Intro / My Machine

Seems like an oddly specific topic for a tutorial? Yeah, it kinda is, but let me give some context.

I have been setting up a standalone emulation computer over the past couple weeks. Specifically, I was recommended to get at least a 4th gen i7, and I found a used Dell Desktop with 16GB RAM and an AMD RX 550 for $400 on NewEgg. I went with the 500GB HDD, which was a mistake! Definitely go for the SSD so you can have faster boot times.

Anyway, my goal is to have something plugged into my TV which I can just turn on and navigate with a game controller - keyboard/mouse should not be required. This is so I can really get that "game console" feel.

Launchbox / Big Box are fantastic for this purpose. I tried EmulationStation on Linux at first (trust me, I do not prefer Windows) - this is what Retropie uses, by the way - but it was just janky, and then I decided to go with Launchbox. It's a much more polished program, albeit only runs on Windows. So, yet again I found myself in that regrettable situation where I had to leave Ubuntu ... until next time😢.

You do have to pay for Launchbox premium to get controller navigation and access to Big Box (which is its more "console" oriented interface). However, that's not required for this tutorial and this will all work in standard Launchbox (or, as I mentioned, other launcher programs with some tweaks).

Launchbox / Bigbox has seamless integration with Retroarch which can run most emlators. However it does not run old Mac games, so to launch those we need some special (and tricky) configuration, hence this tutorial. I spent far too long getting this to work, and found myself questioning my sanity / obsessive tendencies (probably had a point!).

SheepShaver initial setup - Installing OS 9

Note: Feel free to skip if you've already done this

1. Download the program from here
2. Download Mac OS 9.0.4 Installer from here
3. Unzip the Mac OS 9.0.4 Installer and mark the .toast file as Read-Only via its "Properties" menu.
4. Download the "New World" ROMs from here (we don't really all of them, but it doesn't hurt).
5. Open SheepShaverGUI, navigate to the Memory/Misc tab. Set the RAM to something higher (I used 1024 MB) and specify the ROM file newworld86.rom.
6. Go to the "Volumes" tab, press "Add" and navigate to your Mac OS Installer file.
7. Still in the "Volumes" tab, press "create" and give a new name for the drive, ending in .hsv extension, e.g. OS9.hsv. Give it a decent size - 500MB to 2GB - this will be the drive that Mac OS is installed to. The installation itself requires around 250MB of space; it's up to you how much extra space you want to add here. You can store games in this drive, but you can always create additional drives.
8. Make sure the installer volume is first in the list. This ensures it's the one which gets booted into.
9. Make sure the "Mount drives" option is enabled and exposes the drives you want to use. E.g. I want to copy files from my Windows C: and D: drives to Mac OS so I put CD in this field.
10. Some further configuration (optional): In "Graphics/Sound", you can change Video Type to "Fullscreen" but I recommend instead using "Windowed" with Width/Height set to "Maximum". Fullscreen occasionally caused system-wide crashes for me. I also recommend changing the Render Driver to OpenGL or Direct3D. Apparently it's fine to turn off the JIT Compiler in the "JIT Compiler" tab, but I didn't see much effect either way.
11. Press start! The Installer should boot. If you see an error that it "must be on the original disk", you forgot to mark the installer as read-only. You will be promped to format the disk and Mac OS will install there (which can take maybe 10 min).