About GBA4iOS Emulator. As of today, there is a new emulator for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch: The so-called GBA4iOS 2.0 emulates Game Boy Advance on the iOS device. Since Apple would never allow such a gimmick, the installation is carried out via the Safari browser. Without any jailbreak.
Want to run yesterday’s Macintosh software on your modern Mac or PC?
Works on iPhone and iPad. No jailbreak needed for iOS 11-13 Free and Open Source UTM and its dependencies are all free and open source Easy to Use Configure and customize your VM in a native UI Console Mode Run headless server VMs in a native terminal. Software: Emulators. I've created macOS versions of a wide selection of classic computer and console emulators, covering all the major systems from the eighties and nineties. These are available free of charge from this website. I'd love to list them on the Mac App Store, but unfortunately this is not possible.
Since my DOSBox post, where I demonstrated classic MS-DOS software, I’ve wanted to find and use a classic Mac emulator to experience the classic Mac experience – to run classic Macintosh software, experience the user interface and see what has and hasn’t changed.
The Macintosh operating system’s history is often split into two sections: the classic Macintosh OS, and the modern macOS. macOS has evolved since Apple introduced it back in 2001 as Mac OS X, but it is very different from its precursor. (For instance, macOS is based on BSD UNIX; the classic Mac isn’t.)
The website E-Maculation is dedicated to classic Macintosh emulators.
There are three “main” classic Macintosh emulators: Mini vMac, Basilisk II and SheepShaver.
Mini vMac emulates compact Mac models (such as the Macintosh Plus, although it also supports models from the 128K to Classic.) Therefore, you’ll only get a black-and-white display and limited power.
SheepShaver, on the other hand, emulates the PowerPC-based Macs. In 1992, Apple started switching from using the Motorola 68K processors to the PowerPC chips. The PowerPC chips were designed by the AIM Alliance (Apple, IBM and Motorola) and were used until 2006. SheepShaver is the best option if you want to run Mac OS 8 or Mac OS 9.
Basilisk II, the software I’m going to be demonstrating, fits snugly in the middle. It still emulates a 68K-based Mac, but emulates a modular model that was capable of displaying color, offered more power and could run later versions of the Macintosh hardware. Specifically, Basilisk II mostly emulates a Macintosh Quadra 900 (circa 1991) running System 7.5.3 (circa 1996.)
With all of this out of the way, let’s talk about getting our emulator up and running.
Installing/Configuring Basilisk II
Unlike DOSBox, where everything came ready-to-go, Basilisk II requires a lot of work to get it up and going.
I decided to install Basilisk II on my early 2014 MacBook Air, running macOS 10.14.5 “Mojave.” Not only are you running a Macintosh emulator on a true modern Mac, but I found installation was somewhat easier on a Mac.
I’m not going to provide step-by-step configuration instructions. For that, E-Maculation has you covered. They have the detailed instructions for configuring Basilisk II in macOS here. They also have instructions for use with Windows and Linux.
Radioboss para mac. Basilisk II requires downloading a ROM file to work. Because the classic Macintosh operating system only works on a true Mac (whether it be a true Apple Macintosh or, later, a clone) it requires this ROM file to start and work.
In addition, Basilisk II requires downloading the operating system files (obviously) and setting up a place to store the files and setup an emulated drive volume.
Once you get everything set up and the Basilisk II GUI configured properly, you can then start the Macintosh and install the operating system.
After running the System 7.5.3 installer and allowing the software to copy the files onto the system volume, the emulator will restart. Then, System 7.5.3 is ready to go.
You can adjust settings to your liking, such as enabling color and installing software.
Acquiring Software
Speaking of installing software, you will need to either download software or copy them from your own library.
For someone like me, who doesn’t own any classic Macintosh software, there are some websites out there archiving classic Macintosh software. The one I frequent is Macintosh Garden – which has a lot of classic Mac games, utilities and productivity software.
Most files are preserved in StuffIt compressed files. Most of the time, uncompressing the file will reveal an outdated disk image that requires conversion using the macOS Disk Utilities utility. After conversion, you can access the disk image contents and drag the files into the folder that can be accessed in the emulator.
