For those of you who are missing Rosetta...

[Quaker101010]

I found a site that aims to make a replica of Rosetta for Lion. The site is as follows:
http://www.lionrosetta.com
I suggest anyone who takes a look at my post go check it out so it can get more recognition. Any developers should also try joining the project so that they could release it faster. It’d be waste for something that looks so promising to go down the drain. Hopefully it will get the publicity it deserves.

 

[MichaelLAX]

In the meantime...

...Install Snow Leopard (with Rosetta) into Parallels

 

[ScottishCaptain]

So the forum on that website is filled with endless amounts of spam, and the individual who setup that website presumably isn't a programmer- but is actively looking for people to "contribute"?

You know, one of the problems with all these "Let's bring back Rosetta!" posts is that nobody really realizes just how large of a technological feat Rosetta actually was. Not only did it achieve PowerPC emulation faster then the actual G3 and G4 hardware it emulated in some cases, but it did this so well that even advanced 3D games were playable complete with hardware accelerated visuals. What Rosetta did has NEVER been replicated anywhere else, by anyone other then Quicktransit and Apple (yes, I know Digital had FX!32, but it wasn't nearly as fluid as Rosetta was).

So even if you did find a group of super-geniuses to pull something like that off, you're going to have huge issues trying to get the thing running without a copy of OS X 10.5 or 10.6. Rosetta linked into a lot of the 32-bit (not 64-bit, Rosetta didn't support G5-specific applications) libraries that were lying around in Mac OS X. Those have either been depreciated or removed in OS X 10.7 and 10.8. It would be all but virtually impossible to make Rosetta work on either of the latter two simply because the libraries required to run older software through the translator do not exist anymore.

It would be easier to just write a whole PowerPC emulator and boot OS X under that. Going the Rosetta way isn't going to work because Mac OS X doesn't have the code required to make that happen anymore (that's why they dropped it). And even writing a custom PPC emulator would still take a massive amount of effort.

My advice- if you have PowerPC applications at this point, buy an older rig to run them on. There is no reason why a G4 isn't going to run your apps today with the appropriate version of OS X or going into the future. Trying to run PowerPC stuff on a modern day Intel rig isn't going to happen anytime soon, or ever for that fact. Nobody cares anymore (even if you do, you're in the minority). Just like nobody cares about Classic anymore.

-SC

 

[old-wiz]

Thanks Captain! Way too few people have a basic understanding of how deeply Rosetta linked into the core OS services.

No one is going to simply resurrect Rosetta without getting their hands on Apple's code, which is rather difficult to say the least.

 

[MichaelLAX]

...You know, one of the problems with all these "Let's bring back Rosetta!" posts is that nobody really realizes just how large of a technological feat Rosetta actually was...

Well put!

That being said I do enjoy using Snow Leopard in Parallels; SheepShaver and Virtual ][ when the need arises: mostly to gain access to my financial records from years past, lodged in Home Accountant, Time is Money, MacMoney and finally various versions of Quicken for the Mac!