Sheepshaver For Mac Os X



The SheepShaver Wrapper for OS X and macOS

Sheepshaver

Summary | How to set it up | Acknowledgments | Support

The Mac OS 9 system includes a startup script named MacOS9BackgroundScript. This script is used for transferring files from the host OS X/macOS system to the desktop of Mac OS 9. As in all SheepShaver-based systems, you may use the Unix folder for transferring files to and from Mac OS 9. However, this system has other methods. Apr 03, 2018  how to install mac os x yosemite on any pc (dual boot windows 10) (hackintosh) without using a mac Running Mac OS 9 on Raspberry pi Tags: in, install, MAC, OS, os x, OSX, sheepshaver.

An easy way to run 'classic' applications under OS X and macOS

OS X and macOS no longer makes it possible to run 'classic' Mac applications written for 'classic' Mac OS versions, such as System 7 or Mac OS 9. In order to run such applications, OS X and macOS users must now install 'emulator' software that runs old versions of the Mac OS in a window on the OS X or macOS desktop. The most advanced of these emulator programs is SheepShaver. SheepShaver is no longer supported by its original author, Gwenolé Beauchesne, but minor updates are available from an active support forum at E-Maculation.

This page provides a system that makes it easy to set up and use SheepShaver under OS X or macOS 10.8 or later. You will need to supply a 'ROM file' (as described below) and you will need an installation CD for any version of the Mac OS from OS 8.5 through 9.0.4, or a disk image of such a CD, as described below.

This system requires OS X or macOS 10.9 or later. It was updated on 8 March 2019 with an improved 64-bit version of SheepShaver that should run under macOS 10.14 Mojave, and on 18 August 2019 with a 4GB (not 2GB) disk image. It was updated 18 Octobef 2019 with a version that run smoothly under macOS 10.15 Catalina.

How to set it up

The usual way to set up SheepShaver is to follow the detailed guide on the E-maculation site. The page you are now reading provides a much simpler method, using a prebuilt 'application bundle' that contains almost everything you need, in a single package. To use it, follow these steps. Note that when the instructions refer to OS 9, the same procedure should work with OS 8.5 or 8.6. (Expert users will know how to modify the system for use with System 7 through 8.1; non-experts should not attempt this.)

1. Download the application bundle here. It is enclosed in a 13 MB ZIP file. Extract it and place it anywhere on your hard disk. Do not launch the application until you finish step 2; if you do, it will display a warning that you need to add a ROM file, and SheepShaver will not start.

2. Get a copy of a New World Mac PPC ROM. See the setup guide at E-Maculation for advice on how to find one. (Or you can go directly to the Redundant Robot web site and find the file indicated as 'best for SheepShaver'.) The ROM file that you find will probably be named something like 'newworldrom'; make certain to rename the ROM file Mac OS ROM (use this exact string; no extension) and drop the ROM file onto the SheepShaver Wrapper. Cad based design software mac os free. A message from the SheepShaver Wrapper will tell you that the file was copied to the correct location.

3. Install Mac OS 8.5 through 9.0.4. This step assumes that you have a copy of an OS 8.5 through 9.0.4 installation CD on a disk image. (You cannot use an actual CD, only an image made from a CD.) The installation CD image must be one that was made from a retail CD, not one that came with a specific machine. Note that when installing, you should not try to format or initialize the virtual hard disk; it is already formatted, and contains some Apple-supplied updates for OS 8.6 and 9.0.4 in a disk image file in a folder named 'OS Updaters'. Some of these are US-English versions; other versions may be found through a web search.

Note: To create an image file from an installation CD, use Disk Utility in OS X or macOS and create a disk image in 'DVD/CD Master' format.

(Important note: When installing OS 9, when you reach the menu that lets you specify which parts of the OS you want to install, click Options and turn off the option to 'Update Apple Hard Disk Drivers'; for reasons that I don't understand, the OS installation may stall when this option is on. When booting from an OS 8.5 CD image, hold down the shift key to turn extensions off, or else the CD image may not boot; this is not required with OS 8.6.)

