Basilisk...where am I going wrong?

[LaPorta]

Ok, I have had SheepShaver running for years, but I cannot get Basilisk to run. I've tried the pre-compiled versions, which are about 4 years old, and they won't even run on my iMac with 10.13 on it. I have looked at the versions that are newer that you can compile, but I can never figure that stuff out, there are always 100 errors in XCode, and I don't know what I'm doing. Why does no one just make binaries of these things for everyone to be able to use?

 

[ben68]

If you can run SheepShaver, then Basilisk should work for you. I used the emaculation.com install guide. Here are some notes to myself:

Note that Basilisk and Sheepshaver include a ROM file with the download, because these programs use a highly modified ROM for them to work - and DO NOT work with actual Macintosh ROMs - many of which can be found floating in the Intertubes. While vMac emulates the hardware, using real ROMs, Basilisk/SS patches the ROM. Also, that's why this ROM won't work with vMac, because vMac requires a real ROM.

This is a pretty good install guide.

 

[Gorgonops]

Note that Basilisk and Sheepshaver include a ROM file with the download, because these programs use a highly modified ROM for them to work - and DO NOT work with actual Macintosh ROMs - many of which can be found floating in the Intertubes. While vMac emulates the hardware, using real ROMs, Basilisk/SS patches the ROM. Also, that's why this ROM won't work with vMac, because vMac requires a real ROM.

That's not true. Yes, they do heavily patch the ROM, but they do it at runtime. Basilisk does only work with a limited selection of Mac ROMs and some work better than others (most people use a 1MB ROM from a specific Performa model and that is often linked off the howto sites) but that selection does include most 32-bit-clean Mac II family, LC, and Quadra ROMs. (It doesn't like Powerbook, Quadra AV, or Quadra 580/630-family ROMs.) Same goes for Sheepshaver, which will run with varying degrees of success with ROM files from most beige PCI Power Macs. (Or, in the case of running newer OSes, with a New World ROM image.)

Also note that the main reason BasiliskII and vMac can't use the same ROM image is because vMac normally emulates 68000-based machines (it *does* have a limited MacII emulation mode now as well) while Basilisk *solely* emulates a 32-bit clean MacII or Quadra.

And, also, technically speaking, vMac also patches the ROM. Both emulators replace the ROM floppy driver with their virtual disk driver. BasiliskII just goes further and hacks the video/audio/network drivers as well.

 

[ben68]

What Gryphel says:

The biggest current difference is that Mini vMac emulates the earliest Macs, while Basilisk II emulates later 680x0 Macs. The fundamental technical difference is that Basilisk II doesn’t emulate hardware, but patches the drivers in ROM, while Mini vMac emulates the hardware (with the exception of the floppy drive).

The consequences are that some of the earliest Mac software will run in Mini vMac and not Basilisk II, while much of the later software will run in Basilisk II and not Mini vMac. For software that will run in either, the emulation in Mini vMac can be more accurate, while Basilisk II offers many more features (including color, larger screen, more memory, network access, and more host integration).

https://www.gryphel.com/c/minivmac/faq.html

So you're saying that it's patched in runtime? I thought that I read elsewhere that the ROM itself is patched. But I'm not an expert.

 

[Gorgonops]

It's patched. In RAM, after loading. The ROM file on the drive is the plain binary image pulled straight off the Mac. I suppose in principle one could reduce startup time by a few milliseconds if you rewrote the code to persistently cache the patched version but I've never seen that.

Also note that vMac "emulating" hardware is a pretty optimistic way to describe it. Last I checked vMac mostly just emulates "stubs" for things like serial ports and SCSI so it perpetually looks like there's nothing attached. The most optimistic thing it tries to do is emulate the sound hardware (which is really primitive and nasty in a Mac Plus), with mixed results. vMac also plays tricks with "faking" things like mouse emulation by directly poking into system registers instead of emulating the raw hardware, so their approaches really aren't that different. BasiliskII is mostly more ambitious, because their driver replacements actually *do* allow things like SCSI and Serial ports to work, at least to a limited degree.
 

The consequences are that some of the earliest Mac software will run in Mini vMac and not Basilisk II

There's lots of early Mac software that won't run on *real* Macs in 32 bit addressing mode. The inability to do 24 bit addressing is the primary compatibility limitation to BasiliskII beyond its, well, issues with flakiness. (Some of which can be fairly blamed on the fact that a modern machine running BasiliskII creates an emulated environment that's so far beyond any real MacII-family machine in terms of CPU speed and details like the amount of "VRAM" available, etc, that it's bound to uncover limitations in the underlying software that wouldn't be hit on any real machine back in 1994.)