Description...

Basilisk II is an open source emulator of 680x0-based Macintosh computers. Using the emulator, one can boot Mac OS 7.x through 8.1. In addition to Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, Basilisk II has been ported to a plethora of systems... even the the Playstation Portable.

The latest stable releases of the emulator can be obtained from the site of developer Gwenole Bseauchesne.

Development of Basilisk II was suspended in April of 2008, although volunteers have contributed some bug-fixes since then. Check out our collection of unofficial builds for some of those.

We provide a setup guide for Basilisk II, as well as a guide to getting online within the emulated Macintosh. More Basilisk II guides are collected over here.

Power users might want to check out this power pack of emulators. It includes some old versions of Basilisk II which might be helpful in certain circumstances (like emulating a Classic Mac, something that is impossible in the current releases of the emulator).

Some History...

Basilisk II was very popular when this website went online in 1999. It's popularity has waned with the subsequent development of PPC Macintosh emulators, but only a little bit: it can run operating systems and applications that newer emulators cannot.

The initial alpha release of Basilisk II (for the Linux platform) was made on January 23, 1999 by Christian Bauer, who previously developed Frodo, a popular Commodore 64 emulator, Shapeshifter, an (obsolete) Macintosh emulator for the Amiga, and Basilisk I, a (obsolete) Macintosh emulator for BeOS and Linux. At this time it competed with two commercial emulators: Microcode Solution's "Fusion" and Emulators, Inc.'s "SoftMac."

In early April 1999 the first Windows port of the emulator was developed by Lauri Pesonen. For most of 1999 and 2000 Pesonen ported and added features to the emulator on a regular basis. Pesonen is no longer involved with development of the emulator. His final build (142) was released on January 20, 2001. Pesonen's Basilisk website is now offline.

Windows users have gained access to new features via the aforementioned "JIT" version of the emulator, but the Windows release of that project is described as "experimental."

Required Reading

|Article|	|Author|	|Home Page|
Setup guide - Install OS 7.5.3	Staff	E-Maculation
Getting Online in Basilisk II	Staff	E-Maculation
68K Instant Messanger Help	Staff	E-Maculation
Beginner's Guide (old)	Tony Taylor	E-Maculation
Make A Boot Disk	Jim Watters	Emulation Station
Alternative Printing	Jim Watters	Emulation Station
Capture a ROM Image	Jim Watters	Emulation Station
Create a Mac CDR	Jim Watters	Emulation Station
Access a Mac HDF	Jim Watters	Emulation Station
Copy From Win to Mac	Jim Watters	Emulation Station

Links

Basilisk II Home
JIT Basilisk II for Windows and Linux
Original Basilisk II Windows Port (Dead Link)

Files

|File Name|	|Size|	|Source|
Basilisk II JIT (Windows)	1.7 MB	Gwenole Beauchesne
Basilisk II JIT (various Platforms)	Various	Gwenole Beauchesne
Basilisk II JIT (unofficial builds)	Various	Gwenole Beauchesne
old Basilisk II	1.5 MB	Lauri Pesonen
old Basilisk II (various platforms)	Various	Christian Bauer
Copy ROM	8 KB	Philip Cummins
HFVExplorer	405 KB	Lauri Pesonen
System 7.0 Boot Disk	0.97 MB	Marc Hoffman
Stuffit Expander 5.5	1 MB	Jim Watters

Screenshots

page updated 1 October, 2008