Sorry, I decided to close this thread to avoid problems. This is my dream.

I'm pretty sure Basilisk II dropped support for Win9x a long time ago. But what would be the point to dropping support for Win2K/XPSP1/XPSP2 ? I can't recall ever hearing about a program that only supports XPSP3 for some reason.

Also, I reckon many of those models are already supported if you have the appropriate BIOS ROM. Likewise, as the startup sound is included in the BIOS ROM, I don't know what you mean when you say the startup sound isn't included.

Still in development... Please update it as soon as possible!

It was supposed to be released in near future and this is dream, not true and true when the developers/volunteers are contributing bug fixes/new features/updates for this version.

PelandonFeo,

Apparently you do not understand. Let me explain in more detail.

No regular development of both BasiliskII and SheepShaver is going on since the last leading developer, Gwenole Beauchesne, stopped working on these projects a couple of years ago. The last release versions date from 2006 and Gwenole's web-site was closed in 2009.

Since then, various users with programming skills have contributed to the source code with isolated bug fixes and improvements. The source code is free for anyone to use and compile SheepShaver and BasiliskII for themselves. Because not all users are familiar with building the programs themselves, some more experienced users, among which Cat_7 and myself, have made their own builds available to others. Those builds are announced in the sticky topics at the top in the BasiliskII and SheepShaver forum topic lists. Similarly, volunteers have collected, edited, and written guides and manuals to help less experienced users.

This thread (and a similar thread in SheepShaver forum) was started by sheepmyshaver123 as an expression of what he hoped that the future of BasiliskII (and SheepShaver) would be. However, chances of his dreams to come true are slim. He himself is not a developer and he needs to wait, just like you and just like all of us, till someone with programmer skills will feel the need to fix a bug or add a feature in the source code.


Again, no regular development of BasiliskII and SheepShaver is going on and your request for an update is meaningless unless you ask if anyone reading this forum and who has programming skills would be interested to look into fixing a specific bug or adding a specific feature.

Maybe you should make a step by step lesson for C++ on this website . If people read it , we might actually know how to compile it ourselves! If every member in this forum learns how to program C++ , we might probably continue this project ourselves , making major versions .

I do agree... Sheepmyshaver123, can you please explain why to drop support for Win32 < XP SP3 ?



Here, I think the point is just to have a set of preconfigured Macintosh models, so that someone not interested in hardware details just has to select its favourite compter and press the 'Run' button.
A great idea indeed !



Current version of both BasiliskII and SheepShaver can play a startup sound, but that's a hack because it simply plays a separate sound file, not the one embeded in the ROM the emulation boots from (whereas version 142 of BasiliskII did play ROM's sound).
The idea here is to get things working without that hack.

Compiling the software don't really need programming skills. The readme file that lies inside the source code is usually enough to get things running.


As for learning C++ and contributing to the project... well, that's not that simple. Let me explain with some comparisons :

1. If you decide to learn a random new langage today, how long will it take before you can talk this new langage ?
2. Once you talk this new langage, how long will it take to master it ?
3. Once you master it, how long will it take before you can, say, write a novell using it ?
4. Now choose a random complex science you now nothing about. How long will it take before you have a deep knowledge about it ?
5. Now you now both the langage and science are yours, how many time before you can contribute to the science using the langage ?
6. Ho!, I forgot a small detail : some of the books that could help you to learn the science are either lost or not accessible, and you have to re-discover portions of it.

In our case this is :

1. C++, as all other programming langages, while not that hard to learn, is still a complex thing to get. And its way harder when it's the first you learn. For people willing to learn C++, there's a lot of documentation on the web, just type 'learn C++' in you favorite search engine.
2. It will take months of full time work for someone completely new to programming langages to master a new one. I let you imagine in the case of 'spare time studying'...
3. There is a huge difference between being able to write a program in C++ and being such a specialist as to be able to write something diffult even to personnes fluent with it. (And as I'm really not fluent in English, I'm not sure to be clear here :p)
4. Writing or contributing an emulator is not just about 'talking' C++ (and it can be done in lots of other langages). It is a very specialized niche and as such, you have to be (or become) a specialist.
5. As a professional programmer that likes old hardware, Macintoshes and emulation, I can tick the four first points. Even then, I really cannot afford to spend enough time as to successfuly contribute to this project, just because I 'like' it, I'm not 'found of' it.
6. I'm not sure all details about Macintoshes are well known except by Apple's engineers. Moreover, BasiliskII and SheepShaver are not near-the-metal emulators, they use a lot of tricks in order to be fast that requires software details that need to be reversed engineered.

This was a spoof, this restriction has to been lifted. The future versions of Basilisk II/SheepShaver will run on Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista/7 systems only, not 9x because it's unsupported.

Haaa ... cool ! We can now all dream about this fantastic future version :)

Also, I have to temper a bit what I said in a previous post, concerning necessary skills in order to help in development of both BasiliskII and SheepShaver.
It turns out some of the 'coming soon' features are indeed GUI related, thus requiring much less deep knowledge... this removes one or two steps from the learning curve I depicted...

As long as we're dreaming, here's the feature that I'd like: a secret button that causes a brand new Quadra 840AV to arrive in the mail for free

Sorry, I decided to close this thread to avoid problems. This is my private dream.