SheepShaver 2.3 review

SheepShaver is an Open Source PowerPC MacOS run-time environment.

License: GPL OS: Mac OS X File size: 0K Developer: Gwenole Beauchesne Price: $0.00 Updated: 06 Feb 2006

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SheepShaver is an Open Source PowerPC MacOS run-time environment. That is, it enables you to run PowerPC Classic MacOS software on your computer, even if you are using a different operating system. However, you still need a copy of MacOS and a PowerMacintosh ROM image to use this program.

If you are using a PowerPC-based system, applications will run at native speeds (i.e. without any emulation involved). On other systems, SheepShaver provides the first PowerPC G4 emulator, though without MMU, to enable the execution of MacOS Classic. Performance with the current CPU emulator using basic just-in-time (JIT) translation techniques is roughly 1/8-th of native speeds.

Here are some key features of "SheepShaver":
PowerPC G4 emulation on non-PowerPC platforms, direct execution otherwise
Basic but portable JIT engine (x86, x86_64, mips)
Copy and paste of text between MacOS and the host OS
File exchange with the host OS via a Unix icon on the Mac desktop
Color video display with support for run-time resolution switching
Run-time depth switching from 1 bpp to current host depth settings
Native QuickDraw 2D acceleration for BitBlt and FillRect operations
CD-quality stereo sound output
Networking: SheepShaver supports Internet and LAN networking via Ethernet and PPP with all Open Transport compatible MacOS applications.

What's New:
Add fullscreen DGA mode via fbdev in Linux
Add screen prefs item a-la Basilisk II
Add missing lvsl/lvsr instructions in AltiVec emulation (Adobe FrameMaker)
Add support for old toolchain (gcc “2.96”, glibc 2.2)
Add user-space network emulation (ether slirp in prefs file)
Add Ethernet and Serial support to Windows
Add GTK+2 based GUI to Windows
Add initial port to Darwin/x86 with JIT
Improve portability of FPU emulation code to non C99 capable systems
Improve interrupt processing in emulated mode
Improve idle wait on Linux platforms
Properly fail to load MacOS < 8.1 with NewWorld ROMs
Fix native execution in Linux/PowerPC
Fix PowerPC test-and-set implementation (fix clipboard)
Fix Ethernet support in Linux, avoid hangs
Fix occasional hangs during interrupt processing
Fix High Resolution Timing code for Linux
Fix support for 4+ GB hard disk images
Fix SDL/x11 native cursor acceleration
Fix sheep_net driver to properly work with Linux kernels up to 2.6.11.