SheepShaver

The return of the Classic Environment

Despite Apple's decision to remove the Classic Environment from OS X "Leopard" 10.5.x and higher despite a demand for the classic OS 8 and 9 environment to remain accessible, mainly because it is simple and clean and people need to run older software. However, with new and more powerful software compiled to work on the latest microprocessors, most people have had to upgrade their machines to some extent. But for those software tools that will never be updated or people with old personal data files in archives needing older software to open them, it is important to have some means of accessing the files and running older software when you need to. Some users have requested for Apple to reinstate the Classic Environment. The company has refused, partly on the grounds that it is working with Adobe Systems Inc. to force all users to purchase the latest Adobe products (given the high expense and the allegedly high piracy rates for the software), and partly because it claims too much work and money is required to keep the software supported.

Installing SheepShaver

Despite Apple's refusal or effort to deny users going back to an older OS version, users have discovered a third-party solution designed to run the Classic Environment on all Intel Macs (i.e., OS 7, 8 and 9. Another is Basilik II up to OS 8.1.

SheepShaver has slowly evolved as the need to run the application on modern Intel machines persisted. Today, the application has been re-compiled from the universal PowerPC/Intel binary version to the arm64 M1 Mac version. To simplify the process of finding the right application for your machine, use this link. This will contain the original PowerPC/Intel version, and the new arm64 version. Default application is the latter. Swap the application for the older version from the Tools folder if you want to run on an Intel machine.

There is also SheepShaver for Windows available here. If you want to contribute your own programming time to making the application better, you can grab the source code at GitHub.

Here are the instructions for installing and running SheepShaver:

What you will need

  1. Download from the link we gave above. We include the PRAM zap script tool to clear the nvram preference file and allow a fresh one to be created by this latest build. This helps Adobe applications such as Illustrator 9.0 to run and quit without any sudden quit of SheepShaver issues.
  2. Next, you need a Mac OS 9 installation CD. It must be the original OS 9.0 - 9.0.4, not 9.1 or 9.2.x (the latter can be installed and un on UTM QEMU on M1 Macs). You may need to ask a friend to borrow this, or see if a copy exists on a cloud server by a friendly user. As not everyone has the installation CD (and Apple is unlikely to have any left for sale) you can alternatively extract a ready-made disk with the OS9 system folder installed through the COI Chubby Bunny 4.0.1 update (54MB). We suggest you rename the image disk as "macos9.dmg". Alternatively, check some of the Computer Fairs to see if an old OS9 system disk is available. As of 2022, you can get this from here.
  3. Apply the free Mac OS 9.0.4 Update (don't try to find an update version higher than this or it won't work with SheepShaver), downloadable from http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60791 (unless Apple has decided to do away with it. In which case, download it from here).
  4. The second additional software tool is a copy of a suitable New World Mac OS ROM file. We recommend using the most stable MacOS ROM 1.6 from the MacOS ROM Update 1.0 for OS 9, downloadable from http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60408. Alternatively download from here for OS 8.6. Use the utility TomeViewer 1.3d3 on a PowerPC Mac running Classic Environment to extract the ROM from the Apple OS installer file. NOTE: For Intel users, this is not possible. Therefore download the COI Chubby Bunny 4.0.1 update (54MB) and a tool to turn on invisible files on your hard disk. With option key down, click on the application and choose "Show Package Contents". Navigate to within the folder to find the ROM file, rename it as "MacOS9.rom" and drag it out into the SheepShaver folder. However, as of 2022, this process has been simplified. Visit the Mac ROM repository to download any Mac ROM produced by Apple for all machines. Choose the right one to be compatible with SheepShaver.
  5. Adequate space on your hard disk to create the (macos9.dmg) image disk for storing a copy of the Mac OS 9 system folder and various classic applications of your choosing.

