Basilisk II

(last updated October 9, 2020)

Basilisk II is an open source emulator of 68xxx-based Macintosh computers for Windows, OS X and Linux. With Basilisk II, one can boot Mac OS versions 7.x through 8.1. Ports of Basilisk II are available for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux and a number of lesser known systems. Users require a Macintosh ROM image and a copy of Mac OS to use with the emulator.

We provide setup guides for Basilisk II for Windows, Basilisk II for OSX/macOS, and Basilisk II for Linux.

We also manage a busy support forum.

• Basilisk II for Windows
• Basilisk II for OSX/macOS
• Basilisk II for Linux

• HFVExplorer 1.31 (used with Basilisk II for Windows)
• System 7 boot disk
• Stuffit Expander 5.5
• Basilisk II Disk Image Chooser (used with Basilisk II for Mac OS X)
• SDL 1.2 Libraries (used with Basilisk II for Windows)
• GTK +2 Runtime (used with Basilisk II for Windows)

• pre-jit Build 142 for Windows (use if you have the “black screen” problem)
• Basilisk II Build 143 Executable (this is for running Escape Velocity Nova. Check the readme for details.)
• pre-jit Build 94 for Windows
• Archive of very old releases for Windows, Linux, BeOS, AmigaOS, IRIX, Solaris, etc

• Basilisk II setup guide for Windows
• Basilisk II setup guide for OSX/macOS
• Basilisk II setup guide for Linux
• Basilisk II build 142 setup guide for Windows
• Printing from SheepShaver and BasiliskII (Windows and Mac OS X)
• Appletalk for Basilisk II for Mac OS X
• Appletalk for Basilisk II for Windows
• Getting online in Basilisk II for Windows
• Essential 68K Macintosh Software

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, a (obsolete) Macintosh emulator for the Amiga, and Basilisk, a (obsolete) Macintosh emulator for BeOS and Linux. The Windows port of the emulator was developed by Lauri Pesonen. At that time it competed with two commercial emulators: Microcode Solutions' Fusion and Emulators, Inc.'s SoftMac.

Later development was lead by Gwenole Beauchesne (site offline).

Beauchesne suspended his development of Basilisk II in April, 2008. Volunteers have contributed bug-fixes since then. Builds based on these fixes are listed here and in the Basilisk II forum.