“When Steve Jobs announced Apples transition to Intel’s x86 processor line, a huge stir occurred among some Mac OS X users who depend on ‘Classic’ the OS9 environment in Mac OS X for their day to day Mac usage, as Mac OS X on Intel means no more ‘Classic’ and they were right. Rosetta allows PowerPC applications to run on x86 through JIT (Just In Time) architecture emulation, but its translation is not on a low enough level within OS X to allow ‘Classic’ to work on x86 and as such those among us who use OS9 applications have been left out in the cold. Until now that is: a project called ‘Sheep Shaver’ was created to allow BeOS on PowerPC emulate the PowerPC architecture to run another PowerPC operating system on top of BeOS. This application was ported to Mac OS X with the demise of Be Inc. and has since been ported to Mac OS X on Intel processors.”
for at least 2 years, that I know of….
This is not new and definitely is not an ‘until now’ statement….
Had Mac OS 9.0 running at a friend’s place.. he had a mac.. both 8.6 as well as 9.0 . he also has a 9.1/9.2 disc that he wants to use. Sheep shaver was ported within months of tiger’s release i guess. nothing new and ‘untill now’ about it. But the article is worth a look if you are a noob into mac emulation.
Edited 2008-01-04 00:25
So someone takes SheepShaver (an old build rather than the better stuff in CVS, or available as unofficial builds on community sites like Emaculation). Packages it up with a ROM file and OS 9.0.4 and calls it “COI – Classic-On-Intel”, gives it a version number, and puts it on the torrent sites…
And this is somehow news? Geez.
I have only had an Intel based iMac for 2 maybe 3 months now, before that I had an old G4 iBook and a G4 Mac mini that served me well, and since getting an Intel iMac, I found SheepShaver, and attempted to set it up myself but more often than not it just locked up on me.
I have an old G3 Prismo Powerbook and like I said in the article I bought a set of OS 9 install CD’s for my iBook, so as far as reasonably concerned I’m running SheepShaver with a ROM from my Prismo and my own OS9 disc’s as the OS9 install that comes with COI is tripe.
It was more than anything pointing out that there is a pre-configured environment for use if people wish to use it, I chose to take the package and install my own OS9 system on top of it.
As regardless of what most people do, 50%+ seem unable to get SheepShaver to work at all.
Using X11 but still, it has been a while…
Ok, my mistake.. it’s a powerpc emulation… sorry
someone knows the status of qemu ppc on mactel ?
Edited 2008-01-04 01:08
Maybe I’m just too recent a “switcher” but running <10.1 seems like trying to run windows 95c to me. Why bother?
For some people it’s to run some crufty old app that doesn’t work with OSX, other people it’s nostalgia.
I think the people who miss 9.x and earlier are nuts, but different strokes for different folks.
you people dont know your history very well, or like giving credit were its due…..
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Drive/3664/Feb98.htm
”
…
February 7, 1998
Mac OS Runtime Environment for BeOS
A few web sites have news about SheepShaver Mac OS Runtime Environment for BeOS which lets the BeOS run Mac applications. However they say that SheepShaver is a Mac OS emulator. But the creators of SheepShaver say it is not an emulator of the Mac OS! I found this out when I asked the makers of SheepShaver the question “Do the makers of SheepSaver have a license from Apple giving them the right to make SheepSaver look exactly like Mac OS 8?” The makers answered by saying that “SheepShaver forces MacOS to run as a thread of BeOS. What you see at the screenshots is the real MacOS 8. SheepShaver just uses your old installation of MacOS on your Harddisk.” It runs with any version of Mac OS 7.5.2 and greater.
Are there plans to develop SheepShaver for Intel x86 and/or Windows that includes a Mac hardware emulator? The makers said “if we find a fast PPC Emulator for Intel, it should be possible to run all MacOS apps with BeOS Intel.” Their method of running the Mac OS seems very similar to Apple’s method of running the Mac OS (blue box) on Mach/OpenStep in Rhapsody. It also seems similar to Windows95 running on VirtualPC running on the Mac OS. It looks like Mac OS may be coming to Intel, one way or another.
Are there plans to develop SheepShaver for other PowerPC OS’s? Marc Hellwig (one of SheepShaver’s coders) said “Perhaps LinuxPPC (not for sure … a matter of free time).”
What does the name “SheepShaver” mean? Marc Hellwig said “the second coder involved in SheepShaver, wrote a Mac Emulator for the Amiga called ShapeShifter (out of the C64 game archon). At a meeting of Amiga freaks someone called him a “SheepShaver” and we liked this name.”
”
were do you think this Rosetta/JIT (Just In Time) architecture emulation coding idea became popular?, thats right, the Amiga/Emu coders such as the shape shifter,UAE,etc…
its nice to see the other platform coders finally catching up with the past….
Edited 2008-01-04 03:28
OK – so yeah people have said that this isn’t new news, and I agree with them.
