Mac OS 8.1: SheepShaver or BasiliskII

About SheepShaver, a PPC Mac emulator for Windows, MacOS X, and Linux that can run System 7.5.3 to MacOS 9.0.4.

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emendelson
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Mac OS 8.1: SheepShaver or BasiliskII

Post by emendelson »

I've been putting together a self-contained Mac OS 8.1 system - I'm not sure anyone has any use for it, but it's a pleasantly distracting problem.

Question: It's possible to put together an 8.1 system in BasiliskII and SheepShaver. Is there any reason to prefer one to the other for 8.1? They both seem reasonably stable, though I think BII boots slightly faster. If anyone knows anything that might help to answer this question, I'll be grateful to know it.
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adespoton
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Re: Mac OS 8.1: SheepShaver or BasiliskII

Post by adespoton »

Having done both myself, I'll tell you my thoughts:
SheepShaver is useful if the intended audience is going to throw all sorts of apps at it, as it'll run most PPC apps with no complaint.
BII is useful because it's simpler to configure on the back end, takes less space, and is slightly faster. There are also fewer things that can go wrong with the configuration both during setup and runtime.

I never use my SheepShaver 8.1 app because I can do more with my SheepShaver 8.6 app. I use my BII 8.1 app all the time, because that's the last version of Mac OS that supports 68K Macs, so there's some stuff that will only run on 8.x, and 8.0 is liable to corrupt the disk image if you look at it wrong.

Usually though, I run SheepShaver on 9.0.4 and BII on 7.6.1.
emendelson
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Re: Mac OS 8.1: SheepShaver or BasiliskII

Post by emendelson »

That's extremely helpful. Thank you. I went public a few years ago with SheepShaver/9.04 and BasiliskII/7.6.1 standalone apps. For no good reason at all, I decided to add a SheepShaver/8.6 system (based on the system I put together years ago for running WordPerfect for the Mac) and an 8.1 system running from either SS or BII. On the basis of what you say, I'll probably go with SS, because this is for other people to use, and, as you say, they're likely to throw a lot of software at it.

Thanks again!
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