Compatibility: This is emulating Mac OS 9.2.2, released in late 2001. The emulated hardware is more or less of the same vintage, meaning software from the mid-to-late 90s will have some trouble running (as I found). The most common problem is not being able to drop down to 256 colours, although I later found a solution (link below). Apple Mac OS 9.2.2 for Mac. Free Apple Mac/OS Classic Version 9.2.2 Full Specs. Average User Rating: 2 User Votes 4.0. Out of 2 votes. Download Now Secure Download.
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What is SheepShaver PPC emulator (for Windows + Mac OS X)? SheepShaver is a PowerPC (PPC) emulator which allows you to run Mac OS 7.5 up to Mac OS 9.0.4 on various platforms, such as on Windows. SheepShaver started as a commercial project in 1998 but is now open source since 2002. SheepShaver is not perfect (it cannot run MacOS 9.1 or 9.2), but enables users to run the vast majority of PPC software for Macintosh on their PC, which is all things considered, extraordinary, especially back in the year 1998. This bundle was put together by 'that-ben' and is intended to be the easiest possible for starters. It already contains a compatible ROM file (Mac_OS_ROM.rom), a ready 250MB disk image on which Mac OS 9.0.4 is already fully installed (as well as an optional empty 30GB, yes 30 gigabytes, disk image to accomodate heavy disk space use). Please note that the 250MB base image is not intended for users to install more software. If you intend to install software in your SheepShaver VM, then you will need to expand that blank 30GB file and move your Mac OS 9.0.4 installation to it. Pre-installed software includes: QuickTime 4.1 for multimedia playback, Stuffit Deluxe 7.0.3 for extracting/compressing Stuffit archives and MacBinary files (such as .sit, .hqx or .bin), Toast 5 Titanium for mounting/creating CD images (such as .iso or .toast), Virex 6.1 which was the best antivirus for Mac around year 2000, SoundApp which is an extraordinary compatible music player (plays close to 100 different formats such as .mp3, .wav or .mod) and a bunch of useful utilities such as Super ResEdit 2.4, DiskCopy 6.4 and TaskMenuBar 2.4.2. ON WINDOWS:YOU NEED TO INSTALL GTK+ BEFORE USING SHEEPSHAVER :)RTFM: https://www.emaculation.com/doku.php/sheepshaver_setup ON MODERN MAC OS X: If it does not work (especially under Mac OS X 10.15 Catalina), please replace the executable application file by the one in the downloads mentioned 'NOTARIZED - Catalina 10.15'. RTFM:https://www.emaculation.com/doku.php/sheepshaver_mac_os_x_setup See also:Basilisk II - a 68K emulator with floppy support SheepShaver_PPC_Emulator.zip(157.46 MiB / 165.11 MB) SheepShaver (2015-03-15) bundle by that-ben / FOR WINDOWS / Zipped 1242 / 2017-04-24 / 2017-09-07 / a1ba97d1d210f5201e3dbbaeac2386de2d5adbcd / / SheepShaver for OSX - 2019-11-04.zip(146.04 MiB / 153.13 MB) SheepShaver (2019-11-04) bundle by that-ben / FOR MAC OS X 10.8 - 10.15 / Zipped 216 / 2019-11-16 / 2020-04-06 / 6b41c9efa2868dda9659692d3e8d78a8915b1a92 / / SheepShaver_notarized_20200315---CaTaLINa-10.15.zip(1.16 MiB / 1.22 MB) SheepShaver 2.5 (2020-03-15) app only - NOTARIZED FOR MAC OS X 10.15 Catalina / Zipped 61 / 2020-04-06 / 2020-04-06 / 5a66bc1b2bf10e46833b02894a4192ed26a4fe76 / / mac_oldworld_rom4mb-rom.zip(1.95 MiB / 2.05 MB) Old World Mac ROM (4MB) for running Mac OS 8.1 in SheepShaver / Zipped 392 / 2018-10-11 / 2018-10-11 / 036649a2f279906ae4661a2c30e5977a6dcdb3c5 / / Architecture Intel x86-64 For Windows: All you need to do is unzip the file, follow the instructions file inside the '1 - Install First' folder and you'll be ready to run old Mac software in seconds. For Mac: All you need to do is set the 'Unix Root' folder you see on the VM desktop, it allows you to share files between Mac OS X and the VM Mac OS. It's fine if you do not set it, but know that it's gonna default to your /Users/your-username/Documents/ until you set it elsewhere. SheepShaver is crashing while booting Mac OS 9? If the VM crashes while booting, try to re-launch it another time. This happens with SheepShaver, it's not 100% stable and sometimes extensions loading while the virtual Mac OS is booting can crash SheepShaver, notably the Virex antivirus extension. Re-launching it often bypasses the issue. SheepShaver crashes when booting Mac OS 8.1? You need the Old World Mac ROM listed separately (see the downloads). Shut down SheepShaver if it's running, then launch the SheepShaverGUI and under the Memory/Misc tab, select that Old World Mac ROM file, then start SheepShaver and it should boot Mac OS 8.1 successfully. Additional information about QuickTime in SheepShaver from the user 'eep' :
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(Updated Dec 11, 2018)
I recently got an urge to revisit old computer media from the late 90s and early 2000s. Growing up around that time, I remember reading a lot of MacAddict and MacWorld to learn what I could do with a Mac. Building websites, graphic design, hacking the appearance of the UI, all these were explained in the pages of magazines.
