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:
Really old versions for legacy systems:
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