Not sure if this has been posted...https://github.com/felixrieseberg/macintosh.js
You can now play with Mac OS8 on your newer computers.
You can now play with Mac OS8 on your newer computers.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Mac OS8
- Thread starter WhoNet
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Basilisk II and SheepShaver are parts of this
Credits
Please check out the CREDITS! This app wouldn't be possible without the hard work of Christian Bauer and James Friend, who did everything that seems like computing magic here.
I see - still, I don't see the point of emulating an old OS in a browser. This stupid "everything has to run in a browser" craze doesn't appeal to me.
IMO it isn’t stupid at all - think of the number of people who would try that OS when they have to inform themselves, then install and setup sheepshaver/basilisk und then install the OS inside of that. And now take a browser. Literally every browser. Share the URI and everyone interested in it can test it. You can show it to your friends, your kids, to people who have once used it on a daily basis or to those who are too young for that.
yes indeed it is kinda „lame“or even „cheating“ not having to go through the emulation process directly on your machine. But in those rare cases I actually appreciate the „browser approach“. Though personally I prefer to run it on a real machine of the era, a PB1400 or 12“ PDQ for example
The only reason I like that stuff occasionally is to waste time if I’m in the office. It’s funny to boot up Windows 95 in the web browser, put in full screen and see my coworkers reaction.
This is it. I've been emulating and virtualising for so long that it's kinda been engraved into my head
Emulation is absolutely not cheating. If you're using QEMU, sure, you theoretically have support for just about everything, but it's painfully slow, even if you're just running OS 9. PearPC is much faster, but an unsupported unstable mess that can't even run Classic. Sheepshaver is a barely supported unstable mess that can't run OSX.
Basilisk II is great. Sure, it can't run anything beyond 68k Mac software, but it does such a good job I have a port of it on my old PS Vita. But that leaves you, at the newest, stuck on OS 8.1, and you're really better off with OS 7.6.1, there are less bugs and it's generally more stable.
And the hardest challenge is getting these emulators to see your data. Several of them don't have the ability to read ISOs, so good luck knowing how to burn a .toast using only Windows software, even if it's actually easy. But that assumes you have a cd burner.
There really are a lot of hops to get through to make just an emulator work.
Basilisk II is great. Sure, it can't run anything beyond 68k Mac software, but it does such a good job I have a port of it on my old PS Vita. But that leaves you, at the newest, stuck on OS 8.1, and you're really better off with OS 7.6.1, there are less bugs and it's generally more stable.
And the hardest challenge is getting these emulators to see your data. Several of them don't have the ability to read ISOs, so good luck knowing how to burn a .toast using only Windows software, even if it's actually easy. But that assumes you have a cd burner.
There really are a lot of hops to get through to make just an emulator work.
I tried and deleted it. Experience was very very poor and way beyond standards of other old-Mac emulators.
I understand that is an easy path for whom never tried or "studied" emulation, but it will be much easier to distribute a .tar/.zip with BasiliskII binary, disk images and config file than building this complex and unpleasant gui.
When did you try Qemu last time? I am asking that as Qemu in 2015 was totally different than in 2016, and Qemu on 2016 was totally different than Qemu in 2017...and so on. This Summer I was playing around with Qemu 5.0/5.1 and MacOS 9.2 using the image provided by http://macos9lives.com/ and I must say that on my MacBook Pro Early 2013 I had better performance than on my iMac G3
I was also trying Qemu 5.1 with MacOS 9.2 on a fresh Huawei MateBook that my Father in Law just bought (the one with AMD processor) and the result was impressing...
[automerge]1600254971[/automerge]
I understand that is an easy path for whom never tried or "studied" emulation, but it will be much easier to distribute a .tar/.zip with BasiliskII binary, disk images and config file than building this complex and unpleasant gui.
When did you try Qemu last time? I am asking that as Qemu in 2015 was totally different than in 2016, and Qemu on 2016 was totally different than Qemu in 2017...and so on. This Summer I was playing around with Qemu 5.0/5.1 and MacOS 9.2 using the image provided by http://macos9lives.com/ and I must say that on my MacBook Pro Early 2013 I had better performance than on my iMac G3
I was also trying Qemu 5.1 with MacOS 9.2 on a fresh Huawei MateBook that my Father in Law just bought (the one with AMD processor) and the result was impressing...
[automerge]1600254971[/automerge]
Those are great pictures - I especially love the 3:2 aspect ratio MateBooks have.
I was really impressed about the hardware quality of the MateBook itself...it really looks like a MBAir and I was considering to buy one of them if my MBP will die soon and 2nd Gen MacARM won't be ready yet....
I just booted a freeloader out of our garage last week which now gives me ample room to setup and start playing with my old Macs again. Yay! System 7.5.5 and 9.2, here I come. System 7.5.5 is the closest to the original Mac OS you can get while still enjoying some of the features you'd expect in a reasonably useful operating system. Mac OS 7.6 brought some more features but it also brought what is in my opinion the ugly Platinum look that made window borders way too big. Mac OS 8 in all of it's variants is a waste of time in my opinion. Mac OS 9 is the best Classic Mac OS to run on Macs of that vintage that can support it.
System 7 is where I started my interest in Macintoshes. The number seven means absolutely nothing beyond that. Absolutely nothing!
System 7 is where I started my interest in Macintoshes. The number seven means absolutely nothing beyond that. Absolutely nothing!
Last edited:
I booted up QEMU for the first time in about a year, threw Tiger at it, and wow this is painful. Just as bad as last year, the year before that, and so on and so forth. At least the sound sort of works now. Don't get me wrong, it seems to run OS 9 quite well, but Sheepshaver is easier, in my opinion, to set up.When did you try Qemu last time? I am asking that as Qemu in 2015 was totally different than in 2016, and Qemu on 2016 was totally different than Qemu in 2017...and so on. This Summer I was playing around with Qemu 5.0/5.1 and MacOS 9.2 using the image provided by http://macos9lives.com/ and I must say that on my MacBook Pro Early 2013 I had better performance than on my iMac G3
I was also trying Qemu 5.1 with MacOS 9.2 on a fresh Huawei MateBook that my Father in Law just bought (the one with AMD processor) and the result was impressing...
View attachment 953795
View attachment 953796View attachment 953797
[automerge]1600254971[/automerge]
I was going to try to do some Geekbench benchmarks, but beyond the fact that getting this thing online is fairly arcane, even when using an update disk, Geekbench 2.2 just will not start.
Documentation seems horrible, too. I can clearly see Tiger maxing out the single emulated 900 MHz G4 cpu, though it probably shouldn't. But I can't see any particular way to tell it to emulate something faster. Or maybe just more processors. I have confidence my Ryzen 5 3600 can put on a better showing than this.
Yes, one day this will probably be what replaces my need to ever really run a PowerPC Mac, but at the rate it's going, that day is something like a decade off.
And it's a shame, because I want it to be better.
And that's not even talking about the lack of graphics acceleration which makes OS X pretty much useless.