If you have an ISO of a Mac OS 9 install disc (a Mac OS X classic install disc won't work), then you can use that in the next step. If you don't have one, you can download one from Mac OS 9 Lives: Mac OS 9.2.2 Universal Install. Install Mac OS 9. This won't install quite like Mac OS 9 did, but instead use Apple System Restore to restore an. Apple Mac OS 9.2.2 for Mac. Free Apple Mac/OS Classic Version 9.2.2 Full Specs. Average User Rating: 2 User Votes 4.0. Out of 2 votes. Download Now Secure Download.
(Updated Dec 11, 2018)
I recently got an urge to revisit old computer media from the late 90s and early 2000s. Growing up around that time, I remember reading a lot of MacAddict and MacWorld to learn what I could do with a Mac. Building websites, graphic design, hacking the appearance of the UI, all these were explained in the pages of magazines.
These magazines are freely available on the Internet Archive, including their cover discs. I was curious to see what applications were around back then — what about emulating Classic Mac OS to see?
Creative variations in UI design
My first instinct was to reach for VirtualBox, but that is a no go as I need to emulate a Motorola 68K or IBM PowerPC architecture. I recalled that QEMU could emulate other architectures, surely someone has already tried to emulate Mac OS 9.
Yes, many people have already written about emulating Mac OS 9, but only recently (2018) did experimental audio support come out for QEMU. Here is a short guide on how I got it running with MacOS High Sierra as the Host OS.
Note that while QEMU is available in Homebrew, it does not have the experimental audio support (yet).
Internet Archive
Magazines can be browsed right on the archive site, or downloaded as archives or PDFs (or a torrent containing all formats). Cover discs can be downloaded directly as ISO files or a torrent for the ISO. Don’t worry about seedless torrents; these ones are backed with web seeding.
Requirements
DevTools: I already have homebrew and XCode installed; because of this I was not prompted for missing command line tools. If you don’t have them, you might be prompted (by MacOS) to install them.
Hardware: I am not sure about hardware requirements, as most modern Macs will probably eclipse the power needed to run the guest OS. However if you have a low-power CPU (e.g. MacBook) then there may be some struggling.
Windows/Linux: These instructions should probably work there too, although you will probably have to substitute something else for
coreaudio
in the configuration step.Get QEMU “Screamer” Fork
These instructions are adapted from Cat_7 from the Emaculation forums
I started by creating a directory for all this emulation stuff.
Next clone the fork of QEMU with experimental audio support:
Then configure the source to use MacOS CoreAudio. I have also enabled LibUSB, KVM, HyperVirtualization Framework, and the Cocoa UI. In this case I am only compiling the emulator for PPC (32-bit).
Next use make to compile QEMU. (If you have more processor cores, use
make -j 4
or however many cores to speed up the process.) Openvpn socks proxy site.How to remove aero glass watermark. This will create a binary in
qemu-screamer/ppc-softmmu/qemu-system-ppc
that we can use.Optionally you can install these binaries to
/usr/local/bin
or wherever. I kept them in the ~/emulation
directory to separate them from the Homebrew QEMU binaries.Mac Os 9.2.2 Emulator
Create HD for Mac OS 9
We will need to have a hard drive image for our guest OS. I made mine 5 GB in size, which would be typical at the time for Mac OS 9.
In our
qemu-screamer
directory, we will use qemu-img
to create the disk image.Get a Mac OS 9 Installer
If you have an ISO of a Mac OS 9 install disc (a Mac OS X classic install disc will not work — it must be bootable), then you can use that in the next step. If you don’t have one, you can download one from Mac OS 9 Lives: Mac OS 9.2.2 Universal Install.
Install Mac OS 9
The Mac OS 9 Lives method won’t install quite 2002 626 mazda. like an original Mac OS 9 installer would, but instead will use Apple System Restore to restore an image onto the hard drive.
Start up QEMU with the following options:
A breakdown of that command:
-L qemu-screamer/pc-bios
sets the BIOS-cpu 'g4'
emulate a G4 CPU-M mac99,via=pmu
will define the Mac model and enable USB support-m 512
use 512 MB of RAM, could go lower probably-hda macos92.img
use our generated disk image for the hard drive-cdrom '~/Downloads/Mac OS 9.2.2 Universal Install.iso'
use the ISO for the cdrom-boot d
boot from the disk drive-g 1024x768x32
default to 1024x768 resolution and 32 bit colour-device usb-kbd
enable USB keyboard emulation/support-device usb-mouse
enable USB mouse input, will improve cursor tracking somewhat
Ms project. Once it starts up, you will be able to run Disk Initializer to format your hard drive image. Go ahead and do that, using Mac OS HFS Extended as the file system. One partition is good.
