Basillisk, Linux, and Mac HFS CD-ROMs

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Crusher
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Basillisk, Linux, and Mac HFS CD-ROMs

Post by Crusher »

Hi All! This is a noobie question and may already be answered somewhere, but the search engine chokes on "CD-ROM".

I have Basilisk II (flathub version 1.0.0) up and running system 7.5.3 on Elementary Linux 5.1.7 (Hera) based on Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS. I have a lot of old mac HFS format CD-ROMs (the physical disks) NOT HFS+, just old HFS. I can't get these disks to mount in Linux, but I can use hfsutils to browse and copy the files. This is quite clunky, and in certain cases, I want to access the entire contents of the disk rather than just copies of the files. For example, games that play CD audio. There seem to be breadcrumbs here and there that hint that it's not possible for Basilisk to read the physical disk in the drive.

1. Am I missing something that would enable me to have Basilisk read the physical disk in the (USB) CD drive?
2. If I can't use the real physical disk, what format of image file works best with Basilisk II for old HFS CD-ROMs?
3. Can I use the physical CD-ROM disks with Mini Vmac?
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adespoton
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Re: Basillisk, Linux, and Mac HFS CD-ROMs

Post by adespoton »

Crusher wrote: Wed Jan 06, 2021 3:14 am Hi All! This is a noobie question and may already be answered somewhere, but the search engine chokes on "CD-ROM".

I have Basilisk II (flathub version 1.0.0) up and running system 7.5.3 on Elementary Linux 5.1.7 (Hera) based on Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS. I have a lot of old mac HFS format CD-ROMs (the physical disks) NOT HFS+, just old HFS. I can't get these disks to mount in Linux, but I can use hfsutils to browse and copy the files. This is quite clunky, and in certain cases, I want to access the entire contents of the disk rather than just copies of the files. For example, games that play CD audio. There seem to be breadcrumbs here and there that hint that it's not possible for Basilisk to read the physical disk in the drive.

1. Am I missing something that would enable me to have Basilisk read the physical disk in the (USB) CD drive?
2. If I can't use the real physical disk, what format of image file works best with Basilisk II for old HFS CD-ROMs?
3. Can I use the physical CD-ROM disks with Mini Vmac?
1. Old versions of BII for Windows can read the physical disk; this functionality may or may not still be present for Linux in the flathub build. The main thing that was removed was SCSI support, but you'd need an actual SCSI controller on your computer to use this. What definitively no longer works is physical disk access on macOS. Some level of drive access should still be available on Linux and Windows.

2. For old HFS CD-ROMs, a toast image would work best, but BII should be able to read pretty much any image container with a single HFS partition inside. You can just create an image from the CD on your host machine using dd. There is currently work on a different fork of BII that is integrating bin/cue support so you can mount mixed mode CDs.

3. I don't believe so; in Mini vMac all images are presented as if they are floppy disks, and no physical hardware is available. https://www.gryphel.com/c/minivmac/hard ... ppy_drives
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Cat_7
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Re: Basillisk, Linux, and Mac HFS CD-ROMs

Post by Cat_7 »

The current versions of Basilisk/Sheepshaver for Windows can read/boot Mac CDs. That has been fixed some weeks ago. But I'm not sure about which types can be read.
I did, however, notice that Linux host would not allow me to boot from CD, so reading them while booted from hard disk image might also be broken.

EDIT: It seems I was mistaken, Linux versions boot from CD just fine.

As for macOS: running Basilisk/SheepShaver as root has been an option to read real CDs. Whether that still holds true in the latest macOS, I don't know.

Best,
cat_7
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