NOTE: This is an OLD, ARCHIVAL version of this page. Please use the new, updated version in our wiki, complete with a new PearPC setup guide!
Current Status
From Wikipedia:
"PearPC is an architecture-independent PowerPC platform emulator capable of running many PowerPC operating systems, including Mac OS X, Darwin and Linux.
It is released under the GPL. It can be executed on Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and other systems based on POSIX-X11.
The emulator features a Just-in-time (JIT) processor emulation core which dynamically translates PPC code into x86 code,
caching the results. Despite running only on x86 host architectures, the JIT emulation core runs at least 10 times as fast as
the architecture-independent generic processor emulation core. However, according to the man pages supplied with Debian's packages
of PearPC, even the JIT core runs around 40 times slower than the host machine would if executing native code."
The most current release of the emulator is version 0.4.0 from December of 2005.
There is an active PearPC community, including a support forum and Wiki, at PearPC.net.
History
The first release of PearPC was made in May of 2004. The emulator quickly developed a loyal and enthusiastic user base, much larger than
those of earlier Macintosh emulators like Basilisk II or Sheepshaver. The emulator's development, lead by Sebastian Biallas, happened at a
rapid pace at that time, but progress has been very slow since December, 2005. One possible reason for this is suggested in PearPC's
Wikipedia article:
"On June 6th, 2005, Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, announced that Apple will begin switching their computers' architectures from IBM's PowerPC to Intel's
x86 platform. The transition was completed in August of 2006. The news raised a lot of questions about the future of the PearPC project,
because although the project itself is a PowerPC emulator, it is used primarily to run Mac OS X on x86 machines. If Mac OS X will run
natively on the x86 platform, PearPC's emulation may possibly be replaced by VMware Fusion or other virtualization products."
Those interested in the history of PearPC might want to read about the controversy regarding CherryOS,
a knock-off of the emulator that was "developed" for several months in 2005.
Required Reading
Links
Official Page
Support Community
Files
System Specs
Emulates: PowerPC
ROM Required: Yes
Sound: No
Networking: Yes
Current Version: 0.4.0
Creator: Sebastian Biallas
Runs On: Windows/Linux
Screenshots
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