SheepShaver

SheepShaver is an emulator for PowerPC Macintosh computers. It was first released in 1998 by Christian Bauer and Marc Hellwig as a commercial program for BeOS, and became open source under the GNU GPL in 2002. It shares much of its code with Basilisk II.

SheepShaver runs the classic Mac OS from version 7.5.2 up to Mac OS 9.0.4, so it covers the PowerPC games and applications that Basilisk II cannot run. Like Basilisk II, it needs a ROM file from a real PowerPC Mac, usually the “New World” ROM from a Mac OS 9 install. It supports colour graphics, sound, networking, CD-ROMs and sharing folders with the host computer, and has a PowerPC JIT compiler for x86.

Development continues in the kanjitalk755 fork of the Basilisk II and SheepShaver code, which adds SDL2 support, Apple Silicon builds and many fixes. Up-to-date builds for Windows, macOS and Linux are posted on the E-Maculation forum rather than as GitHub releases.

The official downloads cannot currently be tracked automatically, so this page has no download archive yet. Builds and setup guides are available from E-Maculation.