Beta version of new Basilisk II GUI

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

Our member munkymajic developed a new Basilisk II GUI. Public beta versions are available here.

This GUI app is a universal binary that will run on both Intel and Apple Silicon, in macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) through macOS 14 (Sonoma)
Public beta versions are available here to use and test. The builds are notarized.

The latest version is Basilisk II GUI version 0.22.
New in this version:
- Solved an issue in macOS 14 (Sonoma) that prevented adding disk images to the Volumes list
- Earliest compatible macOS version is now 10.13 (High Sierra)

Download version 0.22: https://www.emaculation.com/basilisk/Ba ... I-0.22.zip

Basilisk II GUI is a graphical interface for setting up BasiliskII. See setup manual: https://www.emaculation.com/doku.php/ba ... _osx_setup

[suvayanr]

Is the "Create" button supposed to be greyed out? When will that functionality be available?

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

This is a first beta, not yet even version 1.0, not all planned features are available yet.

If you want to add a new empty volume, you can use Disk Utility to create an empty HFS+ read/write image and add that file to the volumes list in the GUI. When you then launch BasiliskII, you will be asked to initialize the new volume. When you do that, it will be formatted Standard HFS.

[BadGoldEagle]

This is great. It even helped me figure out what was wrong with the high CPU usage/temperature problem on Catalina (See my thread for details).

I only have one suggestion and I don't think it'll be too difficult to implement.
There's at the moment no way to re-order disk images, so if you want to change your boot volume (which I used to do in the old Carbon app by dragging things around in the list) you still have to edit the config file manually in TextEdit.
Apart from that, it's perfect. No glitches to report.

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

Yes, that would be a nice future feature.

In the meantime, our member emendelson created the "Basilisk II Disk Image Chooser", a nice little script utility for managing the volumes list.
http://www.emaculation.com/basilisk/Bas ... hooser.zip

[adespoton]

Is there a Catalina version of this? I just tossed my copy because it's cursed with the (\) overlay.

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

Is there a Catalina version of this? I just tossed my copy because it's cursed with the (\) overlay.

I suppose this is about the Disk Image Chooser?
It is an AppleScript application. You could try opening it in Script Editor and Saving it again.

[adespoton]

Is there a Catalina version of this? I just tossed my copy because it's cursed with the (\) overlay.

I suppose this is about the Disk Image Chooser?
It is an AppleScript application. You could try opening it in Script Editor and Saving it again.

Yes, it is... I guess I should prod emendelson on this one; I seem to recall we had a chat about some of the other applescript tools he and I have done in the past. I just wanted to ensure that the one he's currently providing is Catalina-proof, as the version I had was not. I don't actually use it, just had it for testing.

[emendelson]

Here's a notarized version. I haven't tested it under Catalina because I don't have a standard BasiliskII setup running in Catalina, but I suppose it should work. Can't hurt to try:

http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/Basilisk% ... hooser.zip

Ronald, if we hear that this works under Catalina, could you host it here?

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

No one tried the notarized "Basilisk II Disk Image Chooser" in Catalina yet?

[snowypeak]

I don't know if I am stupid or what, I have managed to emulate a mac on an Amiga back in the 1990's, but this seems a bit difficult.

-basilisk ii folder is in my home folder, and inside that is a Shared folder (with the .smi and .part files)
-I have created the hfs+ image as suggested, and followed the basilisk ii guides.

-I have the quadra rom file added

-I have added the mascsartupos7.img file in the volumes, as well as the hfs+ .dmg image
-i have disabled sound just to be safe
-resolution is 800x600
-68040 selected and 16 mb ram

-The "start" button is grayed out
-If I start basiliskii independently, the emulation starts with a question mark appearing on a picture of disk, like it would like to have a disk inserted.

-Not quite sure what to do next. Please educate me? I would really like to make this work!

-my macOs is 10.14.5 mojave ,retina macbook air 2018 version

Thank you,

Ilkka, from Finland

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

Your issues are not about the new BasiliskII GUI, but about how to set up BasiliskII.
Apparently, you did not follow our setup guide: https://www.emaculation.com/doku.php/ba ... _osx_setup

If you had,
- you would have downloaded the "DiskTools_MacOS8" image as startup disk
- you would not have created a hfs+ volume (System 7.5.3 will not run on hfs+) but you would have created a volume using the GUi app.
- you would also have created an Installer Parts volume using the GUI.

Follow our setup guide.
- The new GUI looks different, but all the same settings are there.
- The Start button is not yet available in this beta GUI. Instead Save the settings, quit the GUI, and Launch BasiliskII itself.
- You can ignore the JIT Compiler settings. JIT is not available in current BasiliskII builds.

