Notice 2020-10-30

This post is several years old and is now out-of-date. Pre-built binaries are now available from the Mini vMac downloads page supporting Macintosh II with 256 colours.

The original post appears below for posterity.


As I posted some time ago, Mini vMac now supports colour display when emulating a Macintosh II. As I discovered today, however, this isn't as simple as it seems, and many links have gone dead since I last tried, so here are my notes on getting a working install.

  1. Obtain a Macintosh Plus ROM and a Macintosh II ROM. The Macintosh Plus ROM will be required only for bootstrapping purposes.

  2. Download the sources and the pre-built Mini vMac binary from the downloads page. This binary is built to emulate a Macintosh Plus, and so does not support colour.

  3. Install Unarchiver and StuffIt for Linux to deal with StuffIt files. I needed both because Unarchiver sometimes inexplicably refused to extract files, while StuffIt sometimes segfaulted.

  4. Download the System Software 6.0.8 startup disk: SSW_6.0.8-1.4MB_Disk1of2.sea.bin. I needed this because the 7.5.3 Network Access Disk threw an ‘unimplemented trap’ error when run on the pre-built Mini vMac binary.

  5. Unstuff the startup disk:

    unstuff SSW_6.0.8-1.4MB_Disk1of2.sea.bin
    unstuff "SSW 6.0.8-1.4MB Disk1of2.sea.data"
    
  6. Install hfsutils and create a system disk:

    dd if=/dev/zero of=System.dsk bs=1M count=64
    hformat -l System System.dsk
    
  7. Run Mini vMac (the pre-built Macintosh Plus version):

    ./minivmac-plus -r Mac-Plus.ROM "System Startup" minivmac-3.3.3.src.dsk System.dsk
    

    On my system, the graphical display was very glitchy. The rendering errors could be momentarily cleared by pressing Ctrl. These problems disappeared after installing 7.5.3 and configuring the colour display.

  8. Copy the build files from the Mini vMac source disk to the System disk. There was insufficient space on the source disk to complete the generation for me.

  9. Generate the Mini vMac build files using the following options:

    -t lx64 -m II -hres 1024 -vres 768 -depth 5
    

    If you're compiling for 32-bit, substitute -t lx86. Doing so on a 64-bit system caused a segmentation fault for me.

  10. Compile Mini vMac.

  11. Download the 7.5 Network Access Disk and System 7.5.3 installation files.

  12. Extract the Network Access Disk:

    unar "Network_Access_Disk_7.5.sea.bin"
    
  13. Copy the System 7.5.3 installation files to a Mini vMac disk:

    dd if=/dev/zero of=System753.dsk bs=1M count=25
    hformat -l System753 System753.dsk
    hcopy ./*.bin :
    
  14. Run Mini vMac (the compiled Macintosh II version):

    ./minivmac -r Mac-IIcx.ROM "Network Access.image" System753.dsk System.dsk
    
  15. Install System 7.5.3 to the System disk as usual.

  16. After installation, boot into the System disk and access Apple menuControl PanelsMonitors, then change Grays/Black & White to Colors/Millions.

  17. Download the System 7.5.5 update installation files.

  18. Extract the System 7.5.5 installation files:

    unstuff *.sea.bin
    unstuff *.sea.data
    
  19. Run Mini vMac:

    ./minivmac -r Mac-IIcx.ROM System.dsk "System 7.5.5 Update - 1" "System 7.5.5 Update - 2" "System 7.5.5 Update - 3"
    

    I had issues with attempting to switch disks during the installation, so I resorted to loading them all at the same time.

  20. Install System 7.5.5 to the System disk as usual.