It is emulating a Macintosh computer system on your Windows based
computer. This includes the operating system and any Macintosh
software.
Absolutely anything you could do on a real Mac. The main reason
for running a Mac emulator is to run software only available for the
Mac. You can connect to the internet with it, connect to a network,
play games and all software, and open and view Macintosh files. And,
it's just fun knowing you have the ability to do the same thing on
your pc in one program that it takes an entire Mac to do.
Unfortunately at this time emulators can only emulate 68k Macs and
not the newer Power PCs or G-series. This means they can only run
from Mac OS 7.1 to 8.1.
Ok the first thing you need to do is download an emulator.
There's a few you can choose from but the one I'm going to discuss
here is called Basilisk
II. There's a lot of tutorials on installing and setting up
Basilisk and other Mac emulators at http://www.emaculation.com/,
this is where I learned it and if you like you can just go there =)
I'm going to go through a step by step set up and installation
procedure the way I experienced it.
This is what you're going
to need (explained below):
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- The Emulator - download here (Windows 9x/NT/2k version,
even though it doesnt say 9x it works) - A Macintosh ROM
file (different from game roms) - you either need to own a
Mac to get this or you can download one here -
Mac OS (Version 7.1-8.1 depending on your rom) - you
can download 7.5.3 for free from Apple here - HFV Explorer - download -
A disk boot image - download
me! | Ok let me go a little more
into detail on each of these.
The Emulator is pretty
self explanatory. It's the program that you're going to use to
emulate the Macintosh. There's a Linux and Windows version. I'll be
discussing the Windows version here only. The Basilisk II home page
is here,
and the link to the Windows port is above. The Windows version,
although it says NT and 2000 only, works fine on 95/98. You need to
download the correct version for your computer then unzip it into a
new directory (ex. c:\basiliskii\ ).
The Macintosh ROM
file is a little more complicated. The ROM on a mac contains a
small amount of system code which allows you to install an operating
system (similar to CMOS on IBM clones). To legally use the emulator
you have to own a Macintosh pc (which you obtained it from). There's
a lot of ones you can buy for cheap (got mine for $20.50 + shipping)
on ebay. Jim Watters wrote a very
good article on extracting the ROM file which you can find here.
If you use the one from the link above (no that's not mine), you can
skip this process. Depending on which ROM you get decides which
operating systems you can use. The ROM file must be captured from a
680x0 Macintosh system (the 680x0 can be 68020, 68030, or 68040, and
tells what type of processor it is). And must be either 256k, 512k
or 1 meg in size.
Next we have the Mac OS. This is the
operating system for Apple computers and is made by Apple. The only versions that work
with the emulator are 7.1 through 8.1. If you want to use 8.x you
need to have a compatible ROM image (the emulator will tell you if
you do, it's mostly 1 meg images from the Quadra series). If you
don't want to pay anything you can download 7.5.3 from Apple's site
(link above). It's 19 .bin files. You want to perserve these in
their original format so dont try to open them or let the browser
convert them when you download. If you can get the cd or original
disks then the install process is even simpler. Also Mac OS 8 has a
lot of great features and is easier to use then 7.
HFV
Explorer is a small tool that lets you create virtual Mac drives
and also copy files to and from Mac formated drives. You need
this.
The boot disk image isn't required if you have
the cd or disks for Mac OS, but if you are going to use the
downloaded version then you want this.
There's two ways to do this but this is probably the easiest.
First unzip HFV Explorer to a new directory. Then run it. Choose
File->Format New Volume... and you'll be presented
with this screen:
.files/hfv_new.gif)
Fill
in the Volume name. This is what will show up under the drive on
your Mac desktop. You can change this at any time so it's not really
important but I'd do something like "Mac OS 7.5.3". Next
choose a volume size. 50 or 100 megs is plenty for the OS and some
programs, but if you have more space or want more space then go
ahead and make it bigger. Click the ">>" button and it'll
bring up a dialog that lets you choose where to save the drive and
what to name it. Just put it in the BasiliskII directory for
now.
Your screen should now look something like this (with
less drives), noting the Mac OS 7.5.3 Drive at the top:
.files/hfv01.jpg)
If
you're using a cd/disks of MacOS then you can skip to the next
section. If you're using the downloaded version of MacOS then now
you can explore your hard drive and copy the 19 files you downloaded
onto the drive. Just drag them onto it and accept the default
settings in the transfer box that pops up. Since this program has no
status bar you have to wait until the hard drive stops being
accessed or the hourglass cursor turns back into a pointer to know
when it's done copying.