Now, let’s take a look at some software I tried out. I tried to find and try the Macintosh version of the software I used in my DOSBox demonstration.
Software Demonstrations
All of these can be found on Macintosh Garden, where I found them. Click the header to go to the Macintosh Garden page for that program.
Arnold’s MIDI Player
In DOSBox, one of the first programs I tested was a MIDI player that used DOSBox’s OPL2 emulator. DOSMID was what I expected… and DOSBox’s OPL2 emulator wasn’t that good.
For the Mac, Arnold’s MIDI Player (AMP) is a good option. AMP uses QuickTime to actually produce the music. AMP provides a GUI for playback controls (unlike DOSMID) and other views, such as a synthesizer view, track listing, karaoke, etc.
One nice thing about AMP is I could import my entire MIDI library and open any file I wanted – no renaming needed. While DOS required each file to be renamed (to have a filename of 8 or fewer characters), Macintosh didn’t have the same requirements.
I recorded AMP’s output for a couple files. Below is AMP’s rendition of the William Tell Overture, along with the recorded version from DOSMID running in DOSBox.
AMP has a feature for recording audio to a .mov file through QuickTime. Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to find a way to open the file using modern software.
Therefore, recording the output was tricky. First, I tried using Soundflower. (Soundflower is a macOS utility that records the system’s sound output.) While Soundflower worked for recording a couple songs, it stopped working about three or four songs in. (Soundflower is very touchy and unstable, at least on recent macOS versions.)
I ended up recording the sound output using the MintTin and Audacity.
Ford Simulator II – 1990
In DOSBox, I tested Ford Simulator 1988. Ford Simulator was a program released every year by the Ford Motor Company to provide details about their vehicles, offering a “virtual showroom.” Ford Simulator 1988 even included a driving game.
Ford Simulator II isn’t much different from the 1988 DOS version, although the user interface is obviously different for the Macintosh – and the vehicles have changes. There are more vehicles in Ford Simulator II for the Macintosh.
Ford Simulator II only consumes the top left corner of the screen and is only in black-and-white. The program was likely written for compact Macintosh models – such as the Macintosh SE – which were more popular at the time the program was written. (Considering the program released in late 1989, the only color Macs at that time were the Macintosh II, IIx and IIcx.)
Ford used the simulator to provide information about each model. In the “Electronic Showroom,” many Ford/Mercury/Lincoln models are available with a graphic and description. The “Buyer’s Guide” section allows you to view in-depth details about all Ford/Mercury/Lincoln models offered in 1990, with their specifications, options, window sticker and even a spreadsheet for making financial calculations.
Like the 1988 DOS version, Ford Simulator II has an “Infocenter” section, which has details about many of the features Ford offered on their vehicles in 1990. The Macintosh version includes nice graphics and animations about many of the features.
Ford Simulator 1990, just like all of the other Ford Simulators, includes a driving game. Unlike the 1988 DOS version, the Macintosh version is much trickier to play.
Lastly, Ford Simulator II has a feedback section. Garageband project. Users could fill out the form on their computer, print it out and send it Ford.
Aldus PageMaker 4.0
Now that we’ve bought a “new” car, let’s do some work.
One of the things I’ve done a lot of is page layout. I’ve always used Adobe’s InDesign page layout program as opposed to Quark XPress, although at one time I did get to play around with Quark XPress.
Before Adobe InDesign, there was Adobe (Aldus) PageMaker. PageMaker was a very early page layout program, released in 1985 for the Macintosh (the PC version was released in December 1986.) Quark XPress, on the other hand, was released in 1987.
Desktop publishing is one of the things that put the Macintosh on the map. With it’s advanced GUI, users could easily produce page designs, illustrations, slideshow presentations, etc. quicker than before. With this, many applications for desktop publishing were released for the Macintosh in the 1980s – from PageMaker to PowerPoint and Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
PageMaker 4.0 was released in 1990 for the Macintosh, with a PC version following in 1991.
As with other WYSIWYG page layout programs of the era, samples and lessons were included to allow users to learn the program.
