As with most emulators and as explained above, SoftMac requires the ROM BIOS from a Macintosh computer in order to properly work. This is both a legal and technical requirement. If you own a functioning 68K based Macintosh computer, you can run a ROM dumping utility (which we supply) on your Macintosh and save its ROM BIOS to a disk file. That ROM file can then be copied to your PC and used with SoftMac and in many cases also used with our Fusion PC 3.0 emulator. The directions for doing this, as well as the ROM dump utility itself are on our SoftMac Online Documentation page. Please check the ROM chart below to make sure you have the necessary model of Macintosh to create the ROM image with. If your ROMs are listed as supported, congratulations, you can skip the rest of this page!

If you do not have a working Macintosh computer or do not have the necessary model of Macintosh computer, you must use ROM card and plug in real Macintosh ROMs into the card which then plugs into your PC. The ROM card which we manufacture has 8 ROM sockets which allows you to plug in two or more sets of Macintosh ROMs at once. This gives you the ability to run SoftMac and emulate multiple Macintosh computers at the same time, each running from a different ROM on the ROM card.

If you purchase our ROM card, you have the option to have us pre-install a set of Mac OS 8 compatible Macintosh ROMs on the card. If you wish to save some money and purchase just the ROM card without pre-installed ROMs, or you are an existing customer with a ROM card already installed, you can add your own Macintosh ROMs to the ROM card. You have several ROMs to choose from depending on what kind of Macintosh you wish to emulate and the kind of Macintosh software you wish to run:

• For running older 68000 software (typically old Macintosh Plus or Macintosh SE software) you will want to use 128K Macintosh Plus ROMs. These can run System 6, System 7, and System 7.5.5, and do support reading high density 1.44M floppy disks and other Macintosh disks. These ROMs easily plug out of any Macintosh Plus computer because they are always socketed.

• The first generation of color Macintosh ROMs are the original Macintosh II series (II, IIx, IIcx, and SE/30). These ROMs support color and are great for running System 7 and System 7.5. They are relatively inexpensive and can be plugged out of most Macintosh II computers because they are usually socketed (except in the IIcx). These ROMs however do not run Mac OS 8 because they are not 32-bit clean and support at most 8 megabytes of memory, limiting their usefulness.

• The second generation of Macintosh II ROMs are the 512K, 1M, and 2M ROMs found in the Macintosh IIci, IIsi, LC series, Centris series, and Quadra series computers. These ROMs are 32-bit clean, meaning they support up to 1024 megabytes of Macintosh memory, they run System 7, 7.5, as well as Mac OS 7.6, 8.0, and 8.1, and are generally much faster and less buggy than the original Macintosh II ROMs. These are the ideal ROMs to run with SoftMac and are the type of ROMs that we install with our ROM cards.

The ROM card can accept almost all types of Macintosh ROMs manufactured between about 1984 and 1992, covering everything from the Mac 128 to the higher end Mac IIci and LC models. Although the card cannot physically accept 1M or larger ROMs due to the shape of those ROM chips, the 512K IIci and LC ROMs work just as well and do support Mac OS 8.

To extract the ROMs and install them on the card, first remove the cover from the Macintosh. Look for the ROMs on the motherboard. They will be a 1, 2, or 4 chip set in a 28-, 32-, or 40-pin package. Most Mac motherboards label the ROM chips right on the board with markings such as "ROM HIGH", "ROM LOW", "ROM HH", "ROM LL", etc.

On each ROM will be part number of the form 341-0XXX or 342-0XXX. The XXX is a 3 digit part number than uniquely identifies each ROM chip. For example, the picture here shows a set of Mac 512 ROMs plugged into the ROM card. If you can read it, note the part numbers on the two chips - the first one is 342-220-A, the second chip is 342-221-A.

Once you unplug the ROMs from the Macintosh, installing the chips is easy. Install the chips in numerically in the order listed in the chart below so that SoftMac will detect them correctly. When installing 28-pin chips, leave empty pins to the left of the chip as pictured above. ROM chips will 32 pins will plug in covering the entire socket. 40 pin ROMs (such as from the LC III) are not supported directly without using additional sockets to sit on top of our card and are not recommended. A ROM image of those ROMs can be used though.

The following is a list of ROMs and part numbers that we've cataloged so far. We will be updating this list as we test ROMs from more Mac models.

For each Macintosh ROM we list the models of computers that the ROM was used in and the unique "checksum" of the ROM. The checksum is displayed by the ROM dump utility and identifies the specific version of the ROM. Apple released dozens of different Macintosh ROMs over the years. For each ROM we also list the type of processor that it supports, the size of the ROM image, the physical information about the ROM chips, the part number, the versions of Mac OS supported by the ROM, and which emulators support this ROM.

Information that is unknown or unsupported is marked with a * symbol.

ROMs that are marked as "jumpers" are not standard 28- or 32-pin ROMs and will require extra installation steps. Installing them yourself is not recommended.

Emulators legend: G = Gemulator 2000, S = SoftMac 2000/Classic/Xpress, P = planned for a future SoftMac release, F = Fusion PC

If you have a Mac not listed here or have ROMs with different part numbers, let us know so we can add them to the list. Give us the model of Macintosh, the year it was manufactured, the type of processor inside of it, the number of ROM chips, the number of pins on each ROM, and read off all the text on each ROM.