Can Basilisk II also use .zip and .dmg images?

About BasiliskII, a 68k Mac emulator for Windows, MacOSX, and Linux that can run System 7.x through MacOS 8.1.

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NavyBrat
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Can Basilisk II also use .zip and .dmg images?

Post by NavyBrat »

As many of us know, it can be hard using only .dsk or .img files for our emulators on an Intel Mac because many of the newer OS X versions can neither create them nor move files to them.

I was wondering if Basilisk II could also use .zip and .dmg images? I thank you.
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: Can Basilisk II also use .zip and .dmg images?

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

The OSX .zip format cannot be used in older Mac OS systems, so it cannot be used with these emulators.

Disk images in .dmg format can be read by SheepShaver by adding them to the volumes list in SheepShaver preferences, provided they are in read/write format. See also our SheepShaver setup guide.

Possibly also in BasiliskII (i never tried it), but then only when running MacOS 8.1 in BasiliskII. Earlier MacOS versions will only read volumes in HFS format, not HFS+ format that is used in .dmg images.

Edit: I removed your same question in SheepShaver forum.
Last edited by Ronald P. Regensburg on Tue Jun 21, 2016 7:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Jorpho
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Re: Can Basilisk II also use .zip and .dmg images?

Post by Jorpho »

Someone posted an app that supposedly allows OSX .zip files to be used in emulators.
http://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewto ... f=1&t=8322

You can also kludge the same result using HFV Explorer.
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: Can Basilisk II also use .zip and .dmg images?

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

Another usefull utility is HFS Disk Maker. It creates a HFS disk image from a folder or file in OSX. The image can be mounted in BasiliskII and SheepShaver by adding it to the volumes list.

http://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewto ... f=1&t=8337
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adespoton
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Re: Can Basilisk II also use .zip and .dmg images?

Post by adespoton »

Just to clarify a bit further:
DMG and Zip are both archive formats.

Files that end in .zip are usually PK Zip archives, as popularized on Windows. Their contents include a header that partitions the rest of the file, followed by individual headers for each archived item, which then has the compressed (or not) data following each header. This format works well for compressing a directory structure, and is also used for compressing individual files. Paul of Mini vMac created an application that will run under System 7 or later that will decompress OS X Zip format, as mentioned in the previous post. Zips can't be mounted as a filesystem, however.

Files that end in .dmg are usually UDIF (Universal Disk Image Format) images. Their contents include a partition table, which is one of: Apple Partition Map (used on older Disk Copy images), Universal CD/DVD, none, GUID partition map (used on Intel OS X), Single partition CD/DVD, Universal HD, or ISO9660 CD. After the partition table, if it exists, is one or more filesystem partitions. Currently by default this consists of a single Journaled HFS+ filesystem. It can also be ExFAT (Extended File Allocation Table), Case-sensitive HFS+, Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+, plain OS 8.1-era HFS+,MS DOS FAT, FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, or UDF (Universal Disk Format - Unix).

Disk Utility images can actually come in a number of formats: The following all end in .dmg:
Read-only, Compressed (ADC), Compressed (normal), Compressed (bzip2), Stub, Read/Write (the one the emulators can use), Disk Copy 4.2 (even though we normally use .dc42 or .img for these), NDIF read-write (Disk Copy 6), NDIF compressed (Disk Copy 6), NDIF compressed (KenCode), Read/Write whole disk (no partition table).

Beyond this, there are some formats that have their own extension: .sparse for sparse partitions and disks, .sparsebundle for bundles of image slices (partition or disk), .cdr etc. for DVD/CD images of various formats, .ipod for ipod flash image files.

As a result, you can possibly create a .dmg file that is a DC42 image containing whatever you want, and if you add it as a virtual disk in the prefs, it will be presented to the emulators as an unformatted disk. BII can format it as HFS, after which, starting with OS X, the image cannot be used for booting, and beginning with OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), it can only be mounted read-only and cannot be updated via Disk Utility.

I believe you can also do this with an NDIF read-write image. You can also, of course, create a CD image that goes the other direction: you can edit it on OS X, but it is read-only via the emulator.
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NavyBrat
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Re: Can Basilisk II also use .zip and .dmg images?

Post by NavyBrat »

Thank you Mr. Regensburg, Jorpho, and Adespoton. You are all very kind and it's very appreciated. I'll be sure to try all of your suggestions and software and post with the results. I thank you so much again.
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