SheepShaver is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple– IBM– ...

Apple Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software ...

emulator In computing, an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use pe ...

originally designed for

BeOS BeOS is an operating system for personal computers first developed by Be Inc. in 1990. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was positioned as a multimedia platform that could be used by a substantial population of desktop users an ...

and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

. The name is a play on ShapeShifter, a

Macintosh II The Macintosh II is a personal computer designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from March 1987 to January 1990. Based on the Motorola 68020 32-bit CPU, it is the first Macintosh supporting color graphics. When introduced, a basic s ...

emulator for

AmigaOS AmigaOS is a family of proprietary native operating systems of the Amiga and AmigaOne personal computers. It was developed first by Commodore International and introduced with the launch of the first Amiga, the Amiga 1000, in 1985. Early versions ...

(made obsolete by

Basilisk II Basilisk II is an emulator which emulates Apple Macintosh computers based on the Motorola 68000 series. The software is cross-platform and can be used on a variety of operating systems. Christian Bauer (developer of a Mac 68k emulator ShapeShi ...

). The ShapeShifter and SheepShaver projects were originally conceived and programmed by Christian Bauer. However, currently, the main developer behind SheepShaver is Gwenolé Beauchesne.

History

SheepShaver was originally commercial software when first released in 1998, but after the demise of

Be Inc. Be Inc. was an American computer company founded in 1990. It is best known for the development and release of BeOS, and the BeBox personal computer. Be was founded by former Apple Computer executive Jean-Louis Gassée with capital from Seymour Cra ...

, the maker of

, it became open source in 2002. It can be run on both

and x86 systems; however, it runs more slowly on an x86 system than on a

system, because of the translation between the PowerPC and Intel x86 instruction sets. SheepShaver has also been ported to

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

. As a free software, a few variants exist to simplify the installation process on Intel-based Macs: * ‘Sheep Shaver Wrapper’ is built off of Sheep Shaver but it does some of the bundling work for the user. * 'Chubby Bunny' also simplifies the set up process of OS 9 visualization on Intel Macs running OS X.

Features

SheepShaver is capable of running

Mac OS 7 System 7, codenamed "Big Bang", and also known as Mac OS 7, is a graphical user interface-based operating system for Macintosh computers and is part of the classic Mac OS series of operating systems. It was introduced on May 13, 1991, by Apple Co ...

.5.2 through 9.0.4 (though it needs the

image An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensio ...

of an

Old World ROM Old World ROM computers are the Macintosh (Mac) models that use a Macintosh Toolbox read-only memory (ROM) chip, usually in a socket (but soldered to the motherboard in some models). All Macs prior to the iMac, the iBook, the Blue and White Power ...

to run Mac OS 8.1 or below), and can be run inside a window so that the user can run

classic Mac OS Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. ...

and either

, Intel-based

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lap ...

, or

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...

applications at the same time. Although SheepShaver does have

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...

support and CD-quality sound output, it does not emulate the

memory management unit A memory management unit (MMU), sometimes called paged memory management unit (PMMU), is a computer hardware unit having all memory references passed through itself, primarily performing the translation of virtual memory addresses to physical a ...

. While adding MMU emulation has been discussed, the feature has not been added because of the effort required in implementing it, the impact on performance it will have and the lack of time on the part of the developers.

References

External links

*
SheepShaver for x86

E-Maculation forum on SheepShaver

SheepShaver for Windows setup guide

SheepShaver for OSX setup guide

Gwenole Beauchesne's SheepShaver page (archived)
{{Virtualization products Free emulation software Linux emulation software MacOS emulation software Macintosh platform emulators PowerPC emulators

History

Features

See also

References

External links