Color - Modify the GSOS Splash page colors for GSOS 5.0.4, 6.0.0, 6.0.1, and 6.0.4 (added in v2)
• HyperTalk Tutor 101 - Teaches the basics of HyperTalk. Used for A2-University in 1994. Includes both the lesson stacks and the transcripts from the online course.
• Key Navigator - adds Keyboard Navigation to HyperCard GS stacks
• Merlin GS - a simulator for the Merlin handheld toy
• No Worries v1.4 - A program launcher HyperCard stack based on Apple's At Ease program.
• Pyramid - A Pyramid solitaire stack
• Word Scrambler - A stack that demonstrates scrambling letters in a word. Accompanied by an Applesoft BASIC program.
• HCGS Extras
• Script-Central Special Edition 2020 (v5n1)
• Script-Central Special Edition 2021 (v6n1)
• Script-Central Special Edition v7n1 (2022 #1)

- GS/OS Finder icons - The bbellina2020icns.2mg disk image includes a set of icons inspired by the Copland OS that was never released by Apple as well a number of custom icons for system files, disks, and the Finder trash can.

- Generic Drive Images - These 32MB ProDOS disk images include GSOS 6.0.1 and a variety of useful IIGS software.

Apple Users Group of Michiana (AUGM) newsletters - These newsletters from 1991-1993 were designed in GraphicWriter III and are available both as disk images and pdf.

Yahoo! Widgets - a large number of my Yahoo! Widgets for displaying icons, displaying weather maps for various states, an LDAP search client, and the Merlin 78 simulator. Requires the Yahoo! Widget Engine to be installed. This is software that is no longer provided or supported by Yahoo!

Baldur's Gate Enhancements - compatible with BG2 and BG1Tutu

Icewind Dale II Enhancements

Neverwinter Nights Mods and Documents

Neverwinter Nights 2 Enhancements


About this Page

I began publishing my software under the name "Silverwand Software" in 1982. I have always recognized that any success I have had writing software has depended greatly on the work and generosity of other software developers and engineers and so I have never charged anything for my work. Over the years I have used several distribution channels for my work, including, but not limited to: GEnie, America Online (AOL), personal websites hosted by various educational institutions I have attended and/or worked for, and public type-specific websites such as the Apple Widget Gallery, Yahoo! Widget Gallery, the Neverwinter Nights 2 Vault at IGN, and the NexusMod site. For various reasons most of these solutions have not withstood the test of time. My hope is to create a single publicly accessible repository for all of my work that will survive for the foreseeable future.

This blog post will serve as the launch page for my software. It will include links to more specific blog posts and those will include download links for the actual software. I will host the software sites that will not require accounts to download from. In the event that those services are retired I will try to relocate the software and then update the links on the blog pages.  One advantage of using the blog pages is that any comments or feedback people may have about a piece of software can be posted on the appropriate blog page.

Thank you for your interest.

Brendan Bellina
July, 2013

Putting Wineskin to Work

I have several posts now about using Wineskin to convert games from Windows to Mac. I have had a range of success, with some games fully functional, some partially functional, and some not at all functional. I thought I could convert several of my older games like Warcraft and Diablo, but ran into a bit of trouble when the the Windows partition of these hybrid disks wouldn't mount on the Mac desktop. I found a solution with this help from the Codeweavers site on how to mount and unmount a Mac/Windows hybrid disk with a little help from Disk Utility to determine the device name of the CD (generally the one in Disk Utility that is grayed out) and the terminal commands:

mkdir cd (creates a directory as a mount point; any name will do, but cd is a safe and simple one to use)
mount -t cd9660 -r /dev/<device name of CD grayed out in Disk Utility> <name of directory you  created> (the cd should now mount on the desktop so you can use it with Wineskin)
umount <name of directory you created> (this unmounts the cd so you can then eject it normally)

Even with this resolved I haven't yet been able to get working versions of either Warcraft or Diablo.

However, I have had some success with applying Wineskin to solving some Mac-incompatibility problems with software we use at USC.

Oracle Calendar 10.1.2

For many years we have used the calendar originally called CorporateTime and now called Oracle Calendar. There have been both Windows and Mac clients of the software, but the Mac client will not work on Mac OS X 10.7 because it is not a native Intel application. This meant that people were either not upgrading to Mac OS X 10.7, switching to using the less functional web client, or running the Windows client in Parallels. Since Oracle has no plans to upgrade the client themselves I decided that this would be a good candidate for converting with Wineskin. I had a functional beta within an hour. It took a little more time to get full functionality. Because I used the icon from the PowerPC client the final product looks just like an official client and actually works better and faster than the Mac client was on Snow Leopard.

I used the WS8Wine1.3.37 engine with the Wineskin 2.5 wrapper. In options I enabled the Map User Mac OS X folder in wrapper and the Option key works as Alt settings. The Windows client I installed was version 10.1.2. I saved the wrapper after running the app and configuring the Oracle Calendar server settings, so users who download my client can just login without having to do any setup at all. The most complicated thing to do involved installing Gecko. Gecko is required for the in-client help system, but installing it into the wrapper was an exercise in frustration. I finally got it working though.

I decided to provide a FAQ along with the application because (1) the cut/copy/paste keystrokes in the Windows client require the ctrl key while on the Mac you use the command key. So to copy something from a Mac program to the clipboard you use command-c, but to then paste it into the Oracle Calendar you use ctrl-v. And (2) Wine seems to have some issues with multiple monitors, so if you move the application to a secondary monitor it may become unresponsive to the mouse; this doesn't always happen but when it does the only solution seems to be either closing and reopening the application or moving it to the primary screen.

Amdocs ClarifyCRM 13.1

Also for many years we have used the ClarifyCRM client, for which there has never been a native Mac client, for problem ticketing. The Windows client is an old product that hasn't been upgraded in years. If newer versions are available we are not using them. I again had some success getting the application to run within an hour using the WS8Wine1.3.37 engine and Wineskin 2.5 wrapper, but then I ran into difficulties. At doh123's suggestion I turned on warnings and was able to determine that many dll's were reported to be missing. The strange thing is that the dll's were not missing as they were installed by the Clarify installer.  I messed around with it for some time, but eventually resolved it in an unexpected manner. I noticed that many of the warnings referred to "nt" and I knew the application was pretty old. So I went into Wineskin > Advanced > Tools and then used the Config Utility (winecfg) to set the Windows version to Windows NT 4.0. After that the application worked correctly except for the in-client help system. I did install Gecko, but even attempting to open the help causes the application to crash. I was unable to resolve this, but figure that most users are already familiar with the client and would not require the help system anyway.

Update: I was able to get the in-client help to work by using winetricks to add corefonts and in the Wine configuration Libraries tab removing the msvcrt override.

The thing that actually took the most time was to find an image that allowed me to use Img2icns.app to create the appropriate application icon.

As I had done with Oracle Calendar I wrote a FAQ to explain how to use the copy/paste keys and to explain the outstanding issue with multiple monitors.

It was very nice to be able to spend only a few hours and have working Mac versions of these applications.