Many features found in PageMaker 4.0 can also be found in modern page layout programs like InDesign and Quark XPress. Color swatches, paragraph styles, grids, guides, etc.
PageMaker 4.0 also included samples for different types of publications, such as newsletters and cards.
Unfortunately, unlike modern page layout programs – there is no option for publishing the document as a PDF. I tried to “print to PDF” but that option was unsuccessful.
Lemmings
Perhaps one of the most popular game titles of the late 1980s/early 1990s, Lemmings was released on almost every platform. From the IBM PC, Commodore 64, Apple II, NES, SNES, and many other gaming consoles, there was a Lemmings version for that platform.
The Macintosh also had its own version.
Gameplay is almost identical to the MS-DOS version. The levels, graphics and controls are very similar.
The biggest difference is the music and sounds. I prefer the Macintosh version’s music and sounds over the MS-DOS version.
Tetris
In addition to Lemmings, Tetris was another popular title from the late 1980s/early 1990s that made it on to almost every platform available.
Gameplay of Tetris is no different from what you would find on any other version – back then or now. (In other words, there is not much to discuss here.) It’s just bricks that you can rotate and position by using different keys on the keyboard.
The thing that I did like about the Mac version are the nice backgrounds.
Oregon Trail
Now to a game that almost every kid born between 1980 and 2005 has likely played… the Oregon Trail.
I was too young to experience the Apple II version of this game, but I did get to experience the graphical Windows XP version in elementary school. It was a very fun game, and I can remember my class spending a lot of time playing the game.
Now I got to experience the Macintosh version.
The Macintosh version of The Oregon Trail is very similar to the Windows XP version I played in elementary school. The graphics, interface, gameplay and almost everything else was identical to what I remember.
Obviously, the interface is nice. I liked how there was a map of the route with the landmarks you would pass on this version. I also liked how you could do things like “take a rest” at any point – instead of waiting for the game to catch up at a river or landmark.
One interesting thing about Oregon Trail is how it affects the desktop wallpaper. The desktop wallpaper will rapidly change colors at the splash screen, and will also display a slightly different color while playing the game. While likely a bug, it’s actually a pretty bug.
This concludes my demonstration of Basilisk II, a classic Macintosh emulator that allows you to enjoy the classic Macintosh operating system along with its software from the comfort of your modern computer. Although installation is more difficult when compared to DOSBox, Basilisk II is compatible with almost all games that were compatible with Macintosh System 7.5.3.
In-Browser Emulators
If you just want to play around in the classic Macintosh environment and some period software but don’t want to install an emulator or go through the hassle of setting one up, there are options – although its more limited.
James Friend created PCE.js – a website featuring an emulator of a Macintosh Plus running System 7 in black-and-white mode. There are a couple different emulators, one with many different games and programs, one with just KidPix, etc.
As previously mentioned, these in-browser emulators have many limitations. Friend’s emulators are emulating a Mac Plus – which only offers black-and-white graphics. Also, since it is in-browser, there is no way to upload files to (or download from) the emulator.
But there are a lot of upsides to the in-browser emulator. There is no need to download or install any emulation programs like Basilisk II, SheepShaver or Mini vMac. The in-browser emulator also runs comfortable on mobile devices. The screenshots were taken using my iPad. Navigating around the emulator and using it on the iPad was very easy, and it ran fine with no real hiccups that I encountered.
Since the in-browser emulator is emulating a Mac Plus, the graphics are very similar to what you actually would’ve found on the ubiquitous “Compact Mac” models of the late 1980s. Color graphics, higher-resolution displays and other “luxuries” didn’t come until 1987 with the introduction of the Macintosh II – which itself was extremely pricey.
Overall, emulators are a great way to experience the computers of yesterday without actually owning one. Vintage computers are often expensive and unreliable, especially vintage Macs. While it is fun to own older hardware, this is the next best thing…
Emulated on the early 2014 MacBook Air.
Windows Update (August 6, 2019)
Today I finally got the Windows version of Basilisk II to work on my ThinkPad W541 (daily driver machine)… somewhat.
