sheepshaver
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Need to run Classic under Snow Leopard? SheepShaver can do that.
I'm beginning to think that some other writers on the Mac beat are reading my mind. About two weeks ago, one of my consulting clients was asking if there was any way that she'd be able to upgrade to Snow Leopard and still be able to run two legacy applications in Classic, one of which was HyperCard. Being the forward-looking guy I am, I suggested that we just move the data from her old HyperCard stack over to Bento (simple), and then see if we could find a replacement for the other application into which her employees could re-enter the old data. Yesterday I was looking at posts over on the venerable Mac website TidBITS, and blogger/author Matt Neuburg had written a post about SheepShaver. This oddly-named application is a PowerPC Mac emulator, one of several that are available for both Mac and Windows. Neuburg does a good job of explaining the process of getting a ROM image, then using a Mac OS 9 installer CD to get SheepShaver up and running. Matt pointed out a website, E-Maculation, that is dedicated to Mac emulators and how to get them up and running. While my client loved the solution I was able to provide to her, running Classic under Snow Leopard might be a better (and more fun!) solution for other Mac users. If you're up to the challenge and fun of setting up SheepShaver on a Snow Leopard Mac, be sure to take a look at both Matt's post and the E-Maculation website. In the meantime, I'm going to go put my aluminum foil hat to make sure that Matt stops reading my mind. [via TidBITS]
SheepShaver
Damien found SheepShaver last February, and at the time this PowerPC emulation environment (great for running Classic on Intel Macs) had 'experimental' attached to its explanation. While I don't know if it can be referred to as a solid powerhouse environment even still, it seems to have come quite a ways since February; up to version 2.3, to be exact. The latest version has support for up to 1 GB of memory, many bug and crash fixes, clipboard updates, performance enhancements and more.While it still might not be pretty, SheepShaver is one of the few, if only, methods I've heard of for running Classic on an Intel Mac.
An Experimental Classic Environment for Intel Macs
One of disadvantages with Apple's migration to Intel processors will be the loss of the Classic (Mac OS 9) environment. Apple has said many times that the Classic environment will be incompatible with their Intel Macs. While this probably won't be a problem for many users, organizations like schools (who may have limited money to upgrade their sofware) will likely encounter a few situations where their new Intel Macs need a Classic environment to run a few applications.Enter Sheepshaver, an open source PowerPC runtime environment capable of running PowerPC Mac OS 9 applications. The developer has relased an experimental version of Sheepshaver compatible with Mac OS X 10.4.4 for Intel Macs.Apple may have dropped support for Mac OS 7.x --> Mac OS 9.x applications with their move to Intel, but the open source community has provided us with a decent solution. When my Intel iMac finally arrives, I'll give this a whirl. Maybe C.K. can check it out in the meantime.