How to run

  1. Open the SheepShaver folder.
  2. For Intel users, bring out the SheepShaverGUI.app and SheepShaver.app inside the Tools folder and replace the arm64 version. For M1 Mac users, use the SheepShaver version shown in the folder. SheepShaverGUI.app will not work on M1 Macs, so make sure you have the right Mac ROM and OS 9 disk image for SheepShaver to open and provide access to settings. If the app quits suddenly, it is likely you don't have a valid Mac ROM and/or OS 9 disk image.
  3. If you have extracted the ROM file from the MacOS ROM Update 1.0 archive, place the ROM file inside the SheepShaver folder. Rename the file to MacOS.rom.
  4. Launch SheepShaverGUI.app. You will be greeted with the SheepShaver Settings dialog box. For M1 Mac users, launch the SheepShaver app.
  5. If the macos9.dmg file is not in your SheepShaver folder, click the Create button in the Setup tab. By doing so, you will be creating the macos9.dmg file for storing the Mac OS 9 System Folder and Applications. Set the size to, say, 1000MB (i.e. 1GB). Save the file in your SheepShaver folder. Click the Save button.
  6. After about 10 seconds, SheepShaver GUI will have completed its task of creating macos9.dmg. NOTE: Alternatively, open Terminal and type: dd if=/dev/zero of=macos9.dmg bs=1024k count=1000, where count=1000 is the size of the disk image in megabytes. Pressing return and waiting for about 30 seconds will create the empty disk image in your Home folder.
  7. Set the RAM size for running SheepShaver to 1024MB. You shouldn't need more than this.
  8. To specify the path to the ROM file, type MacOS.rom if the file is located in the SheepShaver folder.
  9. In the Unix Root field, type /Users/Shared/. This is the folder location from where you can exchange files and applications between OS X and OS9.
  10. In the Boot From field, select Any. If you just want to boot from a CD, choose CD-ROM, but you'll find it quicker later to store a copy of the OS9 System Folder inside macos9.dmg.
  11. In the Audio/Video tab, set Window Refresh Rate to 60Hz (for PPC users, set this to below 30Hz or else it will hog too much CPU time processing the extra video information and your computer will get too hot). Choose Video Type "Window" and choose a window width and height. For fullscreen mode using the native resolution of your screen, set both width and height to 0, choose "Fullscreen" for the Video Type and set the Refresh Rate to 30Hz (or as little as 15Hz, but the cursor will move in a slightly jerky fashion). It should work like a treat.
  12. In the Miscellaneous tab, type slirp for the Ethernet Interface. This will let you share OS X's network connection.
  13. For Modem Port Device, type /dev/cu.Bluetooth-Modem
  14. For Printer Port Device, type /dev/null.
  15. In the Setup tab, select Boot From CD-ROM.
  16. Insert the Mac OS 9 installation CD. Alternative, if you already have a System Folder prepared (i.e. version 9.0 to 9.0.4), burn this on a CD as a bootable disk.
  17. Click the Start button (or close the SheepShaver GUI and launch SheepShaver.app) to commence emulation mode
  18. A window showing a diskette in the middle and a flashing question mark will appear. This tells you it is looking for a Mac OS 9 System Folder to boot from. A second or two later, it will show a smiley face as it boots from the CD.
  19. You will reach the OS9 desktop. A question will be asked whether to initialise the hard disk (i.e. stored in macos9.dmg). Select "Extended File Format" and click Initialise.
  20. Follow the instructions for installing Mac OS 9 on the new OS9 hard disk. Alternatively, if you have already booted from a System Folder, copy this folder directly to the OS 9 hard disk.
  21. When you shutdown, select Boot From Any in SheepShaverGUI.app. You should now be able to boot off the Mac OS 9 System Folder inside macos9.dmg.
  22. Your OS X/macOS host startup disk will appear on the Mac OS 9 desktop as Unix. Use it to transfer files and applications back and forth as you require.

A few tips

Another thing to remember. Never try to open macos9.dmg through Disk Utility on OS X and write files to it. Otherwise it will cause an error followed by the destruction of the OS 9 disk format. It this happens, you will have to rebuild macos9.dmg from scratch.

Also consider going into (i) the Energy Saver control panel under OS9 and set the options to "Never" to solve an issue regarding the cursor suddenly hanging after a while; and (ii) the Appearance control panel and choose "None" for the sound track in the Sound tab as it seems "Platinum Sounds" are likely to crash SheepShaver. Likewise on Intel Macs, opening and using ScrapBook may also crash SheepShaver.

Don't use Disk Warrior 2.1 or other disk tools (including Disk Copy) to optimise the OS 9 disk. It changes the disk in such a way that it no longer provides stability under SheepShaver.

If you use ResEdit, you can change the "vers" (i.e. version) number of the Finder and System files to 9.1 (as opposed to 9.0.4). The system will still run under SheepShaver but will have the added benefit of installing additional OS9 applications you thought was not possible unless you had the genuine OS 9.1 version. This includes Adobe Photoshop 7.0 except only Adobe ImageReady 7.0 will work. Change version number of QuickTime and QuickTime PowerPlug to 4.1.2 or higher and you will be able to install AppleWorks 6. Or find a copy of QuickTime 4.1.3 to install.

Good luck, and happy OS9 computing!

NOTE: Emulation is a highly processor intensive activity and is likely to overheat your PPC and single- or dual-core Intel Macs. So please keep usage of SheepShaver to a minimum, or set the refresh rate to no higher than 30Hz (even 15Hz is fine). Alternatively use a smaller window size. As of 2022, this is no longer an issue on M1 Macs, now that it has large numbers of multicore processors and is fast enough to handle emulation. Indeed, at this time, there is a quiet revolution going on in which major commercial manufacturers of virtualisation software are being asked by Apple and Microsoft not to emulate their OS on M1 Macs, but open source developers are defying this directive thanks to the updates made to QEMU and the user-friendly UTM QEMU app. With this new arm64 optimised app, you can emulate or virtualise dozens of different old OS versions and run the old software in your archives. Use it to replace Parallels Desktop and other applications that refuse to provide adequate choice.

Enjoy!