The Politics of Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, Virtual Machinces, & Emulation

[IIO]

arent all power processors since power2 64 bit?

the G5 for example is a downscaled power4.

[Jubadub]

It's great to have QEMU and other emulation options as assistance. But as substitutes or replacements? As far as I can tell, it is either impossible or we are literal decades away from it, the latter being highly optimistic.

Of course, that doesn't mean we stop pursuing this route-- we keep improving it as much as possible. But I am making the point it can never be THE route to pursue, but rather one of multiple desirable routes. The "true" best route is to make new devices able of natively booting OS 9, which, as we all know, is a lot easier said than done. Yet, like with QEMU, the challenge being incredibly high does not mean we stop pursuing it. So efforts to boot OS 9 in G5s and even newer PowerPC devices, such as the Talos II with its POWER9 processors, is a route to strive for.

Can QEMU run OS 9 at 60 fps? 120 fps? If so, how? Will it ever accurately emulate a ATI Radeon 8500, NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600, Voodoo 5 5500 Mac Edition and so on with full performance?

And although it can be mitigated, I have a huge gripe with the mouse input lag. It's never the same as natively-booted OS 9. I guess that's a problem with any VM of any kind in general, with some being worse than others.

TL;DR It's great to have QEMU etc. as support, and I see no issues of us discussing it here, especially when the host is a PowerPC machine, but it is technologically-unable of replacing the real deal. So rather than embracing either it or native booting, we embrace both.

@lepidotos Cameron Kaiser over at his Talospace blog published some blog posts of him running OS 9 in his POWER9 Talos II via QEMU+KVM. Aside from it seeming like an absolute PITA with all kinds of issues, it sadly will still not be good enough to address my points above. Even if we ignore the GPU, mouse input lag, frame rate etc., almost any native G4 and many G3s will still outperform a POWER9 QEMU+KVM setup, according to his tests, IIRC. Let alone a high-end dual 2.0GHz 7448 MDD, which absolutely smokes any existing virtualization or emulation, even under the majestic POWER9 Talos II.

Regardless of all this, though, all hail OS 9!

[bfcastello]

Hi!

I have been using QEMU since 2019 to emulate all sorts of operating systems I have ever recognized in this life, and I can say some things...

OS 9 under QEMU Screamer fork is pretty much good. Okay, I am limited to 512MB RAM (or else the sound would be crackling/stuttering); No 3D acceleration cards yet (despite of an early attempt on e-maculation forums from other users to try and bring PCem/DOSBOX's Voodoo 2 emulation, and ATI Rage 128 emulation). But runs nearly everything I throw at it. And I am in love with the OS 9 UI/UX experience.

Regarding the low selection of graphics card on QEMU, one can always do a GPU passthrough with a real GPU card. But I'd rather see more developers working on QEMU code to bring other graphics cards. For example PCem and 86Box has an impressive amount of graphics cards and Voodoo cards to emulate, and that could be ported to QEMU with the right people, IMHO.

But apart of that, OS 9 performance is pretty good for whatever I want to do with it. QEMU also performs well on M1 Macs (I have a M1 MacBook Air 2020) to run ARM versions of Ubuntu and Windows, as well as emulate classic i386 versions of Windows (3.11, 9x) and I am even emulating x64 Windows 10, because I couldn't leave it without a few select work related stuff.

With a fork of QEMU that has MESA/Glide passthrough, I can play some 3Dfx Windows 9x/XP games from late 90's & early 2000's. Not 100% perfect, but very good and VERY playable (Need For Speed II SE for example, can run at 60fps without a problem).

The only thing I couldn't emulate yet was the intel OS X builds, because they need the hackintosh methods to work there (I have seen some success stories) and although I did have some hackintoshes years ago, I haven't done any since 2016, so I am out of that scene because I prefer the real Macs, so yes, in a way I can understand the OS 9 fans feelings better; my decision to stop with hackintoshes and move back to real Macs was purely based on performance and maintenance reasons (Hackintoshes require more).

I have spent nearly 4 years trying all sorts of emulators for games and other nostalgia related stuff, and I have found that QEMU is the most powerful option to do that. Can it replace the real deal? It depends of what you want to do. There are linux gamers using QEMU for bare metal Windows virtualization to run Windows only games with linux hosts, and GPU passthrough, for example. This is the most extreme example of usage for QEMU. There are QEMU frontends to do that job, like UTM (for iOS and macOS) which is a very, very good and free option (VMware and Parallels are outrageously expensive).

