I could have put it in the wish list but [OS 9 on PearPC]

ataxy · Post by **ataxy** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 4:39 am

I could have put it in the wish list but...
I would like to know why up to now whe have seen emulator run macos7 up to macos8.6 and if i am not mistaking macosx 10.0 to macos10.3.4 but none but absolutly none run macos9? I have tryed during the last weekend a mac with macos9.1 installed on it and i must say i was amazed at how good it ran and would definitly run it more then X it felt like an even balance between the old and the new what more is that my cousin who works in computer animation said to me that the company where he work reverted back to 9 after trying out X cuz they felt it was loaded with unusefull memory hungry eye candy (wich if you want my point of view is a bit like the transition that whe saw when WinXP arrived compared to Win2K).
So to make my question simple what is so hard about emulating a PPC to run os9.

[thread title edited ... --kybernaut]

Inferno · Post by **Inferno** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 7:30 am

it should happen when openfirmware is fully integrated , at least i heared so somewhere.

Mac Emu · Post by **Mac Emu** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 12:55 pm

ataxy wrote: So to make my question simple what is so hard about emulating a PPC to run os9.

Besides Open Firmware stuff, I believe OS 9 requires MMU (memory management unit) support which is very difficult to code and would slow down the emulation dramatically. A PPC virtual machine like Mac-On-Linux can run Mac OS 9 as MOL has a virtual MMU.

Gwenole has said things like the following about SheepShaver and OS 9:

"I doubt SheepShaver would ever run anything newer than 8.6. MacOS 9.x contains lesser and lesser 68k code (some patches rely on that) and I actually don't know if that can be taught to run in real addressing mode, i.e. not requiring any MMU emulation."

(Visual aid.)

robojam · Post by **robojam** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 1:40 pm

I'd love to see OS9 emulated too - I liked it a lot.

OSX is good, but I think it does suffer from the same 'eye candy' treatement as XP (albeit with a ton more style than the Disney-fied XP).

jhkl · Post by **jhkl** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 1:50 pm

I know this might sound dumb, so be sufficiently prepared. :D

Has anyone ever tried booting Mandrake 9.1 PPC Linux with MOL, to see if it could run OS 9 that way? Is there an unimplemented feature in PearPC that MOL would require to run?

CaptainValor · Post by **CaptainValor** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 2:15 pm

You're talking about one of those machine inside a machine inside a machine deals. Even if it did work, by the time you got OS 9 running it would be too slow to function.

Personally, after reading OS X: The Missing Manual, I'll be just fine never using OS 9. There were so many problems in OS 9 that OS X simply eliminated. And what if I happen to like the eye candy? Is someone going arrest me for that?

robojam · Post by **robojam** » Wed Jun 16, 2004 2:21 pm

I think 9 was fine after you patched it and installed lots of additional software. If we could run 9 on PPC or similar, it would run a lot faster, but I guess there's no point in looking back.

I must admit that I like the eye candy in OSX a lot more than I like the eye candy in XP. Who designed that? A 5 year old?

bonehead · Post by **bonehead** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 1:18 am

CaptainValor wrote:You're talking about one of those machine inside a machine inside a machine deals. Even if it did work, by the time you got OS 9 running it would be too slow to function.

Still worth giving a shot. What's the speed hit of MOL running on a real Mac?

VenomSnake · Post by **VenomSnake** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 1:51 am

On a real Mac there is no speed hit for MOL (because it is hardware supported) which is why they use it. It's just hard to emulate thats all.

jhkl · Post by **jhkl** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 1:52 am

bonehead wrote:
CaptainValor wrote:You're talking about one of those machine inside a machine inside a machine deals. Even if it did work, by the time you got OS 9 running it would be too slow to function.
Still worth giving a shot. What's the speed hit of MOL running on a real Mac?

Even if OS 9 runs at 1/2 the speed of PearPC (hypothetically speaking - I have no real experience with MOL or Macs), the point is that it would still work and it would prove that OS 9 could be emulated on the x86 platform. Personally, I find it so strange that we can emulate anything up to OS 8.6, and OS 10.1+; but x86 OS 9 emulation hasn't yet been achieved. I would have thought that the OS 10.x series would have been the last Mac OS to be successfully emulated.

But that's just me.

Mac Emu · Post by **Mac Emu** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 1:54 am

bonehead wrote:What's the speed hit of MOL running on a real Mac?

