Is SheepShaver dead?

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

Moderators: Cat_7, Ronald P. Regensburg, ClockWise

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GMP79
Space Cadet
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Nov 03, 2020 9:35 am

Is SheepShaver dead?

Post by GMP79 »

Hello,
I am new to Macintosh emulation and discovered this Power Mac emulator. I am just wondering whether SS is dead or is it still being developed? I only ask because someone posted this comment on https://www.osnews.com/story/23321/howt ... heepshaver.
As the main developer abandoned ship some time ago, problems are starting to arise when running on newer host OS’. Some blatant self-interest-driven request: If anyone is interested, we over at emaculation.com could do with an 64-bit update to the cdrom and ethernet drivers for windows and a better (native) routing solution for appletalk in OSX…
If SS is no longer developed, this would be a shame, as I would like to have seen a savestate feature and startup chimes when the emulator loads, and this sound would have varied depending on what Mac model the emulator is set to. (Other emulators that already emulate the Mac, such as Mini vMac and MAME, already emulate the startup chime).
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Ronald P. Regensburg
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Posts: 7821
Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2006 10:24 pm
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands

Re: Is SheepShaver dead?

Post by Ronald P. Regensburg »

SheepShaver and BasiliskII are not dead at all. "the main developer abandoned ship some time ago" possibly refers to Gwenole Beauchesne, who "suspended" development in 2006. That did not stop development. Many developers have contributed since.

In 2012 the original B2-devel code base was moved from SourceForge to GitHub: https://github.com/cebix/macemu
Still different developers contribute. Many also started their own fork.

Later, kanjitalk755 combined the work of several developers in his own fork and continued development. His fork is currently 450+ commits ahead of cebix.
For the builds posted here, we use his source since 2018: https://github.com/kanjitalk755/macemu

Yes, some things are left to be desired still. Also, SheepShaver and BasiliskII do not give you a startup sound.
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