Basilisk II is the newest of the four major Macintosh emulators. But despite not having enjoyed as lengthy a development process as its peers, Basilisk II is feature-rich, stable, and fast. And it is free. For these reasons, the emulator is more popular than the SoftMac and Fusion (commercially developed) emulators, and the freeware vMac emulator.

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. The development of Shapeshifter was controversial, as Microcode Solutions president Jim Drew claims that it was developed using code stolen from his commercially available EMPLANT emulator for the Amiga. Drew has since developed FUSION for DOS/Windows, a formerly commercial product that competed with the free Basilisk II.

In early April 1999, Lauri Pesonen released the first Windows port of the emulator. For most of 1999 and 2000 Pesonen ported and added features to the emulator on a regular basis. Pesonen has since stopped development on the port, and his final full "build" (142), released on January 20, 2001 will probably be his last. Windows users have gained access to some new features via Gwenolé Beauchesne's "JIT Basilisk II," which is "an attempt to add a dynamically recompiling 680x0 cpu core to the original Basilisk II." This version of the emulator, which Beauchesne has ported to Windows offers users a considerable speed improvement. Presently, however, it is only being developed for Linux and no new Windows ports are planned. In fact, the existing Windows ports are described as "experimental."

Basilisk II is generally recommended to people learning about Macintosh emulation. As it is the most widely used emulator there is a large online community available to answer problems that may arise.

Required Reading

|Article|	|Author|	|Home Page|
Install OS 7.5.3	Marc Hoffman	OS Emulation
Get Basilisk II Online	Marc Hoffman	OS Emulation
Basilisk II for Linux	Marc Hoffman	OS Emulation
Basilisk II Technical Manual	Christain Bauer	Basilisk II Home
Use a Cable Modem in Basilisk II(Dead Link)	B2 Collector	Basilisk II Collection
Beginner's Guide	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
Basilisk II Windows Port (Dead Link)
Basilisk II GUI Install (Dead Link)
JIT Basilisk II

Files

|File Name|	|Size|	|Source|
Basilisk II Build 142 (Windows)(Dead Link - BasiliskII is available from the Emaculation forums)	1.10 MB	Lauri Pesonen
Basilisk II Build 142 Source (Win)(Dead Link - Available from forums)	1.11 MB	Lauri Pesonen
JIT Basilisk II (Windows)	1.7 MB	Gwenolé Beauchesne
Basilsik II - Source	454 KB	Christian Bauer
Basilisk II - Linux	458 KB	Christian Bauer
Basilisk II - AmigaOS	124 KB	Christian Bauer
Basilisk II - BeOS/PPC	219 KB	Christian Bauer
Basilisk II - BeOS/x86	390 KB	Christian Bauer
Copy ROM	8 KB	Philip Cummins
HFVExplorer	405 KB	Lauri Pesonen

System Specs

Emulates: 68040
ROM Required: Yes - 512 KB or 1 MB
Memory: Unlimited
Sound: Supported
Mac OS supported: 7.x - 8.1
Modem Support: Yes
Ethernet Support: Yes
Hard Drive size: Unlimited
Current Version: V0.9-1 (Win - Build 143)
Creator:Christian Bauer
Price:Free
Runs On: Amiga, Linux, UNIX, BeOS, Windows 9x, Windows NT

Screen Shots