SheepShaver runs Classic apps on Intel
updated 12:40 pm EST, Wed February 8, 2006
SheepShaver PPC emulator
Gibix.net has recently released an experimental native Intel port (for Mac OS X 10.4.4) of SheepShaver, an open-source PowerPC Mac OS run-time environment that allows users to run PowerPC classic software on a different operating system. SheepShaver requires a copy of Mac OS to run, as well as a Power Macintosh ROM image. Users operating a PowerPC-based system will run applications at native speeds with no emulation, while on other systems the software provides a PowerPC G4 emulator, without a Memory Management Unit (MMU). Performance with the current CPU emulator using basic just-in-time (JIT) translation techniques is roughly one-eighth of native speeds. Supported platforms include Linux (i386, ppc, x86_64), Mac OS X (i386, ppc), Darwin, NetBSD 2.0, FreeBSD 5.3 and Windows for the x86 architecture. SheepShaver is distributed under the GNU GPL for free.
