Apple OS, on a sager?

Hmmm...

It will run slow the moment you bring in an emulator into the picture. Think of it this way - you have to go through your os and then through the emulator and then through OS X to do what you want!!!

I would avoid all that and stick with either Windows or Mac

Depends on the quality of the emulator.

I've seen VMWare do some amazing things running windows in linux and linux in windows, so I would say it depends on the quality of the emulator.

I haven't heard of a MAC emulator for PC's... is there one?

-myrkat

I have used SoftMac and Basilisk (I think that's correct) to run Mac OS 8 on windows.

It would be nice if Apple ever released and developed the long-rumored MAC OS for x86... that'd be sweet! Dual-booting into Windows or Mac OS-X... or Tri-booting by adding *nix to the equation.

-myrkat

If it was compatible...

I'd never install windows only an external drive with windows and the games

Re: If it was compatible...

Performance would suck...

Heh, I was playing BF1942 online @ 1600x1200 and all of a sudden it started to get a little choppy... well, my AVG antivirus scanner was scanning all my files! Heh, I just kept playing - it wasn't too bad.

-myrkat

There is currently no Mac emulator for x86 machines available which will emulate PowerMacs, mainly due to the difficulty in emulting a PowerPC processor in software at acceptable speed, and as far as I am aware there are no plans by any of the current emulator producers to develop one. So no OSX for the PC I'm afraid.

The ONLY Mac emulator worth using is Basilisk II, emulates the previous 680x0-processor or "68k" generation Macs which can run up to MacOS 8.1 which is similar to 9.2 in most respects, and on a P3 or P4 machine will run many, many times faster than the original 68k machine, and rival a modern PPC Mac for speed (I own an older Mac G3 desktop which is usually beaten by my emulated 68k system on my Celeron 700Mhz laptop running the same version of MacOS.)

Basilisk II is free and available at quite a few sites, and requires a Mac ROM image (which you can download from the web) and a copy of MacOS 7.x, 8.0 or 8.1 on CD. Alternatively, MacOS 7.5 can be downloaded as freeware from Apple, but it lacks many of the modern MacOS features that 8.0 introduced.

It runs virtually all 68k Mac software very reliably, uses an image file on the PC hard drive to emulate the MacInstosh disk, and features full compatibility standard CD-ROM and floppy drives, various SCSI devices and ethernet if you want to network or access the web.

There is also a version which has a dynamic JIT compiler for extra compatilility and stability, but you need a meatier processor if you want reasonable speed.

All in all a very nice package I use all the time on the road.

The only drawbacks with Basilisk II are that 68k software is no longer made and therefore most available software is pre-1998, and it has trouble with very high video resolutions that try to allocate more than 4MB of video RAM, so I doubt if you could run it in those lovely SXGA and UXGA resolutions.

Hope this helps.

Good Deal!

Lazyfox: damn fine information! I did not know about this emulator, nor did I know OS 7 is free from Apple!

That'd be slick if MS put windows 3.1 / 95 up for FREE, without support and all. What a nice idea; way to go Apple!

-myrkat

Myrkat, I just noticed you have the 30.6 HT P4 in your Sager. Basilisk II fully supports multiprocessor options under NT4/2000/XP, so I suspect it that it would see the hyperthreading as a multiprocessor setup and REALLY fly. If you do decide to try Basilisk II I'd like to hear if it does indeed take advantage of the hyperthreading.

I would LOVE to try it out, but I have NO mac software and NO mac OS disk...

-myrkat

There's a reason why apple released OS7 for free: because it is absolutely utterly obsolete by today's standards. No one develops for it, and all new software/hardware does not work on it. It's Apple's little trick to obtain profits. They force you to upgrade your computer every 5 years. At least Microsoft doesn't absolutely force you to upgrade windows. That's why they haven't released Win95 or 3.1 yet for free. Programs that runs on WinXP can also run on Win95. All hardware for WinXP still works on Win95. They don't force you to upgrade: they encourage you to with new features and better stability. That's about the only reason why I hate apple. Their things are TOO proprietary. They make the hardware, sell every scrap of it. If they open up and allow third party hardware (enough to "build" your own mac) i'd go for it.

Then why hasn't Microsoft realeased any of their DOS versions for free?

Or Windows 1.0, 2.0, or 3.0 (which I have, ugly and useless as they are)?

I mean, windows is nice - especially since all the coolest games are written for it, but it's not the end-all-be-all.

Don't let your blinding hatred of Apple convince you Windows is great - far from it, many Windows XP programs CANNOT run in windows 95... perhaps when it's the other way around (95 apps in XP), but I know that anything that has security, transparancies, or other advanced hooks into the OS will simply NOT work on previous versions.

In fact, your whole point about how Apple forces you to upgrade every 5 years is a big PLUS in my book; because Microsoft forces you to upgrade EVERY YEAR now (with License 6.0).

Five years on any computer platform is quite commendable, if it can be obtained. Heck, for home users, many don't have primary machines much older than 3-4 years (and some even less).

I agree about the building-your-own mac. On one hand, I wish it was open so you and I (and others) could build our own; however, having a "dictatorship" over the hardware has given Macs a distinct advantage in compatibility areas. But, nothing is w/o problems, Macs are not the end-all-be-all, either.

-myrkat

Lonewolf,

Basilisk II uses PC hardware by firstly emulating the 68K Mac series processor in software (the old Motorola 680x0 series to be exact), and heavily hacks the original Mac ROM chip code to trick it into believing that the Basilisk II code is in fact the hardware. Graphics are done by DirectX or Windows NT's linear frame buffer (both are about as fast as each other).

You can network it just about all you want. Basilisk II includes a windows ethernet driver which allows the emulator to access the web through Windows - again the emulator is simply tricking MacOS into thinking it's connected to a physical ethernet card when in fact it's communicating with a software driver which in turn addresses the real ethernet card through Windows. Very nifty.

And by the way, on a machine like a Sager, MacOS 8.1 (about the same era as Windows 95/98) will run way faster than on any Mac except the high-end G4 models. In terms of compatibility, it's still useful. In run QuarkXpress 3.1, Photoshop 4.0, Office 6.0 and Internet Explorer 4.0 on mine, which are all still perfectly serviceable for newspapers - we're not into high-end 3d design or browsing crappy flash-laden websites, so it's really all we need.

Download FreeBSD and load it on your Sager. It's the same OS as Mac OS X. You can get it at FreeBSD.org

Re: Depends on the quality of the emulator.

I dont think so.. I wonder what microsoft's plans with virtual pc are since they acquired it.. Hmm maybe i should stop thinking on that could be scary lol

if i could run 'anything' mac os, i would be there yesterday. winblo0ws is requiring me, so far, to reinstall it every 4-5 weeks. and this is getting old, real old. windows doesnt crash as i once remembered, and this is great. but it's like M$ built their house on quicksand. it is an absolute unadulterated worthless son of a motherless goat.

Oi, this thread is so old, I don't even remember posting in it!

Oh well, if you like the mac interface, I'd suggest you try out Gnome in any *nix distribution, or through VMware in windows, or a cheap Linux installed on the windows partition like Mandrake. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't want to install OS7 on a system... There are no new programs for it, as everyone says.

The MASTER of backwards compatibility is the X-window system. The newest distribution will still run the very first X-win compiled 11 years ago! You can run that version on linux, but don't expect much in the way of support or visual "bells and whistles".