Draft:Recommended VM configurations/macOS

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This page provides recommended configurations for installing builds in a specific emulator or hypervisor. This page is by no means exhaustive, and your mileage may vary, so you may have to adjust some settings to your liking as it sees fit.

Overview[edit source]

macOS operating systems vary on what architectures are used based on the version. QEMU and SheepShaver can run PowerPC builds of Mac OS X under Windows or other x86 operating systems. QEMU, Basilisk II, and Mini vMac are able to run 68k builds of Mac OS, and VirtualBox, VMware Fusion, and Parallels Desktop for Mac can run x86/64 builds of Mac OS X. ARM macOS systems can only be run as guests on its corresponding hardware via Parallels Desktop for Mac and will not support x86/64 builds of Mac OS X.

Note that running virtual machine guests of x86/64 and ARM64 builds of Mac OS X are only officially (and legally) supported on host Apple systems. As such, no instructions will be provided for running x86/64 and ARM64 builds of Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware.

Mac OS 9[edit source]

Pc-bios qemu logo no text.png QEMU Configuration
Create the hard drive(s)
qemu-img create -f raw MacOS9.img 2G
Boot to the installation media
qemu-system-ppc -L pc-bios -boot d -M mac99 -m 512 -g 1024x768x32 -prom-env "auto-boot?=true" -prom-env "vga-ndrv?=true" -drive file=<filename of installation media>,format=raw,media=cdrom -drive file=MacOS9.img,format=raw,media=disk -display sdl
Boot to the hard drive
qemu-system-ppc -L pc-bios -boot c -M mac99 -m 512 -g 1024x768x32 -prom-env "auto-boot?=true" -prom-env "vga-ndrv?=true" -drive file=MacOS9.img,format=raw,media=disk -display sdl
Notes
Mac OS 9.0 requires a ROM with version 5.2.1 and above.

Mac OS X 10.0 - 10.4[edit source]

Pc-bios qemu logo no text.png QEMU Configuration
Create the hard drive(s)
qemu-img create -f raw MacOSX.img 8G
Boot to the installation media
qemu-system-ppc -L pc-bios -boot d -M mac99 -m 1024 -g 1024x768x32 -prom-env "auto-boot?=true" -prom-env "vga-ndrv?=true" -drive file=<filename of installation media>,format=raw,media=cdrom -drive file=MacOSX.img,format=raw,media=disk -display sdl -netdev user,id=network01 -device sungem,netdev=network01 -device VGA,edid=on
Boot to the hard drive
qemu-system-ppc -L pc-bios -boot c -M mac99 -m 1024 -g 1024x768x32 -prom-env "auto-boot?=true" -prom-env "vga-ndrv?=true" -drive file=MacOSX.img,format=raw,media=disk -display sdl -netdev user,id=network01 -device sungem,netdev=network01 -device VGA,edid=on