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PowerPC Architecture Emulator Unleashed

Posted by timothy on from the keep-handy-the-shredded-newspaper dept.

Sebastian Biallas writes "We have finally released version 0.1 of our PowerPC architecture emulator: PearPC. The emulator itself is (prepared to be) architecture independent but only tested on x86s (here you go porters...). It also features a must faster just-in-time compilation unit for x86 hosts. This means that you can now run your favourite PowerPC-OS on x86: Mandrake Linux (9.1), Darwin (6 + 7) and Mac OS X (10.3)! And the best things is: it's GPL'd. But be warned: it's experimental.."

6 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Panther on x86? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They won't have to. It's going to be dog slow, to the point of uselessness, especially if you actually try to run OSX on it.

    The x86 is just really poorly suited to emulate PPC, the PPC has more registers and they're all general purpose, as opposed to x86's small groups of purpose specific registers. You can try to minimize the drawbacks from this with a JITC, but it's still going to crawl compared to the real thing.

  2. Re:I call total and complete bullshit on OSX... by gmaestro · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you read the website this guy is not claiming to have a working OSX environment. He clearly states the the emulated PPC rus 500 times slower than the host. This is just a cool program in very early beta. Besides, he has screenshots of the initial stages of and OSX install, which is pretty nice for version 0.1.

  3. screenshots by hassr · · Score: 5, Informative
    the project page has screen shots of os-x installing.
    • http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
  4. Re:Why not use it natively? by johnnliu · · Score: 5, Funny

    Because it won't be nerd enough.

    You've got to have:

    Mandrake running
    on PowerPC
    on PearPC simulator .. throwing several flavours of linux distros
    on Virtual PC
    on VMWare
    on XBox
    on ...

    To get be reported on /.

    The trick then, is to withstand the /. effect on your machine.

    And take a screenshot of the smoking machine.

    Then you get the "Immortal" rating.

    Then, just may be, you can get rooted.

  5. QEmu? by pkhuong · · Score: 5, Informative

    Does anyone know how it compares to QEmu (http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/)?

    "QEMU is a FAST! processor emulator using dynamic translation to achieve good emulation speed. "

    "News
    (May 8, 2004) QEMU version 0.5.5 is out. (Changelog). Much improved Windows 98 support. VGA support in PowerPC PREP target.

    (Apr 26, 2004) QEMU version 0.5.4 is out. (Changelog). This is the first version which is able to install and run Windows XP (experimental). This is also the first version which is able to boot a PowerPC PREP Linux kernel on a PC."

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  6. major bug by austad · · Score: 5, Funny

    From their docs: PearPC currently only supports two-button mice (i.e. middle-button click and the scrollwheel will be ignored).

    They are going to have to figure out how to disable that second mouse button if they want to truly emulate OSX. :)

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