Mac on Mac for OSX?

[bigmessowires]

I recently discovered that Classic Mode under OSX 10.4 Tiger is pretty lousy for original MacOS games. Reading more about it, I'm not the only one with this complaint, and apparently Classic worked much better under 10.2 Jaguar. I also read about an intriguing alternative called "Mac on Mac", which was apparently some kind of virtualization layer for PowerPC and early versions of OSX, in which you could run other versions of OSX or OS9. Sort of like Classic, but better?

Unfortunately I've found very little info about Mac-on-Mac, the term is apparently too generic to function well as a Google search term. Does anybody know which versions of OSX it supports for the host OS, and how it fares compared to Classic?

Yes in my particular case I can also just boot directly in OS9, but it's nice to have OSX for most things plus the ability to run that odd OS9 title without rebooting.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

The best solution for classic Mac games is to run them on vintage Beige Macs.

Some games require specific timings, some require specific resolutions or color modes (4 color or 16 color, for example) which more modern hardware just can't handle.

 

[Nixontheknight]

I recently discovered that Classic Mode under OSX 10.4 Tiger is pretty lousy for original MacOS games. Reading more about it, I'm not the only one with this complaint, and apparently Classic worked much better under 10.2 Jaguar. I also read about an intriguing alternative called "Mac on Mac", which was apparently some kind of virtualization layer for PowerPC and early versions of OSX, in which you could run other versions of OSX or OS9. Sort of like Classic, but better?

Unfortunately I've found very little info about Mac-on-Mac, the term is apparently too generic to function well as a Google search term. Does anybody know which versions of OSX it supports for the host OS, and how it fares compared to Classic?

Yes in my particular case I can also just boot directly in OS9, but it's nice to have OSX for most things plus the ability to run that odd OS9 title without rebooting.

you'll probably find more info about it on macintosh repository or macintosh garden

 

[NJRoadfan]

Yes, it was a thing. "Mac-On-Mac" was an alpha port of Mac-On-Linux to Darwin/OS X. It only worked on 10.3 because the very alpha KEXT required for it was never updated for 10.4, which brought a ton of API breaking changes. I had written an audio output driver for it and my testing with it showed that it was somewhat better then Classic for certain programs. I used it to run Bernie ][ The Rescue, an Apple IIgs emulator, which ran terrible on Classic. The audio was unusable under Classic, but worked perfectly under Mac-On-Linux.

 

[bigmessowires]

Thanks for confirming about Mac on Mac. It sounds like a very interesting effort, even if short-lived. As an alternative I've been trying to get some PPC version of Basilisk II running on my Quicksilver, but so far I haven't found any combination of Basilisk II build and ROM version that does more than show a solid color window under emulation.

 

[Phipli]

Thanks for confirming about Mac on Mac. It sounds like a very interesting effort, even if short-lived. As an alternative I've been trying to get some PPC version of Basilisk II running on my Quicksilver, but so far I haven't found any combination of Basilisk II build and ROM version that does more than show a solid color window under emulation.

Grab a IIci ROM.

 

[bigmessowires]

That's the same ROM I was using originally. I tried it with the 20091004 version of Basilisk II PPC as well as "Nigel's version" 16 and 19, with the default Basilisk preferences. In all cases I only got a solid-colored window when I started the emulator under OSX 10.4.11. It's not terribly important so I didn't look into it further yet.

 

[Phipli]

That's the same ROM I was using originally. I tried it with the 20091004 version of Basilisk II PPC as well as "Nigel's version" 16 and 19, with the default Basilisk preferences. In all cases I only got a solid-colored window when I started the emulator under OSX 10.4.11. It's not terribly important so I didn't look into it further yet.

Do you have it set to 030+68882?

IIci ROM gets upset with no 68882 I think I remember.