Run Mac OS 7 or 8 in BasiliskII directly in the WEB BROWSER!

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

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that-ben
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Run Mac OS 7 or 8 in BasiliskII directly in the WEB BROWSER!

Post by that-ben »

Run BasiliskII directly in your web browser thanks to the BasiliskII.js port by James Friend. You can play Sim City 2000 under Mac OS 7.5.3 here: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/emu ... 000URK.dsk or under Mac OS 8.1 here: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/emu ... 000URK.dsk

Emulated machine in the two links above is a Quadra 650 but more Mac models will be added to the page soon.

Quite a nifty way to instantly get your nostalgia vibe if you ask me!
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adespoton
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Re: Run Mac OS 7 or 8 in BasiliskII directly in the WEB BROW

Post by adespoton »

So That-Ben... are you planning to integrate the JS version into your website?
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24bit
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Re: Run Mac OS 7 or 8 in BasiliskII directly in the WEB BROW

Post by 24bit »

Dont want to debase the work of the makers of the Java Script Basilisk II build.
I just feel that the .js based emulator has very limited options and it is slow.
As posted over at Macintoshgarden, you may easily see the difference on an old Windows rig:
https://macintoshgarden.org/forum/in-th ... y-mac-os-8 #31.
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that-ben
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Re: Run Mac OS 7 or 8 in BasiliskII directly in the WEB BROWSER!

Post by that-ben »

Don't mean to necropost, but I literally just saw that you guys replied to my post last year! :P I'm not too good at keeping up with social media, sorry :(

But yes, adespoton, we are working on integrating James Friend's BasiliskII.js port on the MR website. The goal is to have as close to 100% as possible from the 68K software library DIRECTLY playable on the web page, very much like ARCHIVE.ORG did like 5 years ago except they only had B&W 68000 software, now we're trying to get all the 040 COLOR 68K software too. And there is (and will be) no need to sign up or anything like that to use it, just anonymously enjoy the online emulator on MR.

24bit, I fully agree that it is very limited compared to using BasiliskII on a real OS and it has frustrating bugs too, but for a lot of 68K software, I think it's still very useable, especially given the fact that kids nowadays have no clue how to set up BasiliskII and for some of them, it poses a real challenge too. Now with this on the site, people can literally just click on the link and BOOM, they're in. But yeah, BasiliskII.js is unstable at times and some of that 68K library will be impossible to include on the BasiliskII.js emulator too. 16 colors mode is impossible to do with BasiliskII.js which will make perhaps 10-15 titles completely unplayable since those titles cannot even be played in B&W either :(

So since last year, we've manually verified a thousand 68K games on that BasiliskII.js emulator. The process of wrapping HFS games into DSK images is mostly automated, but a handful of people are manually verifying every single one of them before they have the WOW sticker applied :) Apps will follow after games, probably in 1 year... because games are what this emulator makes the most sense for. Producing documents with an office suite in this emulator makes no sense at all, since there is no way to export anything out of this web emulator.

[img]https://www.macintoshrepository.org/img ... rified.png[/img] <-- Image tag is broken? :P

Here's our daily updated 68K web emulation list: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/emu ... verified=1
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adespoton
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Re: Run Mac OS 7 or 8 in BasiliskII directly in the WEB BROWSER!

Post by adespoton »

Producing documents with an office suite in this emulator makes no sense at all, since there is no way to export anything out of this web emulator.
It's something I was discussing with Jeff back when he did the initial port -- it should theoretically be possible to replace the "shared folder" concept with a JS-based upload/download to/from localstorage solution -- that was just really really far down on his list of things to do compared to getting it running and functioning in a manner that would work on archive.org. Do you know if anyone is currently working on the codebase? I seem to recall Jeff stepped back after he got it to the "good enough" stage for archive.org use.
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that-ben
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Re: Run Mac OS 7 or 8 in BasiliskII directly in the WEB BROWSER!

