PearPC is a powerful PowerPC platform emulator that can support various PowerPC operating systems. Its architecture-independence feature makes it a unique software tool for easy emulation of diverse environments.
PearPC is a powerful emulator that can run most PowerPC operating systems. In the latest release, an ugly partition mapping bug that prevented OpenDarwin from booting has been fixed, which is a significant improvement. However, this fix may cause regressions. If your image is no longer booting and you can compile PearPC yourself, you should talk to the pearpc-devel mailing list.
The installation process for PearPC is straightforward. You need to get the Mandrake Installation CDs, read the getting started document, and join the club. Make sure that you have a big hard disk (3 GiB) and a CDROM with the Mandrake 9.1 PPC CD1 inserted. Select a 15-bit video mode (ppc_start_resolution to 1, 4 or 7), boot your system, and wait. At some point, a graphical installer will show up, and you need to create two partitions - Apple bootstrap and a Linux one - and continue with the install.
Even though CPU emulation can be slow, the speed of emulated hardware is hardly impacted by the emulation. The emulated hard-drive and CDROMs are generally fast, especially with OSs that support bus-mastering like Linux, Darwin, and Mac OS X. PearPC will likely only run on little-endian architectures, but this can easily be fixed if the author has access to some big-endian hardware.
Aside from a lack of support for some features such as LBA48 and Altivec, PearPC is an excellent emulator that has been updated with several new improvements. The latest release includes CPU stfiwx implementation, a new "ppc_start_fullscreen" config that starts in fullscreen mode, and better HFS+ volume detection. Other new features are support for DVD-drives and DVD emulation, as well as better handling of graphic errors in Mac OS X 10.1.
PearPC also requires certain requirements, including Mandrake Linux 9.1 for PPC installer, Darwin for PPC, Mac OS X 10.3, and OpenBSD for PPC, among others. The emulator is also highly compatible, but issues such as slow timings and lack of a save/restore machine-state feature may occur. Moreover, PearPC's performance may be affected by unimplemented features.
Overall, PearPC remains an excellent platform emulator that is well worth considering if you are looking to run PowerPC operating systems on your machine.
The installation process for PearPC is straightforward. You need to get the Mandrake Installation CDs, read the getting started document, and join the club. Make sure that you have a big hard disk (3 GiB) and a CDROM with the Mandrake 9.1 PPC CD1 inserted. Select a 15-bit video mode (ppc_start_resolution to 1, 4 or 7), boot your system, and wait. At some point, a graphical installer will show up, and you need to create two partitions - Apple bootstrap and a Linux one - and continue with the install.
Even though CPU emulation can be slow, the speed of emulated hardware is hardly impacted by the emulation. The emulated hard-drive and CDROMs are generally fast, especially with OSs that support bus-mastering like Linux, Darwin, and Mac OS X. PearPC will likely only run on little-endian architectures, but this can easily be fixed if the author has access to some big-endian hardware.
Aside from a lack of support for some features such as LBA48 and Altivec, PearPC is an excellent emulator that has been updated with several new improvements. The latest release includes CPU stfiwx implementation, a new "ppc_start_fullscreen" config that starts in fullscreen mode, and better HFS+ volume detection. Other new features are support for DVD-drives and DVD emulation, as well as better handling of graphic errors in Mac OS X 10.1.
PearPC also requires certain requirements, including Mandrake Linux 9.1 for PPC installer, Darwin for PPC, Mac OS X 10.3, and OpenBSD for PPC, among others. The emulator is also highly compatible, but issues such as slow timings and lack of a save/restore machine-state feature may occur. Moreover, PearPC's performance may be affected by unimplemented features.
Overall, PearPC remains an excellent platform emulator that is well worth considering if you are looking to run PowerPC operating systems on your machine.
What's New
Version 0.4: N/A