Slow performance in Mountain Lion 10.8

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

Moderators: Cat_7, Ronald P. Regensburg

Janichsan
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Joined: Mon Mar 17, 2014 3:34 pm

Re: Slow performance in Mountain Lion 10.8

Post by Janichsan »

Ronald P. Regensburg wrote:Depends what is important to you. If you want to run some games without severe stuttering, best use the March 2013 build (combined with the October 2011 GUI). However, other things, like the Finder are very slow in that build.

If you do not need to run those specific games satisfactorily, better use the March 2014 build. It is more responsive in most other software.
I want primarily use Basilisk to run some old applications (e.g. Word 5.1a, Lotus 1-2-3), so gaming performance isn't much of a concern to me. While the different versions of Basilisk lag to varying degree, it's in all cases bad enough to make using the apps an ordeal.
Set Window refresh rate to: "Dynamic"

What did you choose for RAM Size, Mac Model ID, and CPU type?

Enable JIT compiler: on
Compile FPU instructions: off
Translation Cache Size (KB): 8192
Enable lazy invalidation of translation cache: on
Translate through constant jumps: on
I set Basilisk to emulate an IIci, 8 MB RAM and a 68040. The other settings are as you recommended, though especially the JIT compiler options do not seem have much (if any) effect on the performance problems I'm seeing..
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: Slow performance in Mountain Lion 10.8

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

Usually best performance is achieved with the Mac Model ID set to Quadra 900, also when you run System 7.5.3 / 7.5.5. (The labeling is confusing. The MacIIci setting will not work with 8.x and up.)

These emulators often need more RAM than a real hardware Mac. Set it to at least 65 MB.
Janichsan wrote:While the different versions of Basilisk lag to varying degree, it's in all cases bad enough to make using the apps an ordeal.
Although it could be better in some respects (especially the stuttering audio and video in games), the March 2014 build is certainly not that bad here, at least not on my 10.8.5 machine. In fact, it even feels snappy for most tasks. Do others have such bad experiences with BasiliskII in Mavericks?
Janichsan
Space Cadet
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Mar 17, 2014 3:34 pm

Re: Slow performance in Mountain Lion 10.8

Post by Janichsan »

Ronald P. Regensburg wrote:Although it could be better in some respects (especially the stuttering audio and video in games), the March 2014 build is certainly not that bad here, at least not on my 10.8.5 machine. In fact, it even feels snappy for most tasks. Do others have such bad experiences with BasiliskII in Mavericks?
There definitely must have been some changes with Mavericks that negatively affect Basilisk. Under Mountain Lion, I had at least the X11 versions running pretty smooth. With Mavericks, they also lag severely, as mentioned.
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: Slow performance in Mountain Lion 10.8

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

Some time next month I will upgrade to Mavericks, then I can see how BII behaves in Mavericks on my machine.

There is nothing most of us can do about the problem. No regular development of BII and SS is going on since 2006. Again, we will have to wait till one of the few programmers who occasionally work on the BII and SS code, has time to have a look at the issue.
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