Automating Sheepshaver

About SheepShaver, a PPC Mac emulator for Windows, MacOS X, and Linux that can run System 7.5.3 to MacOS 9.0.4.

Moderators: Cat_7, Ronald P. Regensburg, ClockWise

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drduker
Space Cadet
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jan 15, 2014 10:13 pm

Automating Sheepshaver

Post by drduker »

Is there a way to mount or transfer specific files from a .toast/.iso MacOS 9 file to a new image created by sheepshaver without opening sheepshaver? I want to automate bringing it up with bash and auto-wget some games and wrap it up all nice. I'm not able to mount mac os 9 images on OS X.

In other words, is there a binary that can convert and move files around with Mac OS 9 file systems?

Appreciate any assistance. I happen to be running macos Big Sur locally and sheepshaver works fine.
drduker
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Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jan 15, 2014 10:13 pm

Re: Automating Sheepshaver

Post by drduker »

So looking through this forum it looks like there is a battle between Qemu and Sheepshaver for MacOS 9. I like how Qemu seems to have more continued support and even supports Mac OS 9.2. My goal is to get nostalgia games working well within MacOS 9 such as Apeiron, Bolo, Blobbo, Maelstrom, etc. And it really needs to be a one click install so I can easily share. I understand for security reasons, as if you could be secure with these older OS's, that you would want to do your own fresh install. What is nice with these Mac OS 9 is that you can just copy files over after the image is initialized for a complete installation. I might just throw up a compressed disk image with a fresh MacOS9 install.

Running on Macbook Pro 16in. But I'm going to want to auto load PPC games on Raspberry Pi 4 as well, that is my next task.

Qemu:
Pros:
Qemu Screamer script works
Con:
Mouse movement is crappy - Mouse movement capture in screen doesn't seem as nice as Sheepshaver's, especially important for old games like Apeiron where you have to make quick exact movements with the mouse.
Manual steps involved with a MacOS install from CD
Doesn't have a file share with local desktop as disk

Sheepshaver:
Pros:
Unix file share drive (I've found that many games can play directly off the file share drive, but not all)
sheepvm packaging is helpful but not necessary to script out.
Cons:
Only supports up to Mac OS 9.0.4 which really doesn't matter to me because most games that i've encountered within the past couple of days work fine.
drduker
Space Cadet
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jan 15, 2014 10:13 pm

Re: Automating Sheepshaver

Post by drduker »

Reading through more posts I see that sound really only works on only 9.2.2 and 10.0 with QEMU. So is the latest good working sound 10.0? I feel like QEMU running 9.2 is useless as there is a good way to transfer files to an image. I've install an ftp server onto 9.2 but it just wont work. And not sure how to use the built in web server to transfer from the host to the guest. I tried wput and curl to do a http post. AFP on 9.2 to modern AFP is useless.

I'm hoping that 10.0/QUMU will support file transfers with AFP/ftp and everything I'll need classic wise. But i've already spent so much time on this. I'll need to manually grab 10.0 and work with that then.
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Cat_7
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Joined: Fri Feb 13, 2004 8:59 am
Location: Sittard, The Netherlands

Re: Automating Sheepshaver

Post by Cat_7 »

Hi,

To me it does not look like there is a battle between SheepShaver and Qemu. Some striking differences between them are guest support and accuracy.
If you need a fast emulator up to 9.04 SheepShaver should be your choice, all above can only run with Qemu.
Qemu's accuracy (in e.g., floating point algorithmic) comes at a price: speed.

I've updated both the OSX and Windows guides with options to install an FTP server on the guest side and to connect to it from the host. They employ Netpresenz as FTP server and Filezilla as client on the host (or any ftp client capable of active transfers) to read/write files between host and guest. Some tinkering with the settings on the guest (file sharing, user access) will get you full access to the guest.

Best,
Cat_7
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2006 10:24 pm
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Re: Automating Sheepshaver

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

I do not see a "battle" either. SheepShaver and QEMU are different emulators with different possibilities. Depending on your requirements you choose one or the other, or both.
drduker wrote: Thu Dec 31, 2020 7:10 pmSheepshaver:
Pros:
Unix file share drive (I've found that many games can play directly off the file share drive, but not all)
I am surprised that you can make some games run from the 'Unix' disk. Applications will usually not run at all from the 'Unix' disk, see the setup manual about how to use the 'Unix' disk/shared folder feature.
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