[snowypeak]

Thank you, worked beautifully!

[MrBrown]

Hello,

Thank you for the fantastic information and resources.

I am having trouble with creating the two disk images. The create button is grayed out on the GUI software. As suggested I attempted to create images using disk utility and used the add button to add them to my Basilisk II setup. My system is APFS and there is not option for HFS+. I tried the APFS. When I launch Basilisk II it runs but neither disk shows up. Only the disk tools and the unix folder (and the trash can).

Any help getting the disk images to show up will be greatly appreciated.

Best,
Larry

MacBook Pro, OSX Catalina, Retina, SSD

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

Disk Utility in Catalina can make new empty HFS+ disk images, it is even the default suggested format. But HFS+ can only be used in Mac OS 8.1 and later.

For earlier Mac OS versions you will need HFS volumes. I know of no way to create HFS images in Catalina. You can download blank HFS (and HFS+) image files of various sizes here: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/disk-images-emulators

[MrBrown]

Thank you very much Ronald. The downloadable disk images worked like a charm.

Best,
Larry

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

If you are familiar with Terminal, there is an easy workaround. Simply create an empty file with the desired size:

cd to the folder where you want to save the file. Then do:

Code: Select all

mkfile -n 2g Filename.img

2g is the size, 2 GB
For the size you can use b (Bytes), k (KB), m (MB) or g (GB)

Filename.img is the file name.
If you want to use spaces in the file name you need to use backslashes before the spaces or quotation marks around the file name.
File\ Name.img or "File Name.img" will create the file 'File Name.img'

You can add the file to the volume list in the GUI. If the GUI tells you that the volume is "Not Found", you can ignore that. Save the change.

When you start BasiliskII, the system will happily name and initialize the new volume.

[adespoton]

HFS Disk Image Maker as linked somewhere in these forums will make HFS images from a folder in Catalina. I tested it last week, so I know it's still working

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

HFS Disk Maker does not work here in Catalina. I cannot set a size. It creates a 1K file and initializing in BasiliskII fails.

[adespoton]

I may have fiddled with my copy. When I get back to that computer, I'll take a look, and share what I've got

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

I found an app 'HFSUtilsGUI' on my Mac that I forgot about and that works fine in Catalina for creating HFS (and HFS+) disk images. After a search in the forum I found where it was presented here by our member sentient06
https://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewt ... gui#p51502
The download link does not work anymore. I will add the utility to our wiki downloads.

Edit: Download link also here: https://www.emaculation.com/basilisk/HFSUtilsGUI.zip

[adespoton]

Hmm... I think that's the one I was testing; I may have tossed the other once I realized it didn't work on Catalina.

[Ronald P. Regensburg]

Ah, I see now. Both work in Catalina.

HFS Disk Maker works for creating HFS disk image files from folders.
HFSUtilsGUI works for creating blank HFS (and HFS+) disk image files.

[adespoton]

Probably worth mentioning that last week I was playing around with the Homebrew version of HFSUtils and somehow borked disk image filesystem handling in Catalina -- including Time Machine and my virtual Mac OS collection. It no longer recognized HFS+ images. Had to restore from backup from recovery mode (because Time Machine couldn't mount the backups to restore in regular mode).

These tools are MUCH safer than messing with filesystem bundles right now

[sentient06]

I found an app 'HFSUtilsGUI' on my Mac that I forgot about and that works fine in Catalina for creating HFS (and HFS+) disk images. After a search in the forum I found where it was presented here by our member sentient06
https://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewt ... gui#p51502
The download link does not work anymore. I will add the utility to our wiki downloads.

Edit: Download link also here: https://www.emaculation.com/basilisk/HFSUtilsGUI.zip

Hey guys,

I'm glad it works on Catalina, I didn't touch this for a while. The project can be found on GitHub (https://github.com/sentient06/HFSUtilsGUI) but I don't think I ever put compiled releases there as it didn't seem to have an audience. Also, I never quite finished the app, there's a lot of repeated code and possibly some minor memory leaks. All I did was wrap the unix binaries and copy/paste the interface from Mac OS X's Disk Utility, execute the binaries as if from a command line, add some observers and update the UI.

If you think it could be helpful, I can try and compile it on my old Mac and add it to a DMG file to live in the repository. Anyone is welcome to fork it, of course, or integrate into another project, though I suspect not many people are using Objective-C these days.

I had this crazy idea of making an interface to transfer files between the host machine and an HFS image file (like the old Windows app HFVExplorer), but the whole logic behind the interface seemed so overwhelming that this bit never took off.