Install and configure the
emulator
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By now you should have all the files downloaded and have the
emulator unzipped into a directory. The first thing you want to do
is go to the directory open \setup\CD-ROM drivers\. Now if
you're running this on Win9x go to that directory and copy
cdenable.vxd to the \windows\system\ directory on your
computer, if NT or 2k go to that directory and copy
cdenable.sys to \WinNT\System32\drivers. Also if
you're using WinNT you need to delete the program BasiliskII.exe and
rename BasiliskIINT.exe to BasiliskII.exe.
Now we need to
configure the software. To help I created a small pop-up window of
the config program. Click here to
view it. Within this window you can click on the Info, General,
Memory, Screen, Disk, Floppy, and CD tabs to change views. You can
also click the close button (on the pic) to close the
window.
Run BasiliskIIGUI.exe. First click on the Memory tab and where
it says "ROM file path" enter your ROM file or browse for it.
You can also set how much memory you want to allocate to the
emulator for running the MacOS. This is the same amount as the MacOS
will have to use to run software. 16 megs is a good amount to run
almost any program, but it never hurts to up it if you have plenty
of ram
in your system. Switch over to the General tab and
here you can define a few more options. Mainly you can choose what
type of processor you wish to emulate and enter what type of ROM you
have. If you have a MacOS cd or disks simply choose the ROM type
from the list and head to the next part (if you downloaded the one
above it's "30 (Mac Quadra 650)"). If you're going to use the boot
disk image you downloaded above, set the model ID to #7. Also
important here is the "68881 or 68040 FPU emulation enabled"
check box. When I tried to install the operating system with this
checked at first I kept getting errors. When I unchecked it and ran
it again it worked fine though. So you may want to uncheck it now or
you can wait to see if you get any errors. Next choose the Screen tab. You can
choose what resolution you wish to run the emulator in here. I
recommend 800x600 or 1024x768, depending on what you have your
windows resolution set to and how big your monitor is. Also running
it in windowed mode works fine, or you can choose full screen (you
can switch between the modes within the program with alt-tab). The
floppy and cd tabs are similar. Just choose the drives you wish to
allow the emulator to access. I recommend doing both your floppy and
your cdrom drive. Make sure you have CD-ROM enabled and if
you're going to install MacOS from the original disks then you want
to have boot from floppy enabled. Finally choose the Disk tab. This is
where you specify hard disks for use in the emulator. You want to
add both System70_boot.dsk and the disk you created earlier
with HFV explorer to the installed disks.
At this point you should be ready to run Basilisk II for the
first time. You can either hit run on the configuration program or
run BasiliskII.exe. If you're installing from a cd/disks make
sure they're in the drive and it should automatically start the
installation. If you're using the downloaded version then you should
boot up to a Mac desktop with two drives in the upper righthand
corner. Open the "MacOS 7.5.3" drive (or whatever you called
it). It should have the 19 installation files.
.files/MacOS01.png)
Run
"System 7.5.3 01of19.smi". A screen will pop up with a
license agreement, hit Agree. It should now start unpacking
all the files. If you experience an error at this point you may want
to shut down and go back to the config and make sure FPU Emulation
is off. Otherwise it should add another icon below your disk drives
that says "Sys7.5 V7.5.3 CD Inst". Open this drive and run
the Installer program. Hit the continue button and a
configuration dialog will pop up.
.files/MacOS02.png)
On
this screen, first at the top click the drop down menu and change it
to Custom Install. Then click the arrow to the left of
System Software to expand it. Check the "Universal System
for any Macintosh" option. And finally at the bottom where it
says "Destination Disk" make sure it has "Mac OS 7.5.3"
chosen, if it has anything else hit "Switch disk" until it's right.
Now just hit install and let it work. When it's complete hit
"Quit" and choose "Shut Down" from the
"Special" menu at the top of the screen.
Ok, almost done! Run the Basilisk II configuration program one
more time (BasiliskIIGUI.exe). Choose the disk tab. Now move
the "System70_book.dsk" back from installed to available
drives. Now choose the general tab. Select the Model
ID of the ROM you have and turn on FPU emulation if you want and
turned it off earlier. Then press Run and your new Mac should
be ready to go!
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