3. Drop your CD image file of a Mac OS installation CD on the SheepShaver Wrapper. If the file is in the correct format, and is bootable, SheepShaver will boot from the image file. (If the image file is not 'locked,' which it must be if the Mac OS is to be installed from it, the SheepShaver Wrapper will offer to lock it for you.) Install the Mac OS from the booted CD image. Then shut down SheepShaver completely. Start the SheepShaver Wrapper again, and it should now boot to OS 8 or 9, and the CD image will not be mounted.

4. Start up SheepShaver and start working in Mac OS 8 or 9. The steps above will give you a working SheepShaver system, with the 'Unix' folder in SheepShaver set to be your Documents folder in OS X or macOS. If you want to use a different folder as the 'Unix' folder, or if you want to change the screen size or other features, use the Preferences menu.

4. Study the configuration guide at E-Maculation. The Configuration Guide includes absolutely essential information about using the 'classic' Mac OS in SheepShaver. If something goes wrong, and you have not studied that guide, then you have only yourself to blame.

The virtual hard disk in the system is a 4GB disk. If that does not provide enough disk space for your purposes, create a second disk, using the procedures described in the wiki at Emaculation.com. Or use the SheepShaver Preferences to add the unformatted Backup 4GB disk also included in the system.

Acknowledgments

This system is built on software provided by many people who are more expert than I am. The included build of SheepShaver is slightly customized from code modified by the programmer who uses the name kanjitalk755. I have benefited from many suggestions by Ronald P. Regensburg and others in the E-Maculation forum, and I could not have written this script without the help of many experts at Macscripter.net and especially from Shane Stanley there at Macscripter.net and at the forum at latenightsw.com.

Support

Please do not ask me to help you set up the 'classic' Mac OS or advise you about any applications. Please ask for support in the E-Maculation support forum for SheepShaver. If you want to get in touch with me about the AppleScript in the SheepShaver Wrapper, then please visit this page.

Edward Mendelson (em thirty-six [at] columbia [dot] edu, but with two initials and two numerals before the [at] sign, not spelled out as shown here).

In the run-up to the original release of Mac OS X, users were justifiably worried about compatibility. Mac OS X was a completely different operating system from its predecessors (Mac OS 9, Mac OS 8, System 7). Pal flashcards 1.3.1 free download for mac. Recent Mac OS 9 applications that had been “Carbonized” might run natively under Mac OS X, but older applications certainly would not. Were users doomed to lose access to all their older applications and documents?

To solve this problem, Apple tided its users over with Classic, an environment that emulated Mac OS 9 within Mac OS X. But this solution was fated not to last forever. Classic reached the end of its life in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger; later versions of Mac OS X don’t include Classic, and Classic doesn’t run on Intel machines at all.

If, like me, you still have an older application or document that you’d occasionally like to open, what can you do? I actually have three different approaches. For certain applications that won’t run properly even under Classic, I have several ancient (by computer standards) machines that can actually boot into Mac OS 9. I also have two PowerPC-based Macs that run Tiger and therefore have Classic. But all of that is a lot of trouble, because I’m not usually using those machines; I’m usually using my Intel-based Mac mini, and running Snow Leopard. But even there – even on an Intel machine, even under Snow Leopard – I can run an older Mac OS, enjoy my older applications, and read and edit my older documents, by using SheepShaver.

SheepShaver is a PowerPC emulator that runs under Mac OS X. It started life over 10 years ago as a commercial application for BeOS, but it is now open source and free, and is a clear testament to what the dedication of a few knowledgeable volunteers can accomplish. The Mac version of SheepShaver is a universal binary, so it runs natively on an Intel-based Mac. (Versions that run on Windows and Linux also exist.) Global mapper download for mac.

SheepShaver lets you run any older system between Mac OS 8.5 and Mac OS 9.0.4. (There is another program, BasiliskII, with a parallel history, that emulates a 68000 processor and lets you run System 7.5 through Mac OS 8.1, but I haven’t tried it.) Unlike Apple’s Classic environment, which integrated its windows with Mac OS X’s windows, SheepShaver displays all the older system’s windows inside its own single application window, as if SheepShaver were acting as the monitor of an old Mac; you should’t find this at all inconvenient or disconcerting, especially if you’ve ever used screen sharing under Mac OS X.

