As before, you’ll need to own a copy of the OS and the system ROM that you’re emulating. To run anything else, you’ll need to install Basilisk II. This is a great way to give you a feel for what you’re letting yourself in for, but only a few apps and games are available this way.

Modern Macs have so much more computing power than these that you can run a faithful emulation of System 7 using JavaScript in your web browser.

When you quit SheepShaver and restart it, the disk image will appear on the OS 9 desktop, and you can open it and run the app’s installer.īack in ’94, Alone in the Dark scared the bejesus out of us Step back further in timeįinally, if you want to get really retro, there are apps written back when Macs used the Motorola 68000-series of processors, before even the PowerPC chips. Mount these in the emulated OS 9 by adding them to the list of disks in SheepShaver’s preferences. Most software you find online will in the form of ‘.sit’ files, which have been compressed using the StuffIt utility, and so you’ll need StuffIt Expander to enable you to double-click a sit file in OS X to expand it you’ll then normally see a ‘.img’ disk image. When you add a new file, you’ll need to close and reopen the Unix folder in OS 9 to see the changes. SheepShaver uses a shared folder for this purpose files you you place in that folder from OS X will appear in a virtual disk called ‘Unix’ on the OS 9 desktop. maintains an extensive library of Mac abandonware, including some classic games from the ’90s.Īpple’s Classic environment is an emulator of Mac OS 9 that was included with OS X up to 10.4 Tiger Installing old softwareĪlthough you can download apps directly from the web browser running in OS 9, you’ll find it generally much easier to download the files in OS X and then move them across to the emulated OS 9 environment. It’s technically still software piracy, but the original copyright holder either can’t be traced or chooses not to enforce their copyright.įor software that’s 20 or more years old, some would argue that downloading it is an ethical act of software preservation. This is a legally grey area whereby very old software that’s no longer available commercially is distributed for free by enthusiasts. Once you have OS 9 running inside your emulator – see the walkthrough on the next page for step-by-step instructions – you’re ready to install some apps.Įven if you no longer have the original disks for your software any more (or perhaps even a drive that will read them!) there are lots of apps that are classed as abandonware. ROM files for various older Mac models are available for download though, so you don’t need to go through the rigmarole of copying off the system ROM from that old G3-powered Mac in your loft. These are copyrighted by Apple, so you can’t legally use them unless you also own the physical Mac they came from. This curiously named utility emulates the PowerPC hardware so that you can install OS 9 – or even OS 8.īecause it’s emulating a different hardware architecture, SheepShaver needs to use the system ROM files from one of the older Macs. You can’t run the Classic environment on an Intel Mac, even if you’re running 10.4 from within Parallels or Fusion.įor that, you’ll need to download SheepShaver. Perhaps you need to roll the clock back even further and run software designed for Mac OS 9? If you still have a Mac running 10.4 Tiger, you might be able to run them using the Classic environment, but this will only work on a Mac with a PowerPC processor. You can pick up a copy of Snow Leopard Server on eBay for about £50/$60/AU$85, as long as you avoid getting a copy with unlimited licences. This works just the same as the regular edition of Snow Leopard (apart from some system administration features that you’ll never use) but handily, it will also install correctly under Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion.

The only tiny complication is that Apple’s licensing agreement doesn’t allow the regular edition of Snow Leopard to be installed on a virtual machine, so you need to buy a copy of Snow Leopard Server instead. The virtualisation software takes care of interfacing with your modern hardware, so it works even with older operating systems. Either of these can create a virtual machine that runs within your existing OS and allows you to install and run a completely different operating system on top of that. Instead, you should use either Fusion 8 or Parallels Desktop 12. Unfortunately, running Snow Leopard isn’t as simple as just taking the original install DVD and putting the system on an external drive.Īn operating system from five years ago doesn’t have the right drivers for lots of the hardware on a modern Mac, such as a Retina display or USB 3.0 ports.

Mac rerto emulator