MacOS X version of SheepShaver

Stephen Coates · Post by **Stephen Coates** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 2:20 pm

I have just heared that I can now run SheepShaver as a MacOSX application. Does it just use the processor that is already in the powermac (like Mac-On-Linux does), or does it emulate a powerpc processor (like the x86 linux version does)?

Thanks
Stephen

gb · Post by gb » Sat Jul 10, 2004 3:38 pm

It runs native code. Apple GCC from X.2 miscompiles the PowerPC emulator anyway.

AHunter3 · Post by **AHunter3** » Sun Jul 11, 2004 4:38 am

It's native and quite fast. MacBench and other performance utils show CPU and FPU speed equiv to what I get when I'm booted in MacOS 9 natively. (Video performance suffers a bit).

gb · Post by gb » Tue Jul 13, 2004 5:20 am

Yeah, video performance can't reach Linux/PPC speeds. People would want to make a full Quartz port if they want and if this is profitable, I won't do that.

Stephen Coates · Post by **Stephen Coates** » Fri Jul 16, 2004 10:15 am

I still don't get this.
Does the MacOSX version emulate a processor (Like Virtual PC for mac) or is it a virtual machine (like Mac-On-Linux)?

Thanks
Stephen

AHunter3 · Post by **AHunter3** » Sun Jul 18, 2004 10:03 am

From the tutorial on running SheepShaver on PowerPC Linux:

In this configuration SheepShaver is neither a MacOS replacement nor an emulator. It runs an unmodified PowerPC MacOS under control of Linux at full speed without any kind of emulation.

This is true of SheepShaver running under MacOS X as well. My 500 MHz G4 is a 500 MHz processor under SheepShaver. It isn't pretending to be a PPC 601 chip or 603 chip or anything else. It's directly using your real chip. If you have a 2 GHz G5, SheepShaver will presumably report that you have a 2 GHz processor, and it will feel like it. No speed hit. It isn't emulating the processor.

In contrast, this is not true of Basilisk II for example. If you install Basilisk II and run a utility to report back your processor type and speed, you'll learn that you've got a Motorola 68LC040 chip, if I remember correctly. It does emulate a different processor than what you've got. You do take a speed hit.