After checking my volumes and installation again, I tried things one more time. I managed to get a black box to appear, but nothing inside. I was unable to close the black box, forcing me to force quit out of it.
Apparently, I’m not the only one with this problem. Emaculation said that the solution is to use an older, more stable version of Basilisk II.
After downloading Basilisk II and starting a new system volume from scratch, things went more smooth. This time, I got the infamous Macintosh start up chime followed by the blinking question mark. There’s something wrong with the system volume, as it isn’t seeing it.
Going back to the settings screen and comparing it with the one found on the Emaculation installation guide, I found the problem. I mounted the wrong disk file. After fixing this, the Mac “booted” up.
Once the emulation began, the system software installation process is identical to running Basilisk II on a modern Mac.
After “ejecting” the system install disk and restarting the system, it was official.
But I noticed some oddities. After changing the display settings to color, the desktop pattern chooser only displays black-and-white options. When changing the color setting back to gray in the “Monitors” system preferences window, everything but the Apple menu icon remains in color – although the system should be displaying in grayscale. Really odd.
It works, but not very well. Obviously some odd issues here and there. Office 2019 compatibility with windows 7.
Installing Basilisk II on my daily driver was something I wanted to do as it makes things just much simpler. For instance, audio recording. The output of DOSMID in DOSBox was easily captured as I was running the emulator on my ThinkPad W541, which runs Windows 10 – which allows you to record the sound output from your computer without any cables, dongles or third-party programs. (Which is nice, since most modern computers don’t feature a microphone or line-in jack.) Unfortunately, macOS doesn’t have anything like that without installing a third-party app like Soundflower. As I mentioned previously, Soundflower is fairly unstable and can even cause the entire system to crash. So to capture the audio from Basilisk II/Arnold’s MIDI Player, I had to plug my MacBook Air into my MintTin.
The second reason I wanted to install Basilisk II on my daily driver is the convenience. I could easily open it up and start playing without having to go and grab my MacBook Air, which my dad uses as his daily driver. When I return to school in a couple weeks, I will no longer have easy access to the MacBook Air.
But it seems like Basilisk II is more stable and easier to setup and run in macOS, at least in my experience.
While likely best left to a separate post, I was planning on bringing the late 2014 MacMini out of retirement/storage to be my main Basilisk II host. (Kind of like how the T42 is my main DOSBox host machine.) But, unfortunately, the late 2014 MacMini still refuses to boot.
Basilisk II on macOS Catalina (August 3, 2020)
When I first received my 2019 MacBook Pro back in March, one of the things I tried to install was Basilisk II. However, I wasn’t able to install it. I gave up after tinkering with a beta setup GUI designed for Catalina and using a third-party app to create the HFS volumes for the virtual machine to run from.
Thankfully, tonight I was able to get Basilisk II to run on Catalina. Turns out the whole issue may have been the fault of your’s truly rather than an incompatibility with Catalina. Last time I forgot to extract the System 7.5.3 setup files. Now all is well.
From the announcement made on November 10th, 2020, users have had high hopes for the new Apple M1 devices. With its powerful Apple Silicon processor smashing benchmarks all over the place, users and developers were both asking if a native Dolphin build would be possible. Now we have the answer.
Apple's M1 hardware is incredibly powerful and excels at running Dolphin. This announcement has been in the works for some time, eagle eyed users may have noticed that earlier this month macOS builds were now being designated as 'Intel'. That's because delroth and Skyler had set up a new buildbot using a service called MacStadium for creating Universal macOS binaries. These builds are available immediately and natively support both macOS M1 and Intel macOS devices.
Tackling macOS on ARM¶
It is an understatement to say that Apple dropped a bomb on the PC industry with the M1 ARM processor. ARM is a Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) architecture that was specifically designed for efficiency with portable devices. With a tight instruction set instead of the ever ballooning mess that is x86, ARM was able to get away with literally less processor while performing optimized tasks, giving it exceptional power efficiency. However given unoptimized workloads, an ARM processor would need many more cycles to perform it than an x86 CPU. All combined, ARM was the processor of choice for battery life in portable devices, but when pushed they had poor overall performance compared to Intel's x86 processors. It was a processor for casual things like phones, and not really meant for 'real work'. But that is the past.