I must warn you that setting up SheepShaver is not for the faint of heart, and giving detailed instructions is beyond the scope of this article. The best way to get started is through the resources at the E-Maculation Web site, which provides a particularly good step-by-step tutorial (as well as forums where I have received very courteous and accurate technical advice). You’ll need a generic (not hardware-specific) installation CD for the system you’d like to run (I used a Mac OS 9.0.4 installer that I had lying around). You’ll also probably need a machine that can run Classic, in order to obtain aROM file; I used the technique described in a different tutorial, where you download the Mac OS ROM Update disk image and use Apple’s Tome Viewer utility to extract the ROM file from it.

With the ROM file in hand, properly named and located with respect to the SheepShaver application file, you launch SheepShaver and set up its preferences. There will need to be a disk image file onto which SheepShaver will install your older Mac OS, and from which it will subsequently boot; so, you create that file. And, in order to get your own software and documents into that disk image file, there must be a “shared” folder in the Mac OS X world that SheepShaver can see and project into the older Mac OS world; so, you create that folder and tell SheepShaver where it is. There are some other preferences to set up, but the tutorial tells you what settings to use.

Sheepshaver Rom

Now you insert the Mac OS 9 (or whatever it is) installer CD into your computer and start up SheepShaver, telling it to boot from the installer CD. When this works, it’s positively thrilling, since you are actually running from the installer CD in emulation mode inside SheepShaver, thus proving to yourself that SheepShaver can work on your machine. The disk image file that you made in the previous step has also mounted as an empty drive in the SheepShaver world. So, you now install the system onto that empty drive – that is, into the disk image file. Then you quit SheepShaver and start it up again. This time, though, you boot from the disk image file, which, if all has gone well, now contains a clean installation of thesystem.

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All of that sounds rather daunting, and to be honest, it is. But once it’s done, you’ll be living in a plug-and-play world; you have to suffer all this suspense only once. It took me an entire morning to accomplish the steps described in the previous two paragraphs, as things kept going wrong and I repeatedly had to scrap the disk image file and try again. Eventually, however, I did get it right, and was rewarded at last by seeing Mac OS 9 boot under Snow Leopard, directly from my hard disk, without the Mac OS 9 installer CD being involved. I had done it! I was shaving sheep!

The rest is simple. Any time you start up SheepShaver, it boots your older Mac OS, and there you are. When you tell your older Mac OS to shut down, it does, and SheepShaver quits. That’s all there is to it, really.

But what if you want to do any useful work? Mac OS 9 comes with a few applications, such as SimpleText, but to open your own applications and documents, you need to copy them into the disk image file. You do this in two steps. First, you move or copy them into the “shared” folder I mentioned earlier. Now you start up SheepShaver. The Mac desktop as presented by SheepShaver displays two “disks”: the boot disk, which is really the disk image file, and the “Unix” disk, which is really the “shared” Mac OS X folder. So now you copy the applications and files from the “Unix” disk onto the boot disk, where they should operate properly.

Sheepshaver Network

I’ve made a screencast showing that I can run such nostalgia-laced applications as MORE and HyperCard on my Snow Leopard machine. As you can see, SheepShaver starts up and boots Mac OS 9 in emulation in just a few seconds, and presto, I’m opening a MORE document or a HyperCard stack instantly. Look also at the “disks” at the upper right of the desktop: “baa” is really the disk image file, and “Unix” is really the “shared” folder.

I have not pressed SheepShaver to its limits, nor do I expect to. I haven’t used it to access the Web or to input MIDI or to do any weird hardware-based stuff like that (even though SheepShaver is said to implement Ethernet networking, serial drivers, and even SCSI emulation). As long as I can occasionally access an old MORE document or HyperCard stack, I’m an extremely happy camper.