Nearly no speed hit. Mac-on-Linux is reported to run at near-native speeds and I can atest to it running OS 8.6 very quickly on Yellow Dog Linux on a PowerBook 3400c.

bonehead · Post by **bonehead** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 2:36 pm

Mac Emu wrote:Nearly no speed hit. Mac-on-Linux is reported to run at near-native speeds and I can atest to it running OS 8.6 very quickly on Yellow Dog Linux on a PowerBook 3400c.

That's what I thought, seeing as the PPC is much more suited to virtualization than the x86. If that's the case, someone with some time on their hands should give it a whirl under PearPC. If nothing else, it would be interesting to know if it even works.

jhkl wrote:Personally, I find it so strange that we can emulate anything up to OS 8.6, and OS 10.1+; but x86 OS 9 emulation hasn't yet been achieved. I would have thought that the OS 10.x series would have been the last Mac OS to be successfully emulated.

Probably has something to do with OSX being a slightly more open OS than OS9. Much more open if you look at the kernel alone.

kybernaut · Post by **kybernaut** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 3:32 pm

As far as I am aware, all OS 9 "emulation" layers like MOL or the OS X classic environment are not really emulators but grant the guest system (ie. OS 9) considerable direct access to the hosts hardware...

My conclusion: OS 9 wouldn't run with any tricks outlined here UNTIL PPC is changed in a way that it supports OS 9 natively.

Prove me wrong.

--kybernaut

bonehead · Post by **bonehead** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 3:45 pm

kybernaut wrote:As far as I am aware, all OS 9 "emulation" layers like MOL or the OS X classic environment are not a really emulators but grant the guest system (ie. OS 9) considerable direct access to the hosts hardware...

My conclusion: OS 9 wouldn't run with any tricks outlined here UNTIL PPC is changed in a way that it supports OS 9 natively.

Prove me wrong.

The fact that MOL will let MacOS boot on non-apple hardware -- hardware that would otherwise not be able to boot MacOS -- proves you wrong right off the bat.

MOL is a virtual machine. It does NOT give the guest OS direct access to the hardware, save the CPU. (and even then, it's virtualized, so it doesn't have full control).

kybernaut · Post by **kybernaut** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 3:48 pm

It was new to me that MOL runs on non-apple hardware. Thanks for pointing that out!

--kybernaut

bonehead · Post by **bonehead** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 4:28 pm

kybernaut wrote:It was new to me that MOL runs on non-apple hardware. Thanks for pointing that out!

Hmmm... For walking into that minefield, I think you should be elected to give MOL on a PearPC a shot! :D

kybernaut · Post by **kybernaut** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 4:43 pm

Sorry, I cant do the test, because with my rig it would take me d a y s to do this...

But I can only encourage anyone else here, because I'm anxious about the results!

bonehead · Post by **bonehead** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 8:41 pm

A little dated, but interesting...
http://snow.prohosting.com/guru4mac/mac ... bench.html

If MOL does work under PearPC, as already pointed out by others, it probably wouldn't take much of a hit... unless MOLs MMU virtualization stresses an already weak point of PearPC.

jhkl · Post by **jhkl** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 8:47 pm

*SNIFF SNIFF*

I just read this in the Wiki pages:

"MOL doesn't start in Mandrake client? (testing needed)"

The original TO DO can be found here:

http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/to%20do

Now, it might work in other distributions of Linux and this might be out of date, but right now I would say that it isn't worth trying on Mandrake.

kybernaut · Post by **kybernaut** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 8:24 pm

Just FYI...

I tried to run Classic from OS 9 installed on a mounted disc image -- doesnt work! This is a common trick that works on Macs when you dont have OS 9 drivers on your partition and dont want to re-install. I thought I could fool PearPC this way, but no way.

--kybernaut

HDC · Post by **HDC** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 8:33 pm

Besides Open Firmware stuff, I believe OS 9 requires MMU (memory management unit) support which is very difficult to code and would slow down the emulation dramatically. A PPC virtual machine like Mac-On-Linux can run Mac OS 9 as MOL has a virtual MMU.

Jim, I don't know what kind of herbs you're smoking lately, but PearPC already has a virtual MMU

sardaukar_siet · Post by **sardaukar_siet** » Mon Jun 21, 2004 8:02 am

If someone knows how MOL can boot MacOS (9/X) without the hardware, I would appreciate some info. Is it related to the ROM being "on-disk" from 8.6 onwards?

robojam · Post by **robojam** » Mon Jun 21, 2004 12:26 pm

News just in - you can emulate OS 9 with Sheepshaver!

I could have put it in the wish list but [OS 9 on PearPC]

I could have put it in the wish list but [OS 9 on PearPC]

Re: I could have put it in the wish list but