The answer to "can it replace the real thing?" is probably a strong NO, the real stuff is always better. But when you can't afford a real PowerPC Mac, is more interested in the software side of the things than the hardware, or can't take one with you in the middle of a move to Spain in 2022 (like me), QEMU is a savior for me. OFC I still have the idea of getting a real PPC Mac to play with, but I delayed these plans for some good time due to $$$ and other time constraints. I'd love to have a Mini G4, or a G4 Cube, or a Tangerine iBook. As an UI/UX Designer myself, their designs are interesting to me.

We can see QEMU as an option, not a solution. I agree with Jubadub that we should embrace both worlds (virtualization and the real thing). QEMU can be used for OS9 tests before doing the stuff on real PPC Macs, for example, so you can have a rough idea of what will happen there before. I know it does not 100% replicates a proper PPC Mac, but it can give a good idea of what to expect from that.

If anyone is interested, I can share in other thread my experiences and findings with QEMU running PPC OS 9 and PPC OS X. While OS 9 runs fine, PPC OS X still does have some sound issues, but they're being worked on as we speak by the devs of Screamer QEMU fork, whom expect to be able to merge the patch into mainstream QEMU when they improve it. Apart of sound, PPC OS X under QEMU works pretty good. The older the OS X version, the faster. Tiger being the absolute beast of them, even though Mac fans would prefer Leopard (myself included).

So, this is my experience with QEMU. For me it is just a hobby for nostalgia reasons and an all in one solution (I can do it all on my M1 MBA, be portable, and I do not need other computers).

Embracing the emulation/virtualization of OS 9 will not hurt it, or the real PPC Macs, in fact it can just make it stronger and more accessible to more people, maybe bring in some good hobby programmers who can develop some apps like Newsstand for OS 9, por example. Isn't amazing that Newsstand was developed in 2021 for an OS that is more than 20 years old? This can help to keep OS 9 still alive for many of us. Maybe the forum needs a proper forum section dedicated to emulation. The development and findings there can help to improve the real stuff on PPC Macs without hurting them.

[DieHard]

OS 9 under QEMU Screamer fork is pretty much good. Okay, I am limited to 512MB RAM (or else the sound would be crackling/stuttering); No 3D acceleration cards yet (despite of an early attempt on e-maculation forums from other users to try and bring PCem/DOSBOX's Voodoo 2 emulation, and ATI Rage 128 emulation). But runs nearly everything I throw at it. And I am in love with the OS 9 UI/UX experience.

OMG, that might have been my issue during testing, there is also a relation between having Virtual memory disabled in OS 9 that also causes sound issues; but I never tried it at 512MB

[bfcastello]

OS 9 under QEMU Screamer fork is pretty much good. Okay, I am limited to 512MB RAM (or else the sound would be crackling/stuttering); No 3D acceleration cards yet (despite of an early attempt on e-maculation forums from other users to try and bring PCem/DOSBOX's Voodoo 2 emulation, and ATI Rage 128 emulation). But runs nearly everything I throw at it. And I am in love with the OS 9 UI/UX experience.

OMG, that might have been my issue during testing, there is also a relation between having Virtual memory disabled in OS 9 that also causes sound issues; but I never tried it at 512MB

I am using 512mb + 512 virtual. I have sound for most of the time, I have even played a MOV of a Top Gun movie music soundtrack (Danger Zone). Sometimes after a period using OS9 in it, the sound goes away. But I have never tried without virtual memory (yet).

AFAIK you can go as far as to 768Mb (without virtual mem), just don’t go more than 1Gb.

From e-maculation forums wiki:

Sound will not work in Mac OS guests with memory set to 1024Mb or more, due to virtual memory being turned off automatically.

[DieHard]

I could never get solid & stable sound on any version after Virtual memory is turned off, I was using 768MB setting, I will try 512MB,

If you find a working and stable version (as far as sound) with VM turned off, please PM me and let me know the exact version, my host is High Sierra

[bfcastello]

I could never get solid & stable sound on any version after Virtual memory is turned off, I was using 768MB setting, I will try 512MB,

If you find a working and stable version (as far as sound) with VM turned off, please PM me and let me know the exact version, my host is High Sierra

Well, I can tell you that the only configuration I have ever used is 512mb and VM turned on. This means 512mb + 512mb from VM. I can play music from quicktime and itunes, I am yet to test embedded videos (need to go to cornica.org to test) but other than a weird sound when I click or move around menubar dropdown menu items, no problems. I am not sure if my tendency to cmd+tab out of the virtual machine to do something else (like reply a pm on instagram web) and move back to the virtual machine is the cause of loss of sound when I return to the virtual machine. Need to talk to the Screamer fork dev (macayland). BTW, my host is Monterey on M1 MB Air. I’m using UTM, but qemu screamer fork also works.