SheepShaver

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SheepShaver

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Samsung SyncMaster 191T and BeBox 20081114.jpg
SheepShaver on a BeBox
Basic data

developer Christian Bauer, Marc Hellwig, Gwenolé Beauchesne, u. a.
Current  version 2.3pre
( October 25, 2009 )
operating system BeOS , BSD , Darwin , Linux , macOS , Windows
programming language C ++ , C
category emulation
License GNU GPL
sheepshaver.cebix.net
Development history

SheepShaver is a free Apple Power Macintosh - emulator for Unix with X11 ( Linux and BSD ), macOS (PowerPC and Intel), Windows and BeOS as a host system. As a PowerPC emulator, SheepShaver currently supports Mac OS 7.5.2 to 9.0.4 as guest systems.

history

Since Shapeshifter and its further Basilisk II than 68k - Macintosh are designed emulator can use it only Mac OS run as guest operating systems for 68k Macintosh computers. The last Mac OS to support this computer architecture is Mac OS 8.1 . In order to be able to emulate newer versions of Mac OS, a PowerPC emulator was required. Together with parts of the program code of Basilisk II, SheepShaver was created for BeOS in 1998, first as shareware , later as part of BeDepot.

The name is an allusion to SheepShaver Shapeshifter, the 68K - Macintosh emulator for the Amiga . ShapeShifter as well as Basilisk I and Basilisk II are largely made by Christian Bauer.

After BeOS was unsuccessful, SheepShaver was released as open source under the GPL in 2002 . Gwenolé Beauchesne, a developer at Mandriva Linux , who had already contributed to Basilisk II in 1999, expanded the PowerPC-G4 emulator from 2003 to include “ Just-In-Time translation” and ported the emulator from BeOS to Linux, Mac OS X and Windows . In 2008 he stopped working on SheepShaver.

SheepShaver was the first and until the end of 2005 the only available PowerPC emulator with G4 processor and AltiVec support. On December 20th, PearPC version 0.4.0 was released with AltiVec support.

With the removal of the Classic environment in Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard", Apple has taken away the built-in option of using old Mac programs on new Apple hardware, including on PowerPC Macs. On Intel-based Macs, the first Mac OS X version for this architecture , 10.4 "Tiger", no longer had a Classic Environment . SheepShaver closes this gap: It is currently (as of 2014) the only way to use programs written for Mac OS on Intel-based Macs as well as on all Macs running Mac OS X 10.5 and newer. It is stable and sufficiently fast on both PowerPC and x86 computers.

Supported guest systems

Mac OS 7.5.2 to 8.6 are considered stable, but Mac OS 9.0.4 is also experimentally supported. The newer Mac OS operating systems Mac OS 9.1 to 9.2.2 cannot run because they require an MMU that is not provided by the PowerPC emulation. macOS cannot run.

In order to run Mac OS, SheepShaver needs an image of a Mac OS ROM , whereby the ROM used determines the compatibility with a certain Mac OS version. In older Macintosh computers (later referred to as "Old World" ), the ROM was still housed in its entirety in a ROM chip on the motherboard of the computer. This can be read out on the original hardware and saved in a file that ShapeShifter, Basilisk II and SheepShaver can use as a ROM file. In newer Macs (called “New World” by Apple ) a separation between Boot-ROM ( “Low-Level” ROM) and “Mac OS ROM” (“ Higher Level ROM”) has been introduced. These ROM files are required by SheepShaver in order to be able to start a Mac OS supported by them. The Mac OS ROM (“ Higher Level ROM”) is already part of the operating system from Mac OS 8.5 for “New World” Macs. The boot ROM (“ Low-Level ROM”) that is still required could be read from an existing Power Mac, but Apple also offers official ROM updates from which the respective ROM can also be taken as an image.

technology

SheepShaver emulates generic PowerPC hardware; the original Macintosh ROMs are required to be compatible with Mac OS. SheepShaver thus offers the following functions:

  • Compatible with guest systems Mac OS 7.5.2 to 9.0.4 (depending on the Mac OS ROM used)
  • PowerPC-G4 emulation, with JIT translation on IA-32 (i386, x86), AMD64 (x86-64) and MIPS
  • native execution on PowerPC-G4 hardware ( virtual machine )
  • Copy and paste between guest and host systems
  • File exchange via the Unix symbol on the desktop in the guest system
  • Changing the resolution and adapting the color space to the host system at runtime
  • QuickDraw 2D video acceleration for the BitBlt and FillRect functions
  • Stereo audio output with CD quality
  • With all Mac OS programs, the Internet and LAN connection via Ethernet and PPP: Network Open Transport support

With the JIT emulation, SheepShaver achieves an acceptable speed of about one eighth of the host system on non-PowerPC systems. Compared to a Power Mac G4 running at 400 MHz, Mac OS runs a little faster on an x86 system running at 3.2 GHz.

distribution

The original developers, Christian Bauer and Marc Hellwig, only make very old versions available on their homepage. The last version from 2008 is also on the Gwenolé Beauchesne homepage, which is no longer available.

There is an active developer community at E-Maculation who provide the latest builds for various operating systems. As of 2014, even OS X 10.9 is supported as the host system.

Since SheepShaver is under the GPL, many developers can contribute to the continued existence of the emulator. Currently, Basilisk II and SheepShaver (which share parts of the source code) are available on GitHub.

In addition to the builds for Linux (PowerPC and x86 32-bit and 64-bit), Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel 32-bit) and Windows (32-bit) there are also binaries for Darwin, FreeBSD, Mac OS X (Intel 64-bit), NetBSD and Windows (64-bit).

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The SheepShaver Open Source Project on Open Hub: Languages Page . In: Open Hub . (accessed on July 18, 2018).
  2. ↑ a b SheepShaver FAQ (English), accessed on August 19, 2014
  3. ↑ http://www.gibix.net/dokuwiki/en:about:cv ( Memento from February 9, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ SheepShaver (English) in the E-Maculation -Wiki, accessed on August 19, 2014
  5. ↑ SheepShaver Brings the Classic Mac OS to Intel Macs and Leopard on Low-End-Mac , Alan Zisman, May 2, 2008, accessed August 19, 2014
  6. ↑ What about using Sheepshaver to emulate Mac OS 9.2.2 (English) in the E-Maculation forum, accessed on August 19, 2014
  7. ↑ Macintosh ROM Images , E-Maculation wiki , accessed August 19, 2014
  8. ↑ Differences between the Mac OS ROM and the bootROM , accessed on August 19, 2014
  9. ↑ Mac OS: Matching Mac OS ROM File To Mac OS Version , accessed August 19, 2014
  10. ↑ Extracting a ROM for use in SheepShaver using Basilisk II , E-Maculation wiki , accessed September 3, 2014
  11. ↑ a b SheepShaver ( Memento of February 13, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), Gwenolé Beauchesne Wiki (English), accessed on August 19, 2014
  12. ↑ Benchmarks ( Memento of February 9, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), Gwenolé Beauchesne Wiki (English) accessed on August 19, 2014