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Basilisk II
An Open Source 68k Macintosh EmulatorQuick news
- The source code of Basilisk II is now hosted on GitHub.
General information
What is Basilisk II?
Basilisk II is an Open Source 68k Macintosh emulator. That is, it allows you to run 68k MacOS software on your computer, even if you are using a different operating system. However, you still need a copy of MacOS and a Macintosh ROM image to use Basilisk II. Basilisk II is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
For more information, see the README file. If you are interested in learning how Basilisk II works internally, there is a Technical Manual available (knowledge about programming and computer architecture is required).
Available ports
Basilisk II has been ported to the following systems:- Unix with X11 (Linux i386/x86_64, Solaris 2.5, FreeBSD 3.x, IRIX 6.5)
- Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel)
- Windows NT/2000/XP
- BeOS R4 (PowerPC and Intel)
- AmigaOS 3.x
Some features of Basilisk II
- Emulates either a Mac Classic (which runs MacOS 0.x thru 7.5) or a Mac II series machine (which runs MacOS 7.x, 8.0 and 8.1), depending on the ROM being used
- Color video display
- CD quality sound output
- Floppy disk driver (only 1.44MB disks supported)
- Driver for HFS partitions and hardfiles
- CD-ROM driver with basic audio functions
- Easy file exchange with the host OS via a "Host Directory Tree" icon on the Mac desktop
- Ethernet driver
- Serial drivers
- SCSI Manager (old-style) emulation
- Emulates extended ADB keyboard and 3-button mouse
- Uses UAE 68k emulation or (under AmigaOS and NetBSD/m68k) real 68k processor
Download Basilisk II
Precompiled binaries
For announcements of prebuilt binaries for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, head over to the E-Maculation Forums.
Other prepackaged versions of Basilisk II that I am aware of:
- Basilisk II package for IRIX
- Basilisk II package for Solaris 10 SPARC, provided by Luc Pauwels
Really old versions for legacy systems:
- BasiliskII-0.9-1.beosppc.zip Binary for BeOS/ppc (219k)
- BasiliskII-0.9-1.beosx86.zip Binary for BeOS/x86 (390k)
- BasiliskII-0.9-1.amiga.lha Binary for AmigaOS (124k)
- BasiliskII_src_31052001.tar.gz Source tarball, Release 0.9-1 from 2001-05-31 (454k)
Getting the source code
The source code of Basilisk II (and SheepShaver) is hosted in a Git repository on GitHub:To download the current version of the repository via Git:
$ git clone https://github.com/cebix/macemu.git
After downloading and setting up the repository you can, for example, try to compile the Unix version of Basilisk II:
$ cd macemu/BasiliskII/src/Unix $ ./autogen.sh $ make
Help and support
Mailing lists
- The Basilisk II developer's mailing list basilisk-devel is for development-related discussion.
- You can receive notices about Git commits by watching the repository on GitHub.
Forums and tutorials
- E-Maculation - Information and support for Basilisk II and other Mac emulators
- The Basilisk II help forum on SourceForge
- The Basilisk II forum on Delphi
- Beginner's Guide to Emulating a Macintosh