Post by that-ben »

I knew PCE.js was embedded on ARCHIVE.ORG for B&W 68000 Mac software but I wasn't aware that BasiliskII.js was. Do you have an example of it? (URL please)

Unfortunately, from what I can tell, BasiliskII.js has been "abandoned" for at least a year now... There has been an update last year, but it was just code cleanup. Well, it's not replacing the real BasiliskII emulator entirely, that's for sure. Both are interesting in their own way, but the web emulator is completely unusable under any color mode except 256 and millions, which makes many games impossible to try on that emulator, e.g. Irak Attack which ONLY runs in 16 colors mode. I tried to check in the JS code for a way to like patch pixel bits to have 16 colors mode running, but I failed miserably. The mouse is also super janky at times, so arcade games such as Arashi are impossible to play, at least not with a good score!

About that shared folder (you probably meant the "Unix" mount on the desktop) I agree that there has got to be somebody who can route this elsewhere, even if it has to be on a web server, at least there would be a way then to pipe it to PHP and store/read files on the server. Anyway, my mind was blown away when I opened that mount the first time. It actually lets you use 1GB (!!) of storage I guess from your computer's RAM or something, I don't even know how this is possible, but I could manage to install a 100MB game IN THERE despite the fact that my boot hard drive file was only 19MB and only had 300KB free, so this is really nice if you run out of disk space, you know you have a 1GB buffer in the Unix folder. I actually used that storage buffer last year to try a technique that would save server space by compressing a large game into an ISO that contains a ZIP that contains a DSK that contains the game, tied to a boot hard drive file with an Apple Script that automatically executes at boot time, which takes care of unzipping and mounting the DSK and presenting the user with exactly the same result as the DIRECT .dsk file of the same game. That is quite nice since BasiliskII.js can't boot compressed disk images, at least not that I'm aware of, so you can actually save quite a lot of server space when you apply this technique to all your DSK files. e.g.:
+ The original .dsk file is 24.2MB: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/emu ... ection.dsk
+ The compressed .dsk.zip.iso file is 9.2MB: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/emu ... sk.zip.iso
Yes, you read that correctly, it's a 62% file size reduction and the result is 100% IDENTICAL, except a downside is that the user has to wait for a minute or two while the ZIP is expanding :P The other downside is that since the inner disk image is mounted inside Mac OS, it is stored in RAM, therefore the maximum theoretical size of a disk image that can be zipped with this technique is 60MB :( For many titles tough, a disk image is not necessary so this technique could be used to .sit a much larger folder of loose files, e.g. perhaps 500MB of files I guess, but man would it take a long time to expand that .sit!!!
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adespoton
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Re: Run Mac OS 7 or 8 in BasiliskII directly in the WEB BROWSER!

Post by adespoton »

I don't think BasiliskII.js ever actually got deployed to Archive.org -- that's why you can't find it.

Interesting that BasiliskII.js has disk image restrictions; Vasi (I think that's who it was) added support to the main code stream back around 2013 for sparse images and sparse bundles... that'd be a way to eke out a bit more space in the disk image, especially if combined with lzma compression for delivery.
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that-ben
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Re: Run Mac OS 7 or 8 in BasiliskII directly in the WEB BROWSER!

Post by that-ben »

Well, I'm glad you posted your last message, because it made me look further on ARCHIVE.ORG and I discovered they now have Mini vMac II.js emulation for some very early 90's color titles. Last week, I decided to integrate both Mini vMac 68000 and 68020 on MR and boy I'm glad I did! Mini vMac allows for more disk images at once OF ANY SIZE and in a compressed format too! Also, sound emulation is incredibly better than BasiliskII.js AND you can adjust the CPU emulation speed in real time, exactly like you would on Mini vMac under a normal OS!
Comparison:
+ Monkey Island under BasiliskII.js: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/emu ... land-1.dsk
+ Monkey Island under Mini vMac II.js: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/emu ... land-1.dsk

Mini vMac is just incomparable when it comes to 68000 (and now for 68020) emulation. The ONLY thing that svcks is it's only able to do B&W and 256 colors mode. There is no in-between. I am looking for a solution to have one of those 68K emulators play in 16 colors mode, even if it means a different binary permanently stuck in 16 colors mode, that would be great actually. There are a few titles that actually REQUIRE 16 colors mode, therefore as it is right now it's impossible to run in a web page. I also wonder if Mini vMac is also planning on doing 040 emulation.
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adespoton
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Re: Run Mac OS 7 or 8 in BasiliskII directly in the WEB BROWSER!

