After a lot of frustration trying to run Mac OS 9 natively on my powerbook, I decided that the most viable way to run my classic games would be through the classic environment of Mac OS X 10.4. But for everything to work satisfactorily, it would take a huge effort to research and modify the system, and in my opinion, that would only be worth my time, if it were to help the community of PPC lovers, so I did it.
Mac OS X 10.4.11
When it comes to classic environment, we all know that Tiger is not the best choice, he suffers from performance problems in classic, Apple seemed to be trying to kill classic once and for all, to force developers to migrate to OS X. So, why did I choose this version? Simple! My goal is to make the most recent PPC machines run satisfactorily on mac OS 9, many machines from the year 2005 do not support another version of the older mac os X.
So what good has all this effort been done to modify the system, if Tiger is not good with classic?
- Simple! Because I ported the Classic from Panther (10.3) to Tiger! With that, we have a performance of 30 to 60% better than in the original classic of the system!
In addition, I optimized the entire system so that the center of attention is our beloved Mac OS 9. This means that I removed some things from OS X that were not important, so that the system runs better and faster, BUT ... you you will still have the best of both worlds! Things that were not possible in Mac OS 9, can now be useful! How about a Mac OS 9 with native support for your airport card, WPA? Or support for screen brightness, fan speed control, remote control, bluetooth, java, and even our beloved TenFourFox, already configured to have the best possible performance (believe me, it is incredibly fast in this build).
You may be asking yourself now: But that sucks an OSX Tiger with a classic, any mac does it! - Not quite. I built this system, so that it was a secondary system in a bi-partitioned HD. It is the reincarnation of Mac OS 9, the several hours I spent on this system, it was improving the performance and compatibility with OS9, in addition, 90% of the graphical interface is with the Plantium visual and also acts / responds like it, for you if feel at home, as in OS9. It is basically a Mac OS 9 running under the Mac OS X platform, which serves as a basis for mediating between legacy and unsupported "modern" hardware. Classic may not be exactly the same as OS9, but on an unsupported g4 or g5, it's either it or nothing.
When it comes to classic environment, we all know that Tiger is not the best choice, he suffers from performance problems in classic, Apple seemed to be trying to kill classic once and for all, to force developers to migrate to OS X. So, why did I choose this version? Simple! My goal is to make the most recent PPC machines run satisfactorily on mac OS 9, many machines from the year 2005 do not support another version of the older mac os X.
So what good has all this effort been done to modify the system, if Tiger is not good with classic?
- Simple! Because I ported the Classic from Panther (10.3) to Tiger! With that, we have a performance of 30 to 60% better than in the original classic of the system!
In addition, I optimized the entire system so that the center of attention is our beloved Mac OS 9. This means that I removed some things from OS X that were not important, so that the system runs better and faster, BUT ... you you will still have the best of both worlds! Things that were not possible in Mac OS 9, can now be useful! How about a Mac OS 9 with native support for your airport card, WPA? Or support for screen brightness, fan speed control, remote control, bluetooth, java, and even our beloved TenFourFox, already configured to have the best possible performance (believe me, it is incredibly fast in this build).
You may be asking yourself now: But that sucks an OSX Tiger with a classic, any mac does it! - Not quite. I built this system, so that it was a secondary system in a bi-partitioned HD. It is the reincarnation of Mac OS 9, the several hours I spent on this system, it was improving the performance and compatibility with OS9, in addition, 90% of the graphical interface is with the Plantium visual and also acts / responds like it, for you if feel at home, as in OS9. It is basically a Mac OS 9 running under the Mac OS X platform, which serves as a basis for mediating between legacy and unsupported "modern" hardware. Classic may not be exactly the same as OS9, but on an unsupported g4 or g5, it's either it or nothing.
- I would like to customize the boot screen to insert the image at the beginning of the post, unfortunately the apps available to change the image of the boot screen do not resize the image, they just change. I plan on replacing the current boot screen with the happy mac image on the gray screen. Suggestions?
- I combed through all the OSX documentation and found nothing about it: As soon as the boot screen ends, the system starts the graphical interface (a blue background) then a window written Starting Mac OS X ... appears. I would like to change the BLUE COLOR in the background, but I haven't found anything about it.
I placed a trash can on the work area provisionally. It is not the best choice, it does not work as well as I expected. I tried the tip to create a shortcut to ./Trash, but the problem is that it will only work for the drive where the trash is, and the icon does not change to empty trash / Trash full.
- Unfortunately Dock is necessary for the desktop to work. I'm still looking for a solution to hide it forever.
- My initial idea was to modify classic.app so that it would run in full screen. There is even a tip out there about changing something in the mac os 9 finder, so that the OS9 finder can be seen, but still, somehow, classic does not allow you to see the desktop, and this was the great flaw that made me change my mind, so I decided to modify the entire OSX.I tried to run MacOS.app from Mac OS X DP2 and 3, because it allows you to run classic in full screen, but unfortunately it doesn't work outside the original system. Searching the classic Panther code, I found entries for a button called Show Mac OS 9 desktop, but it seems to have been disabled during compilation.
-A strange bug happens when I try to run Doom 1 from 1996 on any version of classic: The game runs by skipping frames, but in a certain region of the screen, the game runs perfectly at a high frame rate (as it should be). I will only be able to play it if I change the screen resolution to as low as 800x600.
- I combed through all the OSX documentation and found nothing about it: As soon as the boot screen ends, the system starts the graphical interface (a blue background) then a window written Starting Mac OS X ... appears. I would like to change the BLUE COLOR in the background, but I haven't found anything about it.
I placed a trash can on the work area provisionally. It is not the best choice, it does not work as well as I expected. I tried the tip to create a shortcut to ./Trash, but the problem is that it will only work for the drive where the trash is, and the icon does not change to empty trash / Trash full.
- Unfortunately Dock is necessary for the desktop to work. I'm still looking for a solution to hide it forever.
- My initial idea was to modify classic.app so that it would run in full screen. There is even a tip out there about changing something in the mac os 9 finder, so that the OS9 finder can be seen, but still, somehow, classic does not allow you to see the desktop, and this was the great flaw that made me change my mind, so I decided to modify the entire OSX.I tried to run MacOS.app from Mac OS X DP2 and 3, because it allows you to run classic in full screen, but unfortunately it doesn't work outside the original system. Searching the classic Panther code, I found entries for a button called Show Mac OS 9 desktop, but it seems to have been disabled during compilation.
-A strange bug happens when I try to run Doom 1 from 1996 on any version of classic: The game runs by skipping frames, but in a certain region of the screen, the game runs perfectly at a high frame rate (as it should be). I will only be able to play it if I change the screen resolution to as low as 800x600.
Despite all the hard work, the system is not yet ready, I will continue the development after voluntary testers report tips, opinions, problems, etc...
Download links:
- MEGA
- Macintosh Garden
How to use:
Dual boot:
First of all you need to partition your HD (if you want to keep your current system + classix), I will not go into details on how to do this so as not to create a giant topic. Then use the disk drive to write the dmg to the new partition. When the process is over, you can select the system by system preferences / startup disk, or hold the Option screen on the keyboard when starting your mac.
Classix only:
Copy classix.dmg to a pendrive, Start your mac with the Mac OS X 10.4 cd, select disk drive, open the dmg on the pendrive, and restore to your hard drive.
Note: The first boot can take a little time. Within the system, a defragmenter is included, it is recommended that you repair the permissions, and defragment the system before you start using it.
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