Images will produce an ISO that is unreadable to your Mac emulator.That’s not too surprising. As a terminal emulator, the application provides text-based access to the operating system, in contrast to the mostly graphical nature of the user experience of macOS, by AwayFL is an open source Flash emulator created by the non-profit Away Foundation. Terminal originated in NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP, the predecessor operating systems of macOS.Most of the “default” or recommended pre-compiled Mac/Windows versions of emulators offered up to casual or first-time users don’t necessarily do every single feature that the emulator’s front page brags about.So what really is the boundary between Basilisk II and SheepShaver? Why is there such a difference between MacOS 9.0.4 and 9.1? And what the hell is a ROM file anyway? That’s what I want to get into today. That’s partly because, as open source software, each of these programs is *potentially* capable of a hell of a lot – but might require a lot of futzing in configuration files and compiling of source code to actually unlock all those potentials (which, those of us just trying to load up Nanosaur for the first time in 15 years aren’t necessarily looking to mess with). Etc.In particular, while each Mac emulator has some pretty good information available to troubleshoot it (if you’ve got the time to find it), I’ve never found a really satisfying overview, that is, an explanation of why you might choose X program over Y. That’s also not something that to hold against them in the least, mind you – when you are a relatively tiny, all-volunteer group of programmers keeping the software going to maintain decades’ worth of content from a major computing company that’s notoriously litigious about intellectual property….some of the details are going to fall through the cracks, especially when you’re trying to cram them into a forum post, not specifically addressing the archival/information science community, etc.
Emulator Open Source Free And OpenIf you still have the original installer CD lying around, great! You can still use that. These used to come on bootable CD-ROMs, or depending on the age of the OS, floppy disks. We’ll go over these in more detail in a minute.You’ll need the program that installs the desired operating system that you’re trying to recreate/emulate: let’s say, for example, Mac OS 8.5. Intro: How do I pick what emulator to use?There are several free and open-source software options for emulating legacy Mac systems on contemporary computers. (You can jump right to an app with this Table of Contents:![]() But the CPU itself needs a little bit of programmed code in order to work – it has to be able to both understand and give instructions. This ensures your computer has at least some basic functionality even if your operating system were to get corrupted or some piece of hardware were to truly go haywire (see this other post). It also has a CPU, central processing unit, which is commonly analogized to the “brain” of the computer: it coordinates all the different pieces of your computer, hardware and software alike: operating system, keyboard, mouse, monitor, hard drive (or solid state drive), CD-ROM drive, USB hub, etc. So you know your computer has a hard drive, where your operating system and all your files and programs live. This makes emulation easier, because the emulating application can likewise go for broad compatibility and probably be fine, without worrying too specifically about *exactly* what model of CPU/ROM it’s trying to imitate (see, for example, DOSBox).Not so with Mac, since Apple makes closed-box systems: the hardware, OS, software, etc., are all very carefully designed to only work with their own stuff (or, at least, stuff that Apple has pretty specifically approved/licensed). The major selling point of Windows systems is that they are not locked into specific hardware: there are/have been any number of third-party manufacturers (Dell, Lenovo, HP, IBM, etc etc) and they all have to make sure their hardware, including the CPU/ROM that come with their desktops, are very broadly compatible, because they can never predict what other manufacturer’s hardware/software you may be trying to use in combination. If the whole goal of an emulator is to trick legacy software into thinking it’s on an older machine by creating a fake computer-inside-your-computer (a “virtual machine”), you need a ROM file to serve as the fake brain.This is trickier with Mac emulation than it is with Windows/PC emulation. Otherwise we’re basically making an intellectual property fair use case here – that we’re not taking any business/profit from Apple from using this firmware/software for personal or educational purpose, and that providing emulation for archival purposes (and yes, I would consider recovering personal data an “archival” process) serves a public good by providing access to otherwise-lost files. You’re definitely safest to extract and use the ROM file of a Mac computer you bought. But, at least so far as my knowledge of American intellectual property law goes, and I am by no means whatsoever an expert, we are in gray legal territory. Wait, if this relies on proprietary code from closed-box systems… is this legal?Well if you got this far in an article about making fake Macs before asking that, I’m not so sure you actually care about the answer. Workaround for mac cec sierraThere are four emulators that I’ve used successfully (read: that have builds and guides available on Emaculation) that together cover the gamut of basically all legacy Mac machines: Mini vMac, Basilisk II, SheepShaver, and QEMU.As I mentioned at the top, a confusing aspect is that many of these programs have various “builds” – different versions of the same basic application that offer tweaks and improvements focused on one particular feature or another. So how do I pick what ROM file and emulator to use?That’s largely going to depend on what OS you’re aiming for. I’ll link with impunity to options that have worked for me. Besides malware, it’s easy to come across ROM files that are just corrupted and non-functional. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorDan ArchivesCategories |