Post by adespoton »

that-ben wrote: Thu Oct 07, 2021 11:34 am Well, I'm glad you posted your last message, because it made me look further on ARCHIVE.ORG and I discovered they now have Mini vMac II.js emulation for some very early 90's color titles. Last week, I decided to integrate both Mini vMac 68000 and 68020 on MR and boy I'm glad I did! Mini vMac allows for more disk images at once OF ANY SIZE and in a compressed format too! Also, sound emulation is incredibly better than BasiliskII.js AND you can adjust the CPU emulation speed in real time, exactly like you would on Mini vMac under a normal OS!
Comparison:
+ Monkey Island under BasiliskII.js: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/emu ... land-1.dsk
+ Monkey Island under Mini vMac II.js: https://www.macintoshrepository.org/emu ... land-1.dsk

Mini vMac is just incomparable when it comes to 68000 (and now for 68020) emulation. The ONLY thing that svcks is it's only able to do B&W and 256 colors mode. There is no in-between. I am looking for a solution to have one of those 68K emulators play in 16 colors mode, even if it means a different binary permanently stuck in 16 colors mode, that would be great actually. There are a few titles that actually REQUIRE 16 colors mode, therefore as it is right now it's impossible to run in a web page. I also wonder if Mini vMac is also planning on doing 040 emulation.
Nice! As for your last question, no... I don't think he's got plans for 040 emulation. However, QEMU-m68k is coming along nicely and does 040 emulation... maybe someone can build a WebASM version of that eventually?

As for 16 colors mode: I think it should be possible to build a Mini vMac that does 16 colors; I haven't actually checked recently. Might be worth asking Paul if you can't find a setting in the build configs.
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that-ben
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Re: Run Mac OS 7 or 8 in BasiliskII directly in the WEB BROWSER!

Post by that-ben »

I had donated 4 years ago for a custom MacII build, but the way it works is that when you donate, it expires (I think) a couple months after. I don't recall the exact number of days, but it's way past gone by now. I'll have to donate again, but hey, I'll be glad to do so, since Mini vMac is such an excellent piece of software after all. Also, if I can obtain a 16 colors MacII emulator, that would be AWESOME as it would complete the 68K emulation circle. Only question that remains is how to make it WebASM. This, I have no idea how to even do that.
emendelson
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Re: Run Mac OS 7 or 8 in BasiliskII directly in the WEB BROWSER!

Post by emendelson »

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, you simply go this page:

https://www.gryphel.com/c/minivmac/var_serv.html

Click on the menu below Screen Color Depth (Macintosh II only), and select 16 colors. Or am I missing something???
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that-ben
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Re: Run Mac OS 7 or 8 in BasiliskII directly in the WEB BROWSER!

Post by that-ben »

emendelson wrote: Sat Oct 09, 2021 12:17 pm Unless I'm misunderstanding something, you simply go this page:

https://www.gryphel.com/c/minivmac/var_serv.html

Click on the menu below Screen Color Depth (Macintosh II only), and select 16 colors. Or am I missing something???
Where's the Web Assembly compile option tough? How do you end up with a .wasm binary using your method?
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Re: Run Mac OS 7 or 8 in BasiliskII directly in the WEB BROWSER!

Post by emendelson »

Sorry, I lost track of what was needed here. Apologies for wasting bandwidth.
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that-ben
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Re: Run Mac OS 7 or 8 in BasiliskII directly in the WEB BROWSER!

Post by that-ben »

Well, exactly 1 year later, I'll be damned! Mac OS 9 runs in the browser now. This is a fascinating time to be alive.
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