unable to boot BII after a crash

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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: unable to boot BII after a crash

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

chelim78 wrote:unable to suspend mac activity : temp. rises to 80°C, mac tries to read a CDR or DVD every about 30 s.
Is this only when BasiliskII is running or also without BasiliskII running?
BII starts only if I click "start" button on BIIGUI (I mean BII clicked from the dock, from applications Folder or from BasiliskII folder).
It is strange that BII cannot be launched by directly double-clicking its icon. Are you sure you try this on the application that is in the same folder with the BasiliskIIGUI application?
Note that double clicking does not anything when trying to browse files in BIIGUI:Volumes:Add.
The GUI application is a port from a Linux application and does not behave like normal Mac applications. But double-clicking in the left column to browse and in the right column to finally select a file should work.
When BII is started, BIIGUI window disappears but this app. does not quit. I have to quit from the dock.
Yes, it does not quit by itself.
When running Mail + TextEdit + Firefox + a software with BII, I noticed that the % of process. used by WindowServer goes continuously up and down and up and down, and temp. and fan do the same. So I tried to reduce BIIGUY:Widow refresh rate from Dynamic to 30 hz. This caused some improvement. At 15 hz it was even better.
BasiliskII uses a lot of CPU time. It is better to have it not run permanently, only launch it when needed and quit when done. Setting the window refresh rate to lower levels will reduce the CPU use, but cursor movements will become less smooth. Whether this is a problem depends in your use of BasiliskII
But the best of all is running BII without OS 10.6 extensions : fan runs at 1800 - 1900 rpm and I can keep Mail, TextEdit, Firefox (low intensive websites as wikipedia, dictionaries) all open together.
Not sure what you mean with OS 10.6 extensions. Maybe the fan problem is there rather than with BasiliskII.
I have another question : is it possible to install in OS 753 disk a software from a set of floppy disks ? Do I have to declare those 9 volumes in BIIGUI:volumes ? Of course there is only one floppy disk at a time in the floppy driver.
There are two ways to try:
1. Create disk images from all floppies and add those images all to the volumes list.
2. Make folders out of the floppies by option-dragging the icons of the mounted volumes and make sure the folders are together in the same location in BasiliskII.

Some installers will work with one or both methods. But installers that insist on ejecting a disk before inserting the next one will not work. I know of no workaround.
chelim78
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Re: unable to boot BII after a crash

Post by chelim78 »

Ronald P. Regensburg wrote:unable to suspend mac activity : temp. rises to 80°C, mac tries to read a CDR or DVD every about 30 s.
Is this only when BasiliskII is running or also without BasiliskII running?
with or without BII running, even after safe boot of OS 10.6.8
Ronald P. Regensburg wrote:It is strange that BII cannot be launched by directly double-clicking its icon. Are you sure you try this on the application that is in the same folder with the BasiliskIIGUI application?
They were both in the Applications Folder. I just put them in the BII folder but the problem remains.
Ronald P. Regensburg wrote:The GUI application is a port from a Linux application and does not behave like normal Mac applications. But double-clicking in the left column to browse and in the right column to finally select a file should work.
... but it doesnot.
Ronald P. Regensburg wrote:Setting the window refresh rate to lower levels will reduce the CPU use, but cursor movements will become less smooth. Whether this is a problem depends in your use of BasiliskII
I'm testing every refresh rate value.
Ronald P. Regensburg wrote:But the best of all is running BII without OS 10.6 extensions : fan runs at 1800 - 1900 rpm and I can keep Mail, TextEdit, Firefox (low intensive websites as wikipedia, dictionaries) all open together.
Not sure what you mean with OS 10.6 extensions. Maybe the fan problem is there rather than with BasiliskII.
I mean safe boot of OS 10.6.8 (shift on)
Ronald P. Regensburg wrote:But installers that insist on ejecting a disk before inserting the next one will not work. I know of no workaround.
Unfortunately it's this kind of installer. So I made a copy of all the files of all floppies in a folder of Unix disk, then clicked on Installer to install the software on MacOS753 disk. The installer is not able to find some files that are in the folder, so the installation is not complete, but this doesnot seem detrimental for my use.

BTW do you think the HD error
4HDD/11/40000004:SATA(0,0)
is dangerous ?
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: unable to boot BII after a crash

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

So you have at least two instances of double clicking not working, launching BasiliskII and navigating in BasiliskIIGUI. Something weird is going on on your machine. Do all other double-clicks work as expected?
chelim78 wrote:BTW do you think the HD error
4HDD/11/40000004:SATA(0,0)
is dangerous ?
I do not know what the error means, but I would not trust a HD when a hardware test produces an error about it. Small problems on a disk can easily evolve into large problems.
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Re: unable to boot BII after a crash

Post by chelim78 »

Ronald P. Regensburg wrote:So you have at least two instances of double clicking not working, launching BasiliskII and navigating in BasiliskIIGUI. Something weird is going on on your machine. Do all other double-clicks work as expected?
In fact double-clicking is efficient in MacOS753, but not in OS 10.6. For opening an application one single click on an icon in the dock works. In finder 2ble-click does not work, I use command-down arrow, or mouse right button to access "open" in the menu.
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Re: unable to boot BII after a crash

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

Whatever it is, software issue or hardware issue, that is not how it should be.
(Settings in Mouse or Trackpad System Preferences? Some third party utility that affects Finder behavior? Your mouse or trackpad itself?)
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Re: unable to boot BII after a crash

Post by chelim78 »

it's a mystery, but I dont mind (mabe should I ...)
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sentient06
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Re: unable to boot BII after a crash

Post by sentient06 »

Hello.. I don't know exactly what are the problems you have related to, but I can share some of my own experiences.

