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billb · Joined: 12 Dec 2007 Posts: 32

Hi, this is OT, I suppose, but I'm looking for help anyway ... :D

I've had great results using BasiliskII to emulate a 68K Mac running Mac OS 7.5.3 on my PS3, but haven't had much success emulating a PPC Mac using SheepShaver. I posted about my results so far over on the emaculation site here and here. So far I'm just getting a "deer in headlights look" over there. ;)

In summary, it runs up to the "Welcome to Macintosh." screen and then crashes. I realize that the Cell's PPC core is different than say, a G4 PPC, but I don't know in what ways, exactly, or how that would affect it's ability to run SheepShaver.

I would appreciate some insight / suggestions / etc.

Thanks

warrennn · Joined: 24 Oct 2007 Posts: 12 Location: Seattle

Hi Bill,

I am also very interested in PPC Mac OS (not necessarily OSX) emulation on the PS3. The first thing that came to mind was to run MOL (MacOnLinux). I have been in email communication with Joseph Jezak (the current author/proprietor of MOL) and he said that 64 bit kernels are not supported yet. He is working on it.

There was someone on the PureBasic list who claimed that MOL worked on the PS3 - this was received with some skepticism (By Joseph). Here is the link:

http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtopic.php?p=202700&sid=8fff4f48139b4d42566d1668dd44fa37

Good luck.

Warren N

billb · Joined: 12 Dec 2007 Posts: 32

Frek · Joined: 06 Dec 2007 Posts: 18

No MOL doesn't work on PS3, it's not trivial to port it either because the current kernel module don't support 64 bit processors (such as the 970 and the Cell).
I haven't been developing MOL since 2001 so I'm not really up to date when it comes to the linux interface, However I know that 2.6.x broke the way MOL hooked onto the memory management in linux, but it might or might not been fixed now.

I shouldn't be that hard to get sheepshaver up and running however, I might look into that someday when I'm bored.

billb · Joined: 12 Dec 2007 Posts: 32

mc · Joined: 12 Jan 2005 Posts: 212 Location: Link�ping

Frek · Joined: 06 Dec 2007 Posts: 18

billb · Joined: 12 Dec 2007 Posts: 32

Frek · Joined: 06 Dec 2007 Posts: 18

billb · Joined: 12 Dec 2007 Posts: 32

Frek · Joined: 06 Dec 2007 Posts: 18

yep bill I've done pretty much the samething, but I it just crashes on me as soon as it jumps off into rom jump_to_rom() (ppc_asm.S) (and unless i remove DGA X11/(and VOSF like you do)) it crash way earlier, I also noticed that the "processor-type transform" don't work for the CellBE so for now I simply assigned PVR as a 7400 cpu (G4, which Sheepshaver do by default on the G5:s; While the Cell isn't a G5 it's a derative so I assume they are atleast somewhat similar on UISA level)

This project turned out way more difficult that I expected it to be- to be honest I haven't been able to figure what causing the crash right now- it's difficult to trace it down too as gdb messup completely once you branch to the macrom. so instead I have to work the opposite way- try eliminate all other options and it's very time consuming and frustrating- and yes I've tried both New World Roms and Oldworld Roms and the behavior is the same, however I haven't installed a proper bootdisk for sheepshaver- but I don't think that should do any difference, the macrom should just flash a question mark incase it can't find a bootable disk.

I'll further into this later on.

And regarding your hung- I can't really explain it right now then, unless it's related to my difficulties to get the emulator going at all, just try assign the PVR to the PVR of the 7400 and recompile sheepshaver to see if it does any difference just to be sure, but really I don't think it will- judging from your screenshots the boot process got past all hardware initialization done by the ROM- infact it will all be done as soon as you see the "happy mac" before it says "Welcome to Macintosh", you get stuck somewhere when it starts loading extensions and controlpanels, but you're right it seems to get stuck on a emulator level if disabling the extensions don't help.

I'll have to read up some on the Cell BE to see if the cache linesize is 32 or 128 like on the G5 (the flush_icache_range function in basillisk assumes 32 at the moment, that could explain my crashes.... but then again I can't figure why it works for you :p)

billb · Joined: 12 Dec 2007 Posts: 32

Frek · Joined: 06 Dec 2007 Posts: 18

dbarrade · Joined: 31 Mar 2004 Posts: 6

I would like to help beta test SheepShaver on PS3, I have some experience troubleshooting boot issues on MacOS.

As a thought, you may want to match the ROM to the bootable install, there may be extensions which aren't disabled with shift that need to be in the system folder for certain "Mac's". Also if there is a known SheepSaver disk image that matches up to a specific ROM, I would definately start there to minimise your problems to this new build. Alternatively test a known working build of SheepSaver with your boot image and ROM. There are also some other simple images that may work, for example a PPC Mac 6100 could boot a basic floppy image of MacOS 6.0.7, and I think there may be a Norton Utilities disk which should work across many Mac models. I'll have a look round at home for some old stuff... I also have a OSX beta that worked, all be it slowly on my old PowerMac 6100, although it was useless as it was really NeXTStep running on BSD with a couple of MacOS gui apps running, but the interesting thing about it is the BluBox which ran under "Mac OSX" was a very good Mac OS emulator (built by Apple) that had support for at least 8.1 and cut and paste from BSD to MacOS etc

I'd be happy if my PS3 OtherOS was Mac OS 6.0.7 running native PPC apps, Office and Adobe apps should scream and RAM shouldn't be a huge concern... it would just feel like 1998 again... I can only dream...
_________________
Working on PSP Guitarismo...

billb · Joined: 12 Dec 2007 Posts: 32

billb · Joined: 12 Dec 2007 Posts: 32

Finally got SheepShaver running on the PS3 under YDL 6.1. The problem remains with compiling sheepthreads.c which apparently is required when trying to run it on native PPC, but it does work using the built-in PPC emulator. As you can imagine, it's rather slow, but it works ...

I've posted my results so far over here:
http://pleasantfiction.ipower.com/bodega/viewtopic.php?p=1560#p1560

I probably would never have got it going if I hadn't seen this in the changelog of the SheepShaver spec file (rpmfusion version):

http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/releases/10/Everything/ppc/os/repoview/SheepShaver.html

Frek · Joined: 06 Dec 2007 Posts: 18

So ie. you successfully got the interpretive version of MOL running (ie. the one that's intended for x86) not the version that executes natively on the PPC, correct?