Mac emulation on Linux

[bse5150]

Just curious as to whether or not anybody here has ever tried running a Mac emulator in Linux.

I want to try one of the emulators on my ThinkPad but I'm wanting to hear other people's experiences first.

Like how well they work, how difficult are they to setup, how compatible they are, how buggy they are, etcetera, etcetera.

 

[tecneeq]

There is always BasiliskII wich is quite mature, not buggy, works fine, easy to get going:

http://www.emaculation.com/doku.php/basiliskii_linux_setup

This should probably be moved to the software section.

 

[Gorgonops]

SheepShaver works pretty well on Linux as well, and oddly enough seems to benchmark faster running 68k code than BasiliskII does. Both have their good and bad points. BasiliskII seems a *little* less crashy in my experience, but it sort of depends what the phase of the moon was, how high the tides were, and whether or not a groundhog saw his shadow at the exact moment your binary was compiled. On the flip side, if you have an OS 9.0 cd (either a "real" one or a restore CD) SheepShaver is *really* easy to get going. It can use the New World ROM image off the CD instead of making you track down a working beige Power Mac ROM. And, bonus, if you use a restore CD you can use the "hidden disk image" trick to just drag and drop a complete system in one step.

(Just don't use a restore CD for a Cube. One for a Power Mac or iMac is fine but the Cube version of 9.0.4 has **xxored audio drivers and I never figured out how fix them inside the emulator.)

 

[krye]

Mini vMac works on Linux.

 

[24bit]

As nobody named it: MiniVMac.

Setup, if one can call it that, is like eating cake.

OS are stable from 2.0 to 7.5 if you like b/w. :b&w:

Not sure whether MiniVMacII has been ported to GNU/Linux. The Mac_II ASC emulation is still incomplete as far as I know.

Off topic:

If you have a T60 with GMA945 or ATI X1300, I would set up OSX 10.6.8 and have all three emulators on it.

One of the pros is the ease to interchange files with the host OS. OSX does not cripple resource forks of "Classic" files and 10.6 can still read NDIF.

Files can be downloaded with Safari or else and inflated on the fly to be picked up from the "Unix" volume by BII or SS.

Also OSX hosts seems to be a bit faster than Linux hosts with SheepShaver (equal hardware, of course). If performance is an issue...

 

[24bit]

krye, you have beaten me. |)

 

[Gorgonops]

If you have a T60 with GMA945 or ATI X1300, I would set up OSX 10.6.8 and have all three emulators on it.

And in the process violate the shrinkwrap agreement of an arguably-still-current OS, but I don't suppose we'll get into that.

Files can be downloaded with Safari or else and inflated on the fly to be picked up from the "Unix" volume by BII or SS.

I've had few (no?) problems downloading archive files with a native browser and opening them via the "Unix drive". Pretty sure the stub that emulates that drive is the same regardless of OS and thus pays no more attention to resource forks on OS X than it does on Linux.

Also OSX hosts seems to be a bit faster than Linux hosts with SheepShaver (equal hardware, of course). If performance is an issue...

My experience has been the reverse, at least with BasiliskII, but it depends a *lot* on which particular build you're running.

Anyway. Seems a bit weird to tell someone to swap out their OS of choice just to run an emulator which actually has deeper roots on the OS they're running now, but... eh.

 

[tecneeq]

I don't want to sound negative, but emulating isn't the true path to enlightenment.

You really want at least one powerfull and networked 68k mac to play. Emulation isn't the real thing. The whirrs. The clicks. The flickers. A 68k mac is more than just executing applications.

 

[24bit]

Yes Gorgonops, I stand corrected. You are right of course.

As I said, off topic - if I where the OP.

I know Christian Bauer et al. developed on Mandrake/Mandriva back in the day.

Mandriva 2010 still had the emulators in the repository, easy to set up.

As of today, the OSX builds receive most love and attention. If one wishes to plunge into emulation, OSX hosts offer best integration of the guest system - not counting 10.8 maybe.

Sure its a bit crazy to change horses for an emulator. The T60´s factory OS was XP, so if one prefers a *nix system, why not BSD, Darwin...

If only for preservation, I would create images of all my vintage Mac´s HDDs and store them on recent external hard drives - ready to use with emulators if needed.

Guess I´d better stop it here. Off topic.

Have a nice day/night!

 

[Gorgonops]

Oh no, please go on and tell us all about how Darwin is the ideal legal OS for everyday use on non-Apple machines. I'm intrigued, really I am. Let's go over to Puredarwin.org and see what's in the latest release...

Known issues

These issues will be addressed in future releases.

• Works with VMware Fusion 2 on Macintosh, VirtualBox on Linux
  login does not work, user is working as root
  Lots of error messages during the boot process
  X11 does not work with mach_kernel.voodoo
  WindowMaker will not be the default WM
  halt doesn't work reliably, "shutdown -h now" doesn't work reliably
  /var/log gets filled quickly
  No network
  

...

Wow! I know I'm sold. I get to run a six year old codebase as ROOT! That's the power of Open Source right there!

 

[ClassicHasClass]

I really wish I liked SheepShaver more, but I get random hangs or crashes even just trying to install an operating system.

 

[Bunsen]

Moved.