If the fans go mad because of the temperature, it may be the graphic card. It becomes clear when you try to run a game, for example. I have a 2008 Macbook PRO which came with a problematic NVIDIA card. When it over-heats, the card becomes damaged and the user experiences issues with the display going completely black or the mac not even booting (I had both problems). The solution for me was to install a freeware called SMCFanControl and keep the temperatures bellow 70ºC. It can become noisy sometimes, so I shut down any graphic-demanding application.

The sleep issue happens often in "hackintoshes" and is normally related to the HD. Some PCs have some trigger that defaults the AHCI to disabled and somehow the sleep action activates that trigger. Sometimes these PCs don't go through the whole boot process and the user must reset in the BIOS. In a real macintosh, I suppose a real HD damage could interfere in the correct workflow of the sleep process.

Basilisk II often doesn't boot properly depending on the encoding of the preferences file and an application bundle can fail if there are spaces in the application's path and it uses some sort of Unix command with arguments. My guess is that maybe your application bundle is damaged somehow and hence won't start (maybe related to HD damage?).

Also, if your mac isn't supposed to run Lion, I understand the system can behave unexpectedly sometimes. Remember Lion doesn't support PPC applications, perhaps you are using the universal build? In this case try an intel-only. I have a mac with Mountain Lion that doesn't seem to like Universal builds very much. They run, but are slow and don't behave very nice.

Also, try to run with a clean preferences file. Backup yours and try to change memory values and things of the sort. Perhaps the host system is demanding regarding memory and must use virtual memory frequently, which can lead to slow performance because it uses the disk too much. It helps to close all other applications. And beware of the "Ignore Illegal Memory Access" in case you are short in memory.

For the mouse, check the double-click speed in your system's preferences. Maybe the emulator and the host OS are calculating the time-span between clicks differently.

Hope anything here can be useful. Cheers mate!
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Re: unable to boot BII after a crash

Post by chelim78 »

> sentien06

Thank you for your comments. Even if I am not able to understand each of them, I try to learn more about hard- and software.

I have installed SMCFanControl. As far as I can see, I can only controll fan minimal speed. When playing video (e.g. youtube), temp. uses to raise at 80 °C or more, sometimes 90°, but this doesnot seem to damage the machine (?)

I dont suspend anymore activity when I do suspend mine, since this drives the mac crazy. I just shut down.

I run Snow Leopard (10.6.8.) and. 2011.oct.10 intel only BII.

I'm testing different preferences in BIIGUI, especially widow refresh rate.

For the mouse, you're right, I just done my first successfull 2ble-click in OS 10 after checking the speed in the two OS.
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sentient06
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Re: unable to boot BII after a crash

Post by sentient06 »

Hello chelim78,

I'm sorry if I was not clear enough. I'm afraid to simplify stuff too much and accidentally sound condescending, you know? But I'll put in simple words a few stuff that I guess I didn't make myself too clear.

Sorry I thought you were using Lion, I thought I read it somewhere. But that's not important then.

One problem I often face in my job is: people don't know how to manage computer memory.

You see, the computer uses the memory to access immediate information. All information you see on your screen was probably processed at some point and the processor puts everything in the memory. When you close an application, the memory used is released. The modern operating systems use virtual memory. It means that when the memory is clogged and nothing else fits there but the computer needs it anyway, it gets the older memory data and drops this data into the hard drive in a special place. The problem is that action requires the processor to write to the disk and later on, read from it, and it takes time because the disk is much slower than the processor. Also, if the disk is nearly full, there is not much space left for virtual memory or the files are so fragmented that the computer must split all information in different parts of the disk. This way it slows down a lot and people often complain of slow computers when all that is happening is that a lot of memory is in use and they don't know how to fix it.

This is why I suggest you close everything. You said you have 2GB memory. Well, Snow Leopard's requirement is about 1GB. So you have 1GB left. Not too much, in my opinion. You can limit Basilisk's access to memory, but be sure you have all memory you need free.

About the encoding of the file... depending on the software used to save a file, a different encoding can be used. Encodings are usually used to readability of special characters. Since Basilisk's preferences file is basically a text file, it could happen it has a wrong encoding. The wrong encoding could mess the line breaks, for example. I found that out when I saved manually a preferences file using "Sublime Text 2" with the wrong encoding and my Basilisk would not work.

If you want to make a test.. open terminal, find your preferences file and use this:

file -I preferences_file

If it returns something like "text/plain; charset=us-ascii", it should be fine!

About the sleep thing, I mentioned hackintoshes, which are normal pcs running a hacked version of osx. The AHCI is a very low-level setting that defines how the computer must work with SATA disks. This is not really important, but the important part is that it somehow relates to the sleep workflow, I don't know why or how they relate to each other, but could be a clue for sleep issues.

Don't get too mad about the fans, and remember the SMCFanControl app makes the fan velocity stuck. Shut it down if you wish the system controls it normally, but don't panic, if the fans are noisy, it means they are working! =D

I hope it all can be useful. Don't be afraid of changing Basilisk's preferences, is a great way to learn more about it. Just keep the important data and settings backed up somewhere.

Cheers!
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Re: unable to boot BII after a crash

Post by chelim78 »

Hello Tinkerer !

Back to BII after a break…

Thank you very much for all your explanations. I have tested different settings. Concerning what I do with BII, the best is to begin with a "safe start" of OS 10.6. This allows to run all the apps I need besides BII (Mail, TextEdit, Firefox for a few websites). This way I never hear the fans anymore !
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