Tips for a more stable Basilisk

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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starfiretbt
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Tips for a more stable Basilisk

Post by starfiretbt »

Are there any tips or ideas one can do to make Basilisk less prone to Freezing up? My Basilisk freezes up occasionally, is that what crashing is because I thought crashing was when the program ceases? I emulate a system 7.6.1 but I also have 7.5.5 and I use a quadra650 rom. Is there a link for recommended settings in the GUI, because there are lots of options? What causes Basilisk to freeze up? Is it when not enough CPU or memory is available to run the program? If so I will look at my task manager next time.
Also can I keep my volumes in a separate folder instead of my Basilisk directory? The new Basilisk has a LOT of files in its directory and I'm afraid if I download a new Basilisk I might leave a volume in my old one when I delete it.
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adespoton
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Re: Tips for a more stable Basilisk

Post by adespoton »

starfiretbt wrote: Thu Jan 14, 2021 10:36 pm Are there any tips or ideas one can do to make Basilisk less prone to Freezing up? My Basilisk freezes up occasionally, is that what crashing is because I thought crashing was when the program ceases? I emulate a system 7.6.1 but I also have 7.5.5 and I use a quadra650 rom. Is there a link for recommended settings in the GUI, because there are lots of options? What causes Basilisk to freeze up? Is it when not enough CPU or memory is available to run the program? If so I will look at my task manager next time.
Also can I keep my volumes in a separate folder instead of my Basilisk directory? The new Basilisk has a LOT of files in its directory and I'm afraid if I download a new Basilisk I might leave a volume in my old one when I delete it.
What OS is your host system running? If BII is just outright locking up or crashing (as opposed to the Mac OS inside), you should get a system log error on macOS and Linux, and a similar error logged somewhere in the depths of Windows.

To further answer your question though, I'd recommend going through the wiki guide for the recommended default settings. Turning off JIT altogether and turning on "ignore illegal memory accesses" is a good first and second step.

See https://www.emaculation.com/doku.php/basilisk_ii_setup for more guidance.
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Cat_7
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Re: Tips for a more stable Basilisk

Post by Cat_7 »

Are there any tips or ideas one can do to make Basilisk less prone to Freezing up? My Basilisk freezes up occasionally, is that what crashing is because I thought crashing was when the program ceases? I emulate a system 7.6.1 but I also have 7.5.5 and I use a quadra650 rom. Is there a link for recommended settings in the GUI, because there are lots of options? What causes Basilisk to freeze up? Is it when not enough CPU or memory is available to run the program? If so I will look at my task manager next time.
Also can I keep my volumes in a separate folder instead of my Basilisk directory? The new Basilisk has a LOT of files in its directory and I'm afraid if I download a new Basilisk I might leave a volume in my old one when I delete it.
it is not easy to tell why Basilisk might crash. Are you running some software others have had issues with earlier on? Perhaps search the forum?

I believe the current default settings after you downloaded Basilisk are already taking care of most of the potentially problematic settings.
However, it never hurts to check with the guide adespoton pointed to.

Yes, you can keep your hard disk images etc in another location. Just move the files into a safe location and then use the GUI to remove the old volume entries and add the volumes from their new location.

Best,
Cat_7
starfiretbt
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Re: Tips for a more stable Basilisk

Post by starfiretbt »

My Host Operating System is windows 10, Basilisk just seems to freeze and I can't interact with it. Is that called crashing? I see the guide and it has some good information for 8.1, what settings should I use for 7.5.5 or 7.6.1? If you say I can find out what the error is in windows by searching it's depths that would be great. I do turn off Jit compiler
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: Tips for a more stable Basilisk

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

We can judge your settings when you post the content of your prefs file here:
In the folder with BasiliskII / BasiliskIIGUi you will find the prefs file. Open it with Notepad, select the content and copy/paste that in your reply.
starfiretbt
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Re: Tips for a more stable Basilisk

Post by starfiretbt »

displaycolordepth 0
disk D:\TBTol\Games\Mac Emulation\BasiliskII-Windows-23-12-2020\Volumes\install.hfv.dsk
disk D:\TBTol\Games\Mac Emulation\BasiliskII-Windows-23-12-2020\Volumes\Hard Drive A.dsk
extfs
screen win/1024/768
seriala COM1
serialb COM2
udptunnel false
udpport 6066
rom D:\TBTol\Games\Mac Emulation\ROM's\quadra650.rom
bootdrive 0
bootdriver 0
ramsize 134217728
frameskip 0
modelid 5
cpu 3
fpu true
nocdrom false
nosound false
noclipconversion false
nogui false
jit false
jitfpu true
jitdebug false
jitcachesize 8192
jitlazyflush true
jitinline true
keyboardtype 5
keycodes true
keycodefile D:\TBTol\Games\Mac Emulation\BasiliskII-Windows-23-12-2020\BasiliskII_keycodes
mousewheelmode 1
mousewheellines 3
hotkey 0
scale_nearest false
scale_integer false
yearofs 0
dayofs 0
mag_rate 0
swap_opt_cmd true
ignoresegv true
keycodes true
keycodefile D:\TBTol\Games\Mac Emulation\BasiliskII-Windows-23-12-2020\BasiliskII_keycodes
mousewheelmode 1
mousewheellines 3
idlewait true
enableextfs false
debugextfs false
extdrives CDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
pollmedia true
etherpermanentaddress true
ethermulticastmode 0
routerenabled false
ftp_port_list 21
portfile0 C:\B2TEMP0.OUT
portfile1 C:\B2TEMP1.OUT

Thank you for your help
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Re: Tips for a more stable Basilisk

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

Your settings look OK to me.

You could try to increase RAM size from 128MB to 256MB.
Also try Mac Model ID set to Quadra 900 and CPU type set to 68040. (Mac Model ID set to MacIIci is only needed for System 7.x, not for System 7.5 and later.)

Does the freeze occur often? Does it happen with specific programs or actions inside the emulator? Do you keep BasiliskII running for extended periods of time?

The freezing may be a software or system crash inside the emulator rather than BasiliskII crashing. At the time (in the nineties), the Mac OS was not very stable. I remember needing to restart my Mac frequently because of a crash. I would expect MacOS 7.6.1 to be more stable than System 7.5.5.
starfiretbt
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Re: Tips for a more stable Basilisk

Post by starfiretbt »

I think your right, it is the emulated computer. The program Basilisk itself doesn't seem to be unresponsive on my computer's end but I can't interact with whatever I was doing on it. I have been playing "Pax Imperia" and it seems to freeze up more with 7.6.1. than with 7.5.5. The same can be said for "Solarian II." I'm told that the game really should be played on mini vmac but I can't get the program "axis game cheater" to work on that and I don't like the fact that in Pax imperia the number of resources in the game are limited, so I cheat on that part. Is there a program to make 7.5.5 more stable?

EDIT: It wouldn't be so bad but you can only save the game at the end of a turn and if you turn of turn mode you can't pause the game.
My mouse still works in Basilisk, I just can't click on it. Is there a ctrl alt delete for 90's mac's?
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adespoton
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Re: Tips for a more stable Basilisk

Post by adespoton »

starfiretbt wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 6:55 pm My mouse still works in Basilisk, I just can't click on it. Is there a ctrl alt delete for 90's mac's?
There's the interrupt key, from where you can type SM 0 A9F4 <return> G 0 <return>, or SM FA700 A9F4 <return> PC FA700 <return> G <return>

You could also try running your games under SheepShaver or QEMU-PPC using OS 9 -- a surprising amount of old software still runs that way.
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