13 Jan
2006
13 Jan
'06
4:37 a.m.
On Thu, 12 Jan 2006 10:47:36 -0800
"J. Peterson" <pdp11 at saccade.com> wrote:
I've been having loads of fun with BasiliskII over the past
several days. It allows me to try all kinds of Mac stuff off the
actual Mac, which actually preserves the Mac hardware. Each hard
drive image file that you create can be it's own 'Mac'
environment, and you can duplicate an image before trying
anything risky in a particular environment. Next, I need to add
a SCSI interface to this machine so I can easily transport these
'environments' over to a portable Mac hard drive and thence to
the Macs themselves. The drive image files themselves can be
'frozen' and stored on CDR or DVD+R media. It all nicely
complements everything else that I've done recently to preserve
MacOS operating environments.
I will note that BasiliskII is a SERIOUS resource hog. I left it
run yesterday while I was at work and when I got home the Unix
'top' utility indicated it had consumed 19 HOURS of WCPU time!
It ties up 40-80% while running, which is unheard of for most
Unix user code.
I still use a number of 68K apps I picked up for a
song because they do the
job, they're fast, and they were cheap. I'm not giving that up so easily.
I've had great luck with BasiliskII running on Windows. Even funky older
68K programs work (like my own "Wallpaper for the Mind", that compiles code
and jumps to it on the fly).
I found BasiliskII a few years ago when I wanted to set up a time-lapse
photography station, and use an old Mac as a camera controller. I didn't
want to drag the Mac back and forth to work to test the software, so I
developed it under BasiliskII running on a Windows laptop.
I just set up (and ran!) an appropriate vintage copy of Code Warrior under
BasiliskII and tested the camera controller with it, including the serial
port access. Later I found I could access my old Mac files by popping a
SlimSCSI card into my laptop, and using BasiliskII to access my old Mac
SCSI drives (including a Jaz). Need to get something off an old Mac
CD-ROM? No problem! It's like having 1992 in a window.
What's really funny is how much -faster- the old System 7.5 stuff runs
under this emulator on modern 1Ghz hardware. Mac OS boots in a second or
so; amazing to watch after all that time a dozen years ago waiting 30-40
seconds on the original Macs.
Although it requires a separate "disk" file (unlike Classic on Mac OS,
which shares the filesystem), I've found it to be a more complete 68K mac
emulator than running "Classic" on Mac OS X.
Some links:
- Basilisk II homepage: http://basilisk.cebix.net/
- Windows port: (download) http://www.oldos.org/howtos/mac68kemu.php
- Windows w/JIT compiler: http://www.gibix.net/projects/basilisk2/
- Nice documetation (shareware): http://os-emulation.net/basiliskii.html
Cheers,
jp