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PearPC - PowerPC/Mac OS X Emulation on a PC

Tuesday May 11, 2004 9:13 am PDT by Arnold Kim
Several readers have noted a new opensource project that is generating some interest.

PearPC 0.1 is an early version of a "an architecture independent PowerPC platform emulator capable of running most PowerPC operating systems". The emulator offers emulation for various PowerPC operating systems including Mac OS X 10.3 (screenshot).

According to reader reports, the application does appear to work, but is slow and clearly at an early stage of development so of limited use at this time.
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MacBytes
101 months ago
Category: 3rd Party Software
Link: PowerPC Architecture Emulator, capable of running Mac OS X, Linux, etc.
Posted on MacBytes.com

Approved by Mudbug
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Mudbug
101 months ago
so I looked around the site, and tried to understand...

Can someone put into plain english what this means?
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x86isslow
101 months ago
I think there was an older emulation of Mac OS on x86- for OS 8? This might be interesting.
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wrldwzrd89
101 months ago

so I looked around the site, and tried to understand...

Can someone put into plain english what this means?

What this release means is that FINALLY, a viable way to run Mac OS (PowerPC) on Windows (Pentium/x86) exists - a task that was once thought impossible due to internal architectural differences (such as internal registers, which are temporary places to store data that needs to be accessed quickly - x86 has 8 of these registers, whereas the PowerPC has 32). As the site states, this "emulator", as these types of programs are known, is still in early stages of development and is not yet ready for use in, say, a commercial product.
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robbieduncan
101 months ago

so I looked around the site, and tried to understand...

Can someone put into plain english what this means?


It's like VirtualPC but the other way round. It lets you boot PPC operating systems (like Linux-PPC or Mac OSX) on non-PPC computers (like x86 boxes). Unfortunatly it's really slow!
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backspinner
101 months ago
... but will it really run OS X or just only the first pages of the installer? I thought that OS X checks the hardware before booting?
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0 and A ai
101 months ago

... but will it really run OS X or just only the first pages of the installer? I thought that OS X checks the hardware before booting?


So does virtual pc. thats why the program emulates a pc
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Benjamin
101 months ago

What this release means is that FINALLY, a viable way to run Mac OS (PowerPC) on Windows (Pentium/x86) exists [...]


Actually you should have caps the viable and not the finally since.. this emulator already has a ppc emulation on it. http://www.uni-mainz.de/~bauec002/SheepShaver.html

x86isslow -- many emulators have emulated 68k for a while.

article -- hurra... but until they have altivec and less then a 1/10 ratio no point in using it. even VPC runs pretty slow for any real use and it years (with money backing it) ahead of this.
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dombi
101 months ago
How about some benchmarks...why are they always so hard to find? Do any of these solutions have benchmarks to see how quick/slow they are?
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wrldwzrd89
101 months ago

Actually you should have caps the viable and not the finally since.. this emulator already has a ppc emulation on it. http://www.uni-mainz.de/~bauec002/SheepShaver.html

Okay, I see your point - you are right. It should read:

What this release means is that finally, a VIABLE way to run Mac OS (PowerPC) on Windows (Pentium/x86) exists [...]

Shall I edit my original post?
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