Sheepshaver Won't Even Start After Intial Setup

About SheepShaver, a PPC Mac emulator for Windows, MacOS X, and Linux that can run System 7.5.3 to MacOS 9.0.4.

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General Karthos
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Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2017 6:45 am

Sheepshaver Won't Even Start After Intial Setup

Post by General Karthos »

So I am on El Capitán. I am starting Sheepshaver in 32 bit mode, etc. etc. Everything works fine with the intial setup. I'm using a 9.0.4 install disk image, and the newworld86.rom (renamed to Mac OS ROM and within the SheepShaver folder). I created the disk and added the disk image (Apple_MacOS_9.0.4_USA.iso: the site said it would work with Sheepshaver.) I set my window preferences to 1920x1080 (smaller than my screen) and dynamic refresh, checked the correct miscellaneous preferences. (Enable JIT Compiler, Allow Empulated CPU to Idle, Ignore Illegal Memory Accesses.)

I double click on the sheepshaver icon, it expands towards the screen and... nothing happens. It quits immediately without so much as an error message.

Am I just screwed because I'm running El Capitán? (the downloaded file says it works through 10.12, and El Capitán is 10.11)

Has anyone else encountered and (especially) has anyone conquered this issue?

I can certainly answer any additional questions if need be. Thanks for the assist.
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2006 10:24 pm
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Re: Sheepshaver Won't Even Start After Intial Setup

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

Do I understand correctly that SheepShaver did run fine during setup, you could set preferences settings, but quits at launch after that?

Please post here the content of your prefs file:
Open Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities/) and type at the prompt:

Code: Select all

open ~/.sheepshaver_prefs
followed by a return.
The file will open in your default text editor. Select all content, copy, and paste it here in your reply.
General Karthos
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Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2017 6:45 am

Re: Sheepshaver Won't Even Start After Intial Setup

Post by General Karthos »

It's below. The only modification I made to it was to remove my name.

disk MacOS9
disk /Users/[myname]/Desktop/Apple_MacOS_9.0.4_USA.iso
cdrom /dev/poll/cdrom
extfs /Users/[myname]/Desktop/Shared
screen win/1920/1080
windowmodes 0
screenmodes 0
seriala
serialb /dev/null
rom Mac OS ROM
bootdrive 0
bootdriver 0
ramsize -2147483648
frameskip 1
gfxaccel true
nocdrom false
nonet false
nosound false
nogui false
noclipconversion false
ignoresegv true
jit true
jit68k false
keyboardtype 5
ether slirp
keycodes false
keycodefile
mousewheelmode 1
mousewheellines 3
dsp /dev/dsp
mixer /dev/mixer
ignoresegv true
idlewait true

Edit: Is the negative ram size the problem? I saw that in the preferences editor, and changed it to a positive value, but it reverted to a negative number apparently.

Edit 2: It seems to have been solved by reducing the RAM from 2 GB to 1 GB. Maybe I gave it too much RAM? It was far more than it needed. I'm using it to run programs that ran simultaneously on an old machine with 128k of RAM. Thanks for the help though!
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2006 10:24 pm
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Re: Sheepshaver Won't Even Start After Intial Setup

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

Yes, you gave SheepShaver way too much RAM, it cannot recognize 2GB and even 1GB is a lot. For average use 64MB is sufficient, 128MB is better, 256MB is plenty, and 512MB is probably more than you would need.
Last edited by Ronald P. Regensburg on Fri Jan 27, 2017 10:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
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General Karthos
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Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2017 6:45 am

Re: Sheepshaver Won't Even Start After Intial Setup

Post by General Karthos »

That figures. When I only had 4 GB of RAM (on my last computer) I gave 512k to Sheepshaver. Now I have 16 GB of RAM. I figured four times the overall RAM, four times the allocation to Sheepshaver. It never occurred to me that it couldn't understand that much RAM.

Thanks!
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