(Guide created March 9th, 2021)

NOTE: this version of qemu is not yet available

Qemu-system-m68k can emulate the Quadra 800 machine and can run the 68k versions of Mac OS 7.1 up to 8.1.

The status of various guests based on the latest builds available from the forum:

• Qemu program
  
• A Quadra 800 rom file
  
• Disk images for the m68k versions of Mac OS you want to install

This guide assumes you are installing Mac OS 8.0 on a 2gb file that will act as your hard disk for Mac OS.
The CD image you install from is called MacOS8.0.iso and the hard disk is called MacOS8.0.img

Installations of other versions of Mac OS (roughly) follow the same path.

• Go to xxxxxx and download our latest build from the official Qemu source.
• Create a folder for Qemu-related files and unpack the download. Put your Mac OS disk images in this folder.
• For Catalina/Big Sur users: read the readme.txt about how to run Qemu on your host!
• Create an empty disk image to install Mac OS on.
• Create a pram disk image to hold information about the system, such as screen resolution.

Open a command prompt and navigate to your Qemu folder.

Note: If you create a disk image larger than 2Gb, you will have to partition the disk so the first partition is 2Gb or less in size. Otherwise Mac OS will not boot after installation.

./qemu-img create -f raw -o size=2G MacOS8.0.img 
./qemu-img create -f raw pram.img 256b

Open your favorite text editor and create a file called qemu.command with the following content:

#!/bin/bash
cd "$(dirname "$0")"

./qemu-system-m68k \
-L pc-bios \
-M q800 \
-bios Quadra800.rom \
-boot d \ 
-drive file=MacOS8.0.iso,format=raw,media=cdrom \
-drive file=MacOS8.0.img,format=raw,media=disk \
-drive file=pram.img,format=raw,if=mtd 

Save qemu.command and use a terminal to make it executable:

chmod +x qemu.command

• Double-click qemu.command. This starts Qemu and boots the MacOS8.0.iso installation CD image.

-drive file=fda.img,format=raw,media=disk,id=fda,if=none
-device swim-drive,drive=fda