These magazines are freely available on the Internet Archive, including their cover discs. I was curious to see what applications were around back then — what about emulating Classic Mac OS to see?
Creative variations in UI design
My first instinct was to reach for VirtualBox, but that is a no go as I need to emulate a Motorola 68K or IBM PowerPC architecture. I recalled that QEMU could emulate other architectures, surely someone has already tried to emulate Mac OS 9.
Yes, many people have already written about emulating Mac OS 9, but only recently (2018) did experimental audio support come out for QEMU. Here is a short guide on how I got it running with MacOS High Sierra as the Host OS.
Note that while QEMU is available in Homebrew, it does not have the experimental audio support (yet).
Internet Archive
Magazines can be browsed right on the archive site, or downloaded as archives or PDFs (or a torrent containing all formats). Cover discs can be downloaded directly as ISO files or a torrent for the ISO. Don’t worry about seedless torrents; these ones are backed with web seeding.
Requirements
DevTools: I already have homebrew and XCode installed; because of this I was not prompted for missing command line tools. If you don’t have them, you might be prompted (by MacOS) to install them.
Hardware: I am not sure about hardware requirements, as most modern Macs will probably eclipse the power needed to run the guest OS. However if you have a low-power CPU (e.g. MacBook) then there may be some struggling.
Windows/Linux: These instructions should probably work there too, although you will probably have to substitute something else for
coreaudio
in the configuration step.Mac Os 9.2.2 Emulator Download
Get QEMU “Screamer” Fork
These instructions are adapted from Cat_7 from the Emaculation forums
I started by creating a directory for all this emulation stuff.
Next clone the fork of QEMU with experimental audio support:
Then configure the source to use MacOS CoreAudio. I have also enabled LibUSB, KVM, HyperVirtualization Framework, and the Cocoa UI. In this case I am only compiling the emulator for PPC (32-bit).
Next use make to compile QEMU. (If you have more processor cores, use
make -j 4
or however many cores to speed up the process.)This will create a binary in
qemu-screamer/ppc-softmmu/qemu-system-ppc
that we can use.Optionally you can install these binaries to
/usr/local/bin
Scarlett focusrite 2i4 driver windows 10. or wherever. I kept them in the ~/emulation
directory to separate them from the Homebrew QEMU binaries.Create HD for Mac OS 9
We will need to have a hard drive image for our guest OS. I made mine 5 GB in size, which would be typical at the time for Mac OS 9.
Mac Os 9.2.2 Emulator Windows 10
In our
qemu-screamer
directory, we will use qemu-img
to create the disk image.Get a Mac OS 9 Installer
If you have an ISO of a Mac OS 9 install disc (a Mac OS X classic install disc will not work — it must be bootable), then you can use that in the next step. If you don’t have one, you can download one from Mac OS 9 Lives: Mac OS 9.2.2 Universal Install.
Install Mac OS 9
The Mac OS 9 Lives method won’t install quite like an original Mac OS 9 installer would, but instead will use Apple System Restore to restore an image onto the hard drive.
Start up QEMU with the following options:
A breakdown of that command:
-L qemu-screamer/pc-bios
sets the BIOS-cpu 'g4'
emulate a G4 CPU-M mac99,via=pmu
will define the Mac model and enable USB support-m 512
use 512 MB of RAM, could go lower probably-hda macos92.img
use our generated disk image for the hard drive-cdrom '~/Downloads/Mac OS 9.2.2 Universal Install.iso'
use the ISO for the cdrom-boot d
boot from the disk drive-g 1024x768x32
default to 1024x768 resolution and 32 bit colour-device usb-kbd
enable USB keyboard emulation/support-device usb-mouse
enable USB mouse input, will improve cursor tracking somewhat
Once it starts up, you will be able to run Disk Initializer to format your hard drive image. Go ahead and do that, using Mac OS HFS Extended as the file system. One partition is good.
After initializing the disk, run Apple System Restore with the Mac OS 9 Lives disk image as the source and your disk as the destination. This will take a minute to restore. Once done, shut down the emulated system (Special Menu -> Shut Down).
Boot Mac OS 9
Similar to the last command, except we start up from the disk we created.
It should boot up and you will have a running Mac OS 9 with audio! I recommend saving this command as a shell script in your
~/emulation
directory.Boots much faster than it did in 2001
Tips
Backups: When the emulator is shut down, just make a copy of the hard disk image to create a backup. If something breaks your Mac OS 9 installation then you can restore the file.
Discs: You can dynamically attach CDs/DVDs to the emulated system by going to the menu bar on your host system for the QEMU application and selecting the option to attach to the CD IDE drive. It will open a dialog letting you select your ISO.
Compatibility: This is emulating Mac OS 9.2.2, released in late 2001. The emulated hardware is more or less of the same vintage, meaning software from the mid-to-late 90s will have some trouble running (as I found). The most common problem is not being able to drop down to 256 colours, although I later found a solution (link below). I have not tried emulating Mac OS 8/8.5; a cursory reading of forums has mentioned that doesn’t work yet.
Easter Egg in Finder
256 Colours
To support 256 colours you will need to add a bios driver. See the EMaculation forums for instructions; it involves replacing a file in the
pc-bios
directory with an older version that still supports 256 colours.2018-12-11 Updates
I removed the extra arguments from
configure
as by default it will enable everything it can. make
should use -j
instead of -J
. Using USB devices for mouse/keyboard improves mouse performance, but it still is a bit sluggish compared to the host machine. I found a way to get 256 colours working; see that section for a guide.