Intel's iron grip of process superiority has long slipped, and the ARM instruction set has carefully expanded to more efficiently handle more tasks while not sacrificing power efficiency. Yet even with ARM reaching datacenters and even some interesting hardware giving us a glimpse at what could be, ARM's reputation as being weaker than x86 has remained firmly entrenched.
But with M1, Apple has completely shattered this foolish notion. Not only can the M1 perform the same tasks as their former Intel processors, they can do it faster even when using their Rosetta 2 translation layer! All of this while still providing considerably better single threaded performance compared to Intel. Let's just say they had gotten our attention.
We immediately put it through its paces. Using the Rosetta 2 translation layer with Dolphin's x86-64 JIT, the M1 easily ran most games at full speed and handily outran like-class Intel Macs. The experience wasn't entirely smooth due to jitter from Jitting a JIT, yet the processor proved itself more than capable of handling Dolphin. But the fact it had to do it through a translation layer was a huge performance bottleneck. Developers thought, why not just use Dolphin's AArch64 JIT for native support? And thus, the race was on as several people tried to figure out the hurdles of getting Dolphin's AArch64 JIT to run on the M1.
Unfortunately, getting the AArch64 JIT to work wasn't exactly trivial. Apple requires W^X (Write Xor Execute) conformance for native macOS M1 applications. What it does is make it so that areas of memory must be explicitly marked as for WriteorExecute, but not both! Because it's easier and hasn't been forbidden on any of the prior platforms that Dolphin supports, the emulator previously just marked memory regions used by the JIT as for WriteandExecute. This requirement from Apple is mostly a security feature to prevent bugs in programs that read untrusted data from being exploited to run malware. Outside of emulators, the primary place that you'll actually see self-modifying code is web browsers, which is often a vector for attack on a computer.
This was thankfully a lot less strict than on iOS devices, which strictly forbid mapping memory as executable whatsoever and made iOS untenable for us to officially support. Apple even provides documentation for helping developers port JITs to macOS on ARM. Skyler used a method described in the documentation that would change the mapped memory between Writeable when emitting code to Executable when executing code. Since Dolphin wasn't designed for this, there were a few hiccups along the way, but eventually everything was massaged into working with the new restrictions.
Once that was out of the way, the focus shifted towards maintainability and setting up the infrastructure. Beyond getting it to run correctly, this was by far the hardest challenge to official M1 support. Dolphin's infrastructure is rather complicated and sensitive to changes. Moving macOS builds over to a universal binary (x86-64 and AArch64 all in one) along with getting the hardware necessary to build macOS universal binaries was a challenge and could have proven to be an expensive endeavor. In the end, MacStadium made the move extremely inexpensive by providing us with free access to M1 hardware, so we were able to focus on making Dolphin's buildbot infrastructure handle the new builds.
Putting the M1 Hardware To The Test¶
So now that it runs, you're probably wondering how does it run. There's a few things we need to keep in mind. Dolphin's AArch64 JIT isn't quite as mature as the x86-64 JIT. While things aren't as bad as they were a couple of years ago and compatibility should be roughly the same thanks to efforts from JosJuice, it is still the less complete of the two JITs.
One of the differences is instruction coverage. Any PowerPC instruction that isn't included in the JIT has to fallback to interpreter, which costs a huge performance penalty. Most common instructions are covered by both JITs at this point. There is one important feature missing in the AArch64 Jit, though: memchecks. Thankfully, this only affects Full MMU games such as Star Wars Rogue Squadron II, III, and Spider-Man 2. There are some niceties missing from AArch64 JIT, too, like JitCache space reuse used to prevent spurious JitCache flushes.
AArch64 does have its advantages, though. Namely, the processors have 31 registers, compared to the 16 available in x86-64 processors. The PowerPC processor we are emulating has 32 registers, and while it is rare for all of them to be used within a single code block, more registers is always nice to have. Another difference is that AArch64 and PowerPC have 3 operand instructions while x86-64 only has two.
