Multiple instances of Basilisk II ? - Macintosh Garden

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2009, September 10 - 9:00am

#1

bertyboy's picture

bertyboy

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Joined: 2009 Jun 14

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Multiple instances of Basilisk II ?

I would like to set up emulation to provide more than one old Mac OS in Basilisk II.

I have vMac and mini vMac already covered, giving me Systems 6.0.4, 6.0.8, 7.0.1 and 7.1, achieved by just selecting a different boot disk (between 40M and 100M), or by keeping multiple instances of the application folder, with a default disk in each. Prefs for each copy of the app are stored within the enclosing folder.

But I'd also like to achieve something similar with Basilisk II. A System 7.5.3, OS 8.1, perhaps even backwards to Sys 7.1 and Sys 6.0.8. Multiple instances and versions of the app achieve nothing as the Prefs are stored in a single (hidden) file in my home directory.

Has anyone else had a similar situation ? and achieved any form of success in achieving your goal ?

I see two options, maintain multiple preferences files, maybe in the app directory and select the preferred set of prefs at each app startup.
Or get the source and modify the prefs handling to look for a named file in the app directory.

Any other ideas ?

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2009, September 10 - 9:36am

#2

Euryale's picture

Euryale

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Joined: 2009 Jul 22

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I don't quite understand what you want to do,
but in my case, I use SoftMac Emulator w/ System 7.3 and 7.6 for testing new software,
before I transfer them to Basilisk w/ OS8.1
Also, I use SOftMac Emulator to transfer games to a disk image of System 6
for use with minivMac since i don't have stuffit for Sys 6
only problem is that SoftMac doesn't have a sound but it starts faster than Basilisk
that's why I only use it for testing ( I used softmac way before i knew Basilisk)

anyway, I can have Multiple (Actually 2) Instances at the same time
one using SoftMac w/Sys 7.6, and the other using Basilisk w/ OS 8.1

Maybe i'm getting the wrong idea of what you want to achieve.

2009, September 10 - 10:59am

#3

bertyboy's picture

bertyboy

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Euryale,

My poor explanation of what I want to achieve is probably down to being up all night with my new baby. Writing stuff like that in the morning is a bad idea.

Basically I want to have more than one installation of Basilisk II, one to emulate System 7.1, one to emulate System 7.5.3 and one for Mac OS 8.1.
I don't need to run them all at the same time, but it would be good if I could easily choose which System I wanted to boot. So something like a "Basilisk II System 7.1" folder, with everything I need in it, and a "Basilisk II System 7.5.3" folder, again with everything I need in it.

Currently the app stores its preferences in the users home folder. The preferences contain details of the ROM file to use, the disks to mount, etc, etc. So it is very difficult to have more than one system emulated.

I've got the source, and can see the changes I would have to make, but I was hoping someone else had other ideas.

On my Mac Pro, I could run multiple Windows sessions in Parallels, each of them running Basilisk II for Windows. Just another option, but I was hoping for something that would fit on my G4 MDD.

2009, September 11 - 12:50am

#4

watchsmart

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Joined: 2009 Apr 10

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A feature like that has just been added to SheepShaver CVS:

http://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5754

You could perhaps look at the code and implement the same thing for Basilisk II? That would be helpful for a lot of people as it has been very well received by users of SheepShaver. The author of the feature reads that thread and could help out.

2009, September 11 - 8:17am

#5

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bertyboy

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Excellent,

thanks for the link.

The Basilisk II "Load Prefs" button also has a few bugs, some attributes like screen size are not loaded - they default to 512x342, they're dwfaulted before the prefs are loaded, just in case it's not set in the file.

I see in the source that the Windows version doesn't suffer from the same issue as I am experiencing, the prefs file is just called "BasiliskII_Prefs", it's only in the Unix versions that it is explicitly prepended with the users home directory.

2009, September 11 - 8:25am

#6

watchsmart

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Joined: 2009 Apr 10

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That's right. Not being too familiar with your version, I was a little stumped by your question! Windows users don't get many perks (most of the development over the last few years has been for the OS X version), but at least we get that!

If the bundles have been included into SheepShaver, they ought to be easy enough to add to the Basilisk II cvs.