An emulator focusing on accurate Mac emulation?

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kikyoulinux
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An emulator focusing on accurate Mac emulation?

Post by kikyoulinux »

I'm looking forward to an emulator that emulates oldworld Macs accurately.
Both SheepShaver and Basilisk II are good. But they lack precise cpu speed emulation and scsi, which are supported by pce-macplus. Also, they both lack an emulated MMU. Pce-macplus is great except for its emulating 68000 Macs only...
There are already emulators for old PCs and NeXT that emphasis on accuracy. And is there one for old Macs?
kataetheweirdo
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Re: An emulator focusing on accurate Mac emulation?

Post by kataetheweirdo »

A couple of answers I have.

There's a project I'm working on called DingusPPC. We've managed to get OpenFirmware from the Power Mac G3 Beige v3 ROM booting, but the emulator is very much a pre-alpha. SCSI is being worked on, but it's yet to be completed and merged. However, the MMU is emulated.

There's also a patch in progress for QEMU to include some Old World ROM support (influenced in part by DingusPPC) and they managed to hack into OpenFirmware with that.

For 68k Macs, I think the closest thing to an accurate emulator might be MESS, which can emulate a Mac II.
Jorpho
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Re: An emulator focusing on accurate Mac emulation?

Post by Jorpho »

I often used to say that the lack of a free open-source BIOS and viable alternative to MacOS held back development efforts – but these days it seems like that doesn't really matter anymore.
kikyoulinux wrote:There are already emulators for old PCs and NeXT that emphasis on accuracy.
Are you thinking of Bochs? Because by all accounts it is too slow to be of much practical use.
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adespoton
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Re: An emulator focusing on accurate Mac emulation?

Post by adespoton »

If you find one I'm missing, feel free to add it to https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 2nWC9_t2w/

The list includes PCEm and x86box for running x86 OS X, but not BOCHS. Anyone who can fill in the missing results for MESS is more than welcome to do so :)
andreas_g
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Re: An emulator focusing on accurate Mac emulation?

Post by andreas_g »

For your list: Previous also runs 68k Mac OS from System 7.0 up to 7.5.5 via Daydream (Darkmatter).
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adespoton
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Re: An emulator focusing on accurate Mac emulation?

Post by adespoton »

For those unaware of the components there:
https://virtuallyfun.com/2015/08/07/darkmatter/
Darkmatter is a Mac emulator for NeXT hardware.

It's not really focused on accurate Mac emulation though, and doesn't run on modern hardware (and Previous, which DOES run on modern hardware, is already in my list of emulators, but also isn't focused on accurate emulation).
andreas_g
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Re: An emulator focusing on accurate Mac emulation?

Post by andreas_g »

Previous is focused on accurately emulating a NeXT Computer. Daydream (Darkmatter) is meant to run Mac OS on NeXT hardware. So Previous being a NeXT hardware emulator with the help of Darkmatter also runs Mac OS in a quite accurate way. For example Previous has the best 68k FPU emulation of any 68k Mac emulator out there. We have mostly accurate CPU, MMU, FPU, DSP, SCSI, Floppy, Printer, Sound (no driver for Mac OS), Ethernet and so on. Previous is no Mac emulator, but probably the most accurate way to run 68k Mac OS.
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