Run classic environment in Mac OS 10.1

About Qemu-system-ppc, a PPC Mac emulator for Windows, macOS and Linux that can run Mac OS 9.0 up to Mac OS X 10.5

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Chasmann8
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Run classic environment in Mac OS 10.1

Post by Chasmann8 »

I am running El Capitan natively on a mac desktop, but have legacy games only compatible with PowerPC. Some of them require 10.1, others only run on 9.x or in the classic environment.

I used qemu to emulate 10.1 and it’s working great for some of the newer games, but for those that run in the classic environment, I get the error “to start classic, you need Mac OS 9.1 or later installed. See your documentation for instructions for installing this software.”

If I go to system preferences under classic, I get the error “no startup volume. There is no volume with a system folder that supports starting classic. Please install Mac OS 9.1 or later.

My question: is there a way to get the classic environment to work in my qemu emulated 10.1? Or is there another way for me to have a system that can run games/applications with compatibility for 9.x and 10.1 through 10.4?
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adespoton
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Re: Run classic environment in Mac OS 10.1

Post by adespoton »

I'd highly recommend running 10.2 instead of 10.1 -- it will be faster, more stable, and have better Classic support. You may find you do even better running 10.4 with the classic environment swapped out from 10.2.

Personally, I run 10.4.11 with 9.2.2 via Classic as my general environment, with the option to boot into 9.2.2 when the need arises. Most games will run under Classic, and if they crash, I just need to re-launch Classic while the host OS stays running. For those rare configurations where that doesn't work, it's either bare metal 9.2.2 or Mini vMac under 10.4.11 running whatever OS version is needed.
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Cat_7
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Re: Run classic environment in Mac OS 10.1

Post by Cat_7 »

is there a way to get the classic environment to work in my qemu emulated 10.1? Or is there another way for me to have a system that can run games/applications with compatibility for 9.x and 10.1 through 10.4?
You would need to install Mac OS 9.1 or 9.2 in 10.1 to get classic going there. You might also create a new virtual machine running 9.2 on its own.

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Chasmann8
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Re: Run classic environment in Mac OS 10.1

Post by Chasmann8 »

Thanks for the reply. How do I install 9.2 within 10.1? I have a 9.2 iso, but if I try to install it, I get the same error because it tries to open the classic environment in order to install it. Is there a different method to install it?
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Cat_7
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Re: Run classic environment in Mac OS 10.1

Post by Cat_7 »

The Apple preferred way to get classic running is to install OSX over an 9.1 or 9.2 installation ;-)

It seems you can also attempt to restore 9.2 from a restore cd when running OSX. You'd have to find such a CD.
Then there are downloads of copies of system folders people used in Classic. You'd have to find and download one into your 10.1 and try.

Do not go the 10.2 route as 10.2 has serious display issues.

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adespoton
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Re: Run classic environment in Mac OS 10.1

Post by adespoton »

Another way to install 9.2 is to install it to an emulator and then copy the contents over to your existing environment.

For booting classic, a straight file copy is enough to get it to work; to boot into OS 9, you'll need to bless the System Folder first, but that's it.

It's only with OS X that setting up an OS disk became trickier.
PeterHolbrook
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Re: Run classic environment in Mac OS 10.1

Post by PeterHolbrook »

I have a Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11 system running on Qemu 7.1 on top of Monterey 12.4. Classic was installed alongside Tiger itself, and it works just fine.
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wattzXVM
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Re: Run classic environment in Mac OS 10.1

Post by wattzXVM »

Just boot from the MacOS9.2 installation CD and install Classic.
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