UneasySilence.com has a guide on how to use SheepShaver to run Mac OS 9 on an Intel Mac. “Who said you can’t use MacOS 9 because you have an Intel Mac? It is completely possible with a little bit of tinkering, and a really cool universal application called Sheep Shaver, which came to us via a tip from Kazaki. Sheep Shaver is a full speed ‘Classic’ emulator for Windows, Linux, and Intel based Macs, that runs older MacOS’s at shockingly full speed!”
The article implies full-speed emulation regardless of CPU type; this is misleading. From SheepHaver’s website:
“If you are using a PowerPC-based system, applications will run at native speeds (i.e. without any emulation involved). On other systems, SheepShaver provides the first PowerPC G4 emulator, though without MMU, to enable the execution of MacOS Classic. Performance with the current CPU emulator using basic just-in-time (JIT) translation techniques is roughly 1/8-th of native speeds.”
Is that 1/8th the native speed of a PPC Mac?
Or 1/8th the processor speed of the Intel Mac running it?
Because one would think on a dual core MacPro or MacBook, that one would see speed that would smoke a 233mhz – 400mhz G3 iMac.
It’s a shame Sheepshaver couldn’t tap into Rosetta.
Is that 1/8th the native speed of a PPC Mac? Or 1/8th the processor speed of the Intel Mac running it?
I’d have to assume 1/8th the Intel processor speed. The other way doesn’t make sense, since 1/8 of a PPC Mac isn’t defined since there’s a range of processors.
And for the other post, “shockingly full” to me means it runs fast, but not necessarily ‘full’ speed. Maybe my reading was colored since I know that emulation can never be full speed so I didn’t take it as such. Maybe the author meant ‘full, as in as fast as period hardware’?
Edited 2006-08-21 16:28
I know that emulation can never be full speed
Linux emulation on NetBSD can be run at full speeds. I beleive that they have been documented faster on netbsd emulation than native linux. Obviously this isn’t on all software though.
.adam.
True for FreeBSD also, some apps have been documented as running faster under FreeBSD than Linux.
Yes, emulating Linux/x86 on NetBSD or FreeBSD/x86 may make it faster. Try emulating Linux/PPC apps on NetBSD/x86. OS 9 PPC is both a different operating system AND a different processor architecture than OS X/x86, so your comparison is far from apt.
I still remember Sheepsaver from the PPC version of BeOS and the Amiga… and that brings up one question: Since when has sheepsaver worked on non-PPC/68K processors? Must have missed the memo on that one…
Given I’ve been using Basalisk II for testing legacy apps in the Wintel world, I’ll have to see if Sheepsaver is any better/worse now that it’s cross-processor.
Back in the day Sheepshaver worked on BeOS/PPC only, but it did work on Linux/x86 apparently.
http://sheepshaver.cebix.net/
SheepShaver was ported to x86 Linux first around 2002 by Gwenole, and was later ported over to Mac OS X (PPC) then Windows. It was ported to Mac OS X for Intel earlier this year using remote compilation, as the developer didn’t have a MacIntel.
Note that SheepShaver for x86 came out about a year before the PPC emulator PearPC showed up on the scene. But SheepShaver never reached the publicity that PearPC quickly had.
Sheep Shaver is a full speed ‘Classic’ emulator
There are two problem with this sentence:
1) Functional:
“Classic” was not an emulator and hence ran at native speeds
2) Semantic:
Mac OS 9 is not “Classic”. The first is an OS version, the second is a virtualization application/ambient provided by Apple with Mac OS X and previously with Rhapsody on PPC chips.
nda
Edited 2006-08-21 17:17
I wish there was a solution for running OSX PPC under OSX Intel, for testing whether universal builds are really working universally, without the need for a separate PPC test rig…
I wish there was a solution for running OSX PPC under OSX Intel, for testing whether universal builds are really working universally, without the need for a separate PPC test rig…
Shouldn’t PearPC be able to do this?
i thought there was an option to force an app to run under rosetta? i could be wrong, dont have an intel mac in front of me
Yes there is. You right click on the application, click “Get Info”, and then enable “Run under Rosetta” or something like that. This is the same as Classic and Native apps under OS X. Appleworks, for instance, ran under OS 9 and OS X natively from the same .app file. I was able to explicitly tell it whether to open natively in OS X, or in Classic mode. It is the same thing.
Nice articles lately Thom. Pure news, no fooling around. Really glad to see. 🙂
just some additional info… before you try it… it supports currently upto MacOS 9.0.4…