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Emulating Mac OS 7.5.5

slooksterPSV

slooksterPSV

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 17, 2004
3,545
309
Nowheresville
How do you guys feel about emulating Mac OS 7.5.5 on a Windows computer? I have this program called Basilisk II and using someones system startup, copying it to the Mac Virtual drive, upgrading to Mac OS 7.5.3 using the free tools off a Mac FTP site upgrade to 7.5.5 afterwards. I've started using the Mac, but it doesn't pick up some stuff. You also have to search for the 68040 PERFORMA.ZIP rom file so that it'll load and that. Since I don't have an iBook yet I'm using that just to mess around. its quite fun + if I had an OS 8 disk I could upgrade all the way to OS 8.6 I think it was. Point of this Thread is has anyone emulated something like that before? Ideas, thoughts of it?
 
slooksterPSV said:
...Point of this Thread is has anyone emulated something like that before? Ideas, thoughts of it?
Click to expand...

It was BasiliskII that got me eventually to switch over to the Mac. I guess it was OS 7.5 that did it for me :D It's the best emulator I've used in a long time, and the best Mac emulator out there. vMac is good, but I've only used it to emulate 128k Macs w/OS 6.

Basillisk has been ported to OS X too, but I haven't played with it.

Oh yeah, since Basilisk only emulates a 68k machine, you'll only be able to use up to OS 8.1, anything more would require a PowerPC processor. Still, with a little bit of research and digging around, OS 8 can still be useable.
 
Yeah, I used to run OS 8.1 on Basilisk II. I actually bought a licenced copy of 8.1, even though I didn't own a real Mac :eek:

It's not as useful these days as it was a few years ago, because it's become very hard to find 68K sofware.

Edit: If you install Linux on your system, you can use SheepShaver to emulate a 604, and run OS 8.6. But the PPC emulation code is incomplete so don't expect every single app to work :)
 
So, speaking of SheepShaver, I've taken a look at it, but it's not compatible with the ROM from my 5260. It needs a PCI ROM, anyone willing to share? :)

Edit: I found that I can use the Mac OS ROM file that's on the OS 8.5 CD :)
 
I've found both vMac and Basilisk II to be horrible at emulation. vMac lacks sound support and good keyboard support (which is essential for playing old games), and Basilisk II just has a ugly and annoying interface and also lacks sound support.

The best emulator I've found (that sadly doesn't emulate 7.5.5... only up to 7.1, I think) is Mini vMac. It's based on vMac, but it's much better supported and it is actually updated. The keyboard support is much better than vMac (so that old games are actually playable), it has fullscreen support (so you don't run into that annoying problem where your mouse moves out of the emulation screen), and it also has sound support.

Of course, Mini vMac only emulates a Mac Plus, so it can only use system software that a Mac Plus can run (up to 7.0.x or 7.1). But it's great for playing those old classics like Dark Castle, Beyond Dark Castle, and Shufflepuck Cafe (all of which run flawlessly in Mini vMac).
 
simX said:
I've found both vMac and Basilisk II to be horrible at emulation. vMac lacks sound support and good keyboard support (which is essential for playing old games), and Basilisk II just has a ugly and annoying interface and also lacks sound support.
Click to expand...

When running on Windows or Mac? I found Basilisk II to be excellent on Windows, although I haven't tried it on the Mac. I'm pretty sure it had sound support. I believe many people consider it to be the best 68K Mac emulator out there.

SheepShaver is looking promising, although it's apparently far too slow at the moment. I don't have a modern Linux PC to test it on, only Virtual PC :eek:

SheepShaver on Virtual PC: PowerPC emulating a Pentium, emulating a PowerPC :rolleyes:
 
Nermal said:
When running on Windows or Mac? I found Basilisk II to be excellent on Windows, although I haven't tried it on the Mac. I'm pretty sure it had sound support. I believe many people consider it to be the best 68K Mac emulator out there.
Click to expand...

I was talking about when running on a Mac. And no, it doesn't have sound support.

I'm just hoping that the developers of Mini vMac are working on a way to emulate a better Mac, like a Quadra or something, that has the ability to run something higher than System 7.1.
 
Maybe the Windows version had sound support. Or I might be mixing it up with something else.

Anyway, Mini vMac should eventually be able to emulate something better, the Basilisk code is open source so they could always just peek at that :)
 
A couple months ago I was trying to get some very classic games to run, so I went around downloading every emulator I could find (we've reached the day of trying to emulate a Mac on a Mac... how ironic), and I agree that mini vMac is the best choice at this point; it's easy to get working and lightweight.

I did have a rather amusing realization in the process of finding system disk images and booting from them: In thinking back to the wonder of getting System 6 running on an LC (my first Mac at home), I can now download an entire OS from a bygone era, including a few apps, from the internet in less than one second. A second to pull an entire OS out of nowhere. Furthermore, I can boot System 6 on my G5 so fast I can barely see it happen--opening Calculator takes way longer! System 7 takes almost a full second to load, though.

How far things have come.
 
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