As you can see, it makes emulating some instructions much cleaner and easier than on our x86-64 JIT. Alright, enough with the boring details. How does the M1 hardware perform when put up against some of the beasts of the GameCube and Wii library? We also included data from two computers featured in Progress Reports previously for comparison.
There's no denying it; macOS M1 hardware kicks some serious ass. It absolutely obliterates a two and a half year old Intel MacBook Pro that was over three times its price all while keeping within ARM's reach of a powerful desktop computer. We were so impressed, we decided to make a second graph to express it.
The efficiency is almost literally off the chart. Compared to an absolute monstrosity of a Desktop PC, it uses less than 1/10th of the energy while providing ~65% of the performance. And the poor Intel MacBook Pro just can't compare.
Taking Things a (Lock)Step Further¶
After doing strenuous performance testing on the macOS M1 and its Apple Silicon, it was clear that it was powerful. The problem is that if you give developers a new toy, they eventually decide to push things further and further. This was the first time we got to see Dolphin's AArch64 JIT really stretch its legs on something other than a phone or tablet with an ultra aggressive governor that's also limited by graphics drivers. What is the absolute worst idea that we could come up with given this new found power? Netplay.
This was the real test to see if the AArch64 JIT and x86-64 JIT truly equals. We couldn't exactly test this before because the Android GUI lacks netplay support, but macOS runs the desktop version with no compromises. That includes having full netplay support. Now, testing this was mostly a joke because there are tons of differences between the JITs. Everything from instruction coverage to known rounding errors. The chances of this working was next to zero. But there was no reason to stop and think if we should - technology had made it so we could.
And it actually worked! We just can't be certain exactly how well yet due to limited testing. Every single game we've tested on netplay so far has managed to synchronize, albeit with Dolphin's desync checker giving a false positive. Testers have tried everything from Super Smash Bros. Melee and Mario Party 5 to things like spectating The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. All of the sessions stayed in sync.
This might not be true for all games. Up until earlier this month, games like Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, F-Zero GX, and Mario Kart Wii would immediately desync due to physics differences. Thanks to the work of JosJuice, those rounding bugs in the AArch64 JIT and interpreter (..we'll get to that in the Progress Report) are now fixed, meaning these games should at least have a chance to sync on netplay.
Macos Ipad Emulator Free
Because of limited libraries, we don't have a great idea of what games will work and what games are problematic. As a stress test, Techjar and Skyler played the Super Mario Sunshine Co-op Mod. The physics calculations in Super Mario Sunshine are extremely sensitive to CPU rounding bugs and it provided a tough test for both JITs. Oh yeah, they also enabled the 60 FPS hack just to make things even more interesting.
Macos Ipad Emulator Download
Everyone knowledgeable on Dolphin's JITs thought that cross-JIT netplay would be impossible, at least without tons of dedicated fixes. Yet here we are, able to experience it first hand. And it can only get better from here, as we are now able to monitor and test JIT determinism on netplay. While you might be excited to dive right in, it's important to note that we were only able to test a few games and we have no idea what compatibility will look like when unleashed on the wider library.
Note:Yes, we're aware that Windows and Linux AArch64 devices existed before the M1. There was no allure to testing netplay on those because they could not run Dolphin reasonably. We really didn't expect this to work or we probably would have tried it sooner.
In Conclusion¶
There's little else we can say: The M1 hardware is fantastic and higher tiers are on the way promising even better performance. But what we have is already efficient, powerful, and gives us a mainstream AArch64 device that isn't Android and uses our AArch64 JIT to its fullest potential. The only big downside is the proprietary graphics API present in macOS that prevents us from using the latest versions of OpenGL and forces us to use MoltenVK in order to take advantage of Vulkan. That is a very small price to pay to get a glimpse at some really cool hardware that redefines what an ARM processor can do. There's undeniable excitement for the next generation of AArch64 hardware to see how much further that this can go.
Nintendo Emulator For Ipad
EDITORS NOTE: A small error was noticed in our 9900k performance testing. This has been corrected. However, the differences are very minor and do not affect our conclusion.