Seoulscapade

Yes, it’s a Dell.

Not many people are going to be interested in emulating a Mac operating system on a PC, let alone on a Mac. But for those tinkerers out there, like me, here are some tips on how to do it.

It all started when I wanted to run the excellent WriteNow word-editor program again, which I used to use in the 80s and early 90s. For Mactintosh only, it was so simple and effortless to use; writing footnoted documents was a breeze; it was fast and everything just worked. But it became abandon-ware, all development and support ceased. Even today, however, there are still loyal users around. You’ll find some more info on WriteNow here.

So, why the hell should I bother, when I have a host of word programs to choose from? Call it nostalgia, and you can call it obstinancy in the face of everyone telling me that I can’t have something–WriteNow is still copyrighted and hence offically unavailable. After some searching, I did find it here. Don’t be alarmed by the title. It’s OK. Of course, it was made in the days before you needed serial numbers and passwords for every aspect of life. Ah, those were the days.

As suspected, I could not install it onto my iBook’s classic Mac OS 9 environment. The installer kept giving an error. The next step, then, was emulating an old Mac system and installing it on that. After more searching, trying different emulators, and getting nowhere fast, I stumbled on this instruction site, which not only has comprehensive instructions on emulating an old Mac system on Windows but also all the files you will need available for download. The person who put this together really deserves a lot of credit.

The emulator used is called Basilisk II. Now, the process was not without a series of problems. The main one was that with a full install of Mac OS 7.5.5, the system would crash at bootup. This was solved after visiting this site and reading the tip that suggested changing the CPU type to 68020. After I got things up and running I came across the HFV system file available at another instruction site here, which can make the process easier.

With a system up and running on Windows XP, I could now install WriteNow. Using HFVexplorer (available on the instruction site), I simply transfered the WriteNow file over my home network to the Mac system, and then run it to extract and install it. By the way, do not leave HFVexplorer running the background when you fire up Basilisk II, it locks system folders.

In the meantime, I was also playing around with the version of Basilisk II ported for Mac. You can use the files from the instruction sites I mentioned to help things along. But I had a few problems with the Mac Basilisk II. It would often crash or otherwise not boot, giving me the dreaded, flashing floppy disk and question mark icon. Possibly I was doing something or several different things wrong at different times, although I can’t recollect what now.

Eventually, after reinstalling systems several times, I had it up and running and had installed Writenow on that, too. The good thing about the Basilisk II emulator on the iBook is that a Unix icon automatically appears that gives you access to your iBook system so you can copy files back and forth. I was able to copy the installed WriteNow folder across. Some files would not copy for some reason, but these just seemed to be templates or examples of some kind.

Then I exited Basilisk, doubled clicked to run WriteNow and, hey presto, it was up and running in Mac OS 9. I guess that was my thrill for the week.