Run very old Mac software
Necromantic tricks to bring long-forgotten software back from the grave
It’s a strange quirk that software becomes obsolete much quicker than hardware. You can still buy an external USB floppy disk drive from Amazon for less than $15 that will read disks created on a Macintosh Classic from 1990; yet there are apps written for Leopard that won’t run in El Capitan just seven years later. Documents that you access regularly survive the passage of time because they get migrated from one format to the next, as you upgrade your Mac. But the dusty box of floppy disks with that unfinished first novel in MacWrite, and your father’s carefully researched family tree in an old version of File Maker Pro, are unreadable binary detritus on a modern Mac.
Being able to run old software is the best way to rescue these files, but old Mac apps can be fun, too. Even though we undoubtedly live in a golden era of computer and video games, there are still some genuinely worthy classics from the ’80s and ’90s. But you don’t need to lovingly restore an actual Macintosh Plus just to play Lode Runner; modern Macs easily have enough horsepower to emulate the older Mac operating systems.
Virtually a Power PC
Let’s start with OS X. A lot of apps originally developed for 10.5 Leopard or 10.6 Snow Leopard won’t run on later versions. Snow Leopard was also the last version of OS X to support Power PC processors. So, if you have any software that originally ran on a G3, G4, or G5 Mac, that’s as far as it could be upgraded.
Unfortunately, running Snow Leopard isn’t as simple as just taking the original install DVD and putting the system on an external drive. An operating system from five years ago doesn’t have the right drivers for lots of the hardware on a modern Mac, such as a Retina display or
USB 3 ports. Instead, you should use either Fusion 8.5 ($68, vmware.com) or Parallels Desktop 12 ($80, parallels.com). Either of these can create a virtual machine that runs within your existing OS and allows you to install and run a completely different operating system on top of that. The virtualization software takes care of interfacing with your modern hardware, so it works even with older operating systems.
The only tiny complication is that Apple’s licensing agreement doesn’t allow the regular edition of Snow Leopard to be installed on a virtual machine, so you need to buy a copy of Snow Leopard Server instead. This works just the same as the regular edition of Snow Leopard (apart from some system administration features that you’ll never use) but usefully, it will also install correctly under Parallels Desktop or VM ware Fusion. You can pick up a copy of Snow Leopard Server on eBay for about $50.
Perhaps you need to roll the clock back even further and run software designed for Mac OS 9? If you still have a Mac running 10.4 Tiger, you might be able to run them using the Classic environment, but this will only work on a Mac with a Power PC processor. You can’t run the Classic environment on an Intel Mac, even if you’re running 10.4 from within Parallels or Fusion. For that, you’ll need to download Sheep Shaver (free, sheepshaver.cebix.net). This strangely named utility emulates the Power PC hardware so that you can install OS 9 – or even OS 8. Because it’s emulating a different hardware architecture, Sheep Shaver needs to use the system ROM files from one of the older Macs. These are copyrighted by Apple, so you can’t legally use them unless you also own the physical Mac they came from. ROM files for various older Mac models are available for download, though, so you don’t need to go through the rigmarole of copying off the system ROM from that old G3-powered Mac in your basement.
get to the good stuff
Once you have OS 9 running inside your emulator – see the walkthrough on p105 – you’re ready to install some apps. Even if you no longer have the original disks for your software any more (or perhaps even a drive that will read them!) there are lots of apps that are classed as abandonware. This is a legally gray area whereby very old software that’s no longer available commercially is distributed for free by enthusiasts. It’s technically still software piracy, but the original copyright holder either can’t be traced or chooses not to enforce their copyright.
In any case, some would argue that downloading it is an ethical act of software preservation. Macintosh garden.org maintains an extensive library of Mac abandonware, including some classic games from the ’90s.