After initializing the disk, run Apple System Restore with the Mac OS 9 Lives disk image as the source and your disk as the destination. This will take a minute to restore. Once done, shut down the emulated system (Special Menu -> Shut Down).
Boot Mac OS 9
Similar to the last command, except we start up from the disk we created.
It should boot up and you will have a running Mac OS 9 with audio! I recommend saving this command as a shell script in your
~/emulation
directory.Boots much faster than it did in 2001
Tips
Backups: When the emulator is shut down, just make a copy of the hard disk image to create a backup. If something breaks your Mac OS 9 installation then you can restore the file.
Discs: You can dynamically attach CDs/DVDs to the emulated system by going to the menu bar on your host system for the QEMU application and selecting the option to attach to the CD IDE drive. It will open a dialog letting you select your ISO.
Compatibility: This is emulating Mac OS 9.2.2, released in late 2001. The emulated hardware is more or less of the same vintage, meaning software from the mid-to-late 90s will have some trouble running (as I found). The most common problem is not being able to drop down to 256 colours, although I later found a solution (link below). I have not tried emulating Mac OS 8/8.5; a cursory reading of forums has mentioned that doesn’t work yet.
Easter Egg in Finder
256 Colours
To support 256 colours you will need to add a bios driver. See the EMaculation forums for instructions; it involves replacing a file in the
pc-bios
directory with an older version that still supports 256 colours.2018-12-11 Updates
I removed the extra arguments from
Location: GUIs > Apple > MacOS 9.2.2configure
as by default it will enable everything it can. make
should use -j
instead of -J
. Using USB devices for mouse/keyboard improves mouse performance, but it still is a bit sluggish compared to the host machine. I found a way to get 256 colours working; see that section for a guide.screen shots
Thanks to Jason Reid
MacOS 9.0 was released in October 1999 with the final update for it,version 9.2.2, release in December 2001. MacOS 9.2.2 is the last versionof MacOS based on the original Macintosh operating system.
This is the MacOS 9 desktop. Over all the user interface is not muchdifferent from the MacOS 8.x desktop but there have been many technicalimprovements and some new features added. (Note, these screen shots alsoshow a useful third party utility called 'Dave' that enables Macs to fullyparticipate in a Windows NT network)
Mac Os 9 Emulator Online
The control strip, which was available for earlier versions of MacOShas been improved. You can now simply drag tiles onto the strip to installthem, instead of having to put them in 'Control Strip Modules.' You cannow also delete one by holding the Option key, then dragging it out.
Mac OS 9 can, optionally, have multiple users. Each user can have adifferent desktop theme and sound settings. Users can be given limitedpermissions so as to prevent them from messing up the Mac while still lettingthem use it.
With multiple users enabled the above login box appears at startup.Microsoft completely ripped off the appearance of this login window inWindows XP.
This is the multiple user control panel used to add and modify usersettings.
A very funky feature of MacOS 9 is that it can use your voiceprintas a password. You record a phrase and when you log in it does not justcheck the phrase but also that you are the one saying it.
Also on the subject of security, MacOS 9 adds the ability to encryptfiles on your hard drive.
A screen shot of MacOS 9 browsing the hard drive to show some of itsicons. In 9.0 - 9.0.4, most applications would install to the 'Applications'folder. 9.1 changed that, as it shipped at the same time, and along with,Mac OS X 10.0. 'Applications' is now used for OS X applications, and 'Applications(Mac OS 9) for OS 9 apps. It cannot be renamed to remove the (Mac OS 9).
MacOS 9 ships with Sherlock 2. You can use it to search your hard drive,as well as places on the internet. Google even has a plugin you can installthat allows Sherlock to search it.
Mac Os 9.0.4
This version of MacOS also ads a software update feature that can getsystem software and application updates from Apple over the internet. Youcan get updates manually or schedule a time to get updates automatically.
It also adds a network browser that enables you browse file servers,web servers and FTP servers.
Also on the subject of networking, MacOS 9 has an improved versionof AppleScript that can work remotely over TCP/IP with other Macintoshes.
Not that it is part of MacOS (thank goodness) but a web browser thatwas once popular for it was Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 for the Mac.Microsoft, however, has completely abandoned IE for the Mac. Thisversion will run on 9.x but actually can run on MacOS as far back as 8.1(on PPC only). There is also a MacOS X native version but Microsoft hasabandoned that version as well.
The last version of Mozilla that will Run on MacOS 9 is version 1.2.1.Unlike IE, however, Mozilla is still being actively developed for MacOSX.
This is the Quicktime 6 Player, MacOS 9.0 - 9.1 comes with Quicktime4, and 9.2.1 comes with Quicktime 5. Quicktime is used internally by MacOSfor many image, drawing, and sound operations.
Logging out of MacOS 9.