I posted two pics on Spymac last year before it turned into a horrible ad site. I was running Tiger on my MBP
See screens here:
http://www.spymac.com/details/?1957689
http://www.spymac.com/details/?1957691
I had absolutely no problems in setting it up at all.
pac
I’ve only been running sheepshaver on non mac intel linux computers recently but its been running 9.0.4 for ages now… cant they update it to 9.2.2 ? I’d be happy to fiddle with it more after that….
I have a ppc g4 cube so if I wanted os9 that badly I’d run it natively… instead it runs leopard server headless hehe
this program just sounds like a prepackaged ss + os 9 for mactards unable to configure their system from a unix background.
Apologies for the use of ‘mactard’ (I do own two macs myself) But mac users are usually in one of two groups (and I realise I probably fall into one of those)
Those that are very competent and those that are totally incompetent (in computer literacy atleast). The windows users have a majority I’d say of falling somewhere inbetween. This application just sounds like a drag and drop way of doing something that people have done for eons.
Great to see sheepshaver still in the news, but wake me up when it can boot the last revision of the classic OS.
Edited 2008-01-04 12:29 UTC
IIRC the reason it can’t use newer than 9.0.4 is because after that MacOS started requiring a Memory Management Unit, which Sheep Shaver doesn’t emulate.
If Classic-On-Intel is a distribution of OS9 itself, it’s an illegal distribution.
I have a Mac capable of booting OS9, therefore I have access to a ROM, and I own Mac OS 9 installation media, so I personally havent done anything illegal as far as I personally know under UK law.
I did mention that without owning an actual G3/G4 Mac and without owning the OS 9 install media COI is of questionable legality.
Now this article can also be used as a guide as a comparision of how SheepShaver performs, and as such SheepShaver comes without a ROM or OS 9.
Apart from the crowd that loves to play with old OSes (more power to you guys) are there anyone who actually *needs* OS 9 anymore? What could anyone possible have to run? And if it really is something very important, let’s say for a business, my advice would be to get a used old mac and do it that way while you fix some replacement software.
OS X is an excellent platform to create software on, if you have a need I am sure there are someone out there who could help.
I still like to run More III for outlining. Nothing like it. I’m still mad at Symantec for dropping it. I run it under basilisk; but there are problems because of endianess of things.
In corporate software ecosystems you often want to run new software (like a new office Package) and old software (your expensive custom written corporate software).
So using old Macs for the old Software would likely mean to have two Workstations on many Desks and that has a lot of downsides. One of them is that the probability of Hardware failure rises with the age of it (and please no anecdotes of 50 year old Macs still working now) and in a corporate environment downtime often means financial loss (you *will* pay the guy at that desk no matter if he does work or just waits for it to show up). It also means twice the maintenance cost and higher power consumption.
So emulation is often a more favorable solution.
I used to work at a company where we had 10+ years old dos software on Windows 2k and i have seen something like that in many places.
Is there anyone who actually *needs* OS X? Unless it is dictated to us, such as in business, the OS we run is by usually by choice. In my case my printer/scanner has certain functions that only work in OS 9. I choose not to replace it because “it just works”.
A lot of people use it to run WordPerfect, see:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/wordperfectmac/
eComStation exists because some companies still need to use legacy OS/2 apps. Similarly, some people have old software or hardware that only works in Classic Mac OS.
I have to use MacOS 8.5 to run scanner software for our SciTex scanner (about $20k). It is hard to find the updated software which runs on a newer version, and the company has been purchased numerous times, so chasing leads goes nowhere. The machine it came with was a dying 8500, parts are scarce for the machine, and it’s dead slow. So I put together a newer dual G4, slapped OSX on it and run SheepShaver to get us by. Everything scans into a nice networked folder, or will as soon as it’s all configured nicely
if you really want MMU emulation then go and take it out of QEMU and i think pear also has some working MMu code, then get to work on finding and intigrating a JIT Altivec to MMX/SSE* mapper , to help optimise the many Altivec memcopy options coming to your PPC linux distros (works great on generic PS3 BTW and getting even better)care of the Amiga like coders in this thread
http://www.powerdeveloper.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1426&postdays=…
finally , collect up all your best x86 hardcore coders and try and make it all intigrate as best you can, to come as close to the altivec clock for clock speed as you can make it, its not going to be anywere as fast but you might get it ‘good enough’ perhaps if you have or know someone with the skills and time/interest to do it …
if you look ,you might even find some cash incentives from the likes of the AROS bountys if your willing to add code to that initative too….
http://aros-exec.org/modules/news/
funny how its still the amiga style coders and what have you that is leading the way in advancing this so called freeware codebase!
Edited 2008-01-05 01:53
In the case u need older software for older OS, the best option would be to install a virtual machine/emulator and install the necessasy OS n apps
http://www.thefreecountry.com/emulators/macintosh.shtml