Ptolemy 1.0 beta 3

Ptolemy is a PowerPC Mac emulator for Apple silicon: it runs Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11 and Leopard 10.5 for PowerPC, with Mac OS X's own ATI driver accelerating Quartz Extreme and OpenGL on the Mac's GPU through Metal.

New in beta 3:

Leopard 10.5: installs from your DVD image and starts with a Quartz Extreme desktop; typing works (the keyboard is now an Apple Pro Keyboard); the network much faster (a 10 MB download: 2.3 s instead of 41 s; the network card's timer interrupt); a platform UUID; System Preferences text and Chess pieces (depth read-back with FSAA) work; Ptolemy Tools keep Leopard from sleeping, which would hang it.
The Leopard installer no longer ends with "Install failed … could not make the computer start up from Macintosh HD": Ptolemy gives it the DVD with the first-boot marker its kext daemon needs (the image file is not changed).
Tiger and Classic: fixed data corruption under memory pressure (some physical page copies read stale translations).
NVRAM is the Core99 flash Mac OS X expects; a machine from an earlier beta converts its NVRAM file once and keeps the original as nvram.bin.legacy.
The launcher takes Leopard discs as well as Tiger's, with its own look for Leopard machines (Leopard needs a G4).
From beta 2 feedback: full screen survives a restart, Force Quit works, the menu bar comes back after a restart, scrolling is fixed, file transfers show their progress, dropped files can be up to 4 GB.

Known issues: floating-point-heavy library code is slower than on a real G4 (Xbench's vecLib FFT about half of a 1.33 GHz iBook G4); no G5 yet; not fixed from beta 2 feedback: Bugdom freezing, Cro-Mag Rally's rendering, frame drops in 1080p video.

Requirements: a Mac with Apple silicon, macOS 15 Sequoia or later, and an image of your own Tiger 10.4 or Leopard 10.5 PowerPC install DVD (the README shows how to make one in Disk Utility). Ptolemy does not include or download Apple software.

First start: Ptolemy is signed ad hoc, not notarized. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway, or run: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Ptolemy.app

This is a beta of a hobby project. What has been tried and what is known not to work: see the README. Most applications and games have never been tried, in Leopard especially; reports are welcome.

SHA-256 (Ptolemy-1.0b3.zip): 6ff184e7ff207746d9d2edfbfe0ecd57bf1749977e89c30e0d136ed0941fa7d7

Ptolemy 1.0 beta 2

Ptolemy 1.0 beta 2.

Ptolemy is a PowerPC Mac emulator for Apple silicon: it runs Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11 for PowerPC, with Tiger's own ATI driver accelerating Quartz Extreme and OpenGL on the Mac's GPU through Metal.

New in beta 2:

Classic: Mac OS 9 inside Tiger starts from a Mac OS 9.2.2 System Folder that you bring into Tiger yourself (in a disk image or a StuffIt archive), and runs 2D games such as Age of Empires; Classic has no 3D on real Macs either. It started 15 times in a row while testing this release.
Speed: the processor's trips to its interpreter mostly stay in translated code now (1.4 million instead of 60.6 million in a session of Halo, Classic and Age of Empires). On a MacBook Air with the M4: Geekbench 2.2 4561, Cinebench R10 CPU 2880 and OpenGL 5700, Xbench 263.82.
Graphics: SimCity 4's trees and buildings no longer sit in black boxes; no dark squares under Halo's creatures; a shader compiles in the background instead of holding the machine; wireframe polygon modes with edge flags.
Mouse: when a game switches the display mode, Ptolemy captures the mouse; Ctrl+Option or Cmd+Tab releases it, a click captures it again.
Network: Tiger's name lookups no longer stall when many run at once.
macOS 15 Sequoia or later (beta 1 needed macOS 26).

Requirements: a Mac with Apple silicon, macOS 15 Sequoia or later, and an image of your own Tiger 10.4 PowerPC install DVD (the README shows how to make one in Disk Utility). Ptolemy does not include or download Apple software.

First start: Ptolemy is signed ad hoc, not notarized. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway, or run: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Ptolemy.app

You can download a Mac OS 9.2.2 System Folder for Mac OS X Tiger from the Internet (for example, the “Classic folder” archive from Macintosh Repository) and install it:

1. Unpack the archive on your Mac with The Unarchiver or StuffIt Expander. They keep the files’ resource forks, which Mac OS 9 needs.
2. In Finder, Control-click the unpacked folder and choose Compress. Finder’s zip keeps the resource forks.
3. In Ptolemy, choose Media › Insert Disk Image… and select the zip. Tiger shows it as a disk with the zip’s name.
4. In Tiger, drag the System Folder from that disk onto Tiger’s disk.
5. Open System Preferences › Classic, select that System Folder and click Start.

Don’t drag Mac OS 9 files onto Ptolemy’s window: that copy loses their resource forks.

This is a beta of a hobby project. What has been tried and what is known not to work: see the README. Most applications and games have never been tried; reports are welcome.

SHA-256 (Ptolemy-1.0b2.zip): 9d70da3a65606d3c447c0e4f5dada8e8268060bde5f3921b253a07ea117171d5

Ptolemy 1.0 beta 1

Ptolemy 1.0 beta 1, the first prebuilt release.

Ptolemy is a PowerPC Mac emulator for Apple silicon: it runs Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11 for PowerPC, with Tiger's own ATI driver accelerating Quartz Extreme and OpenGL on the Mac's GPU through Metal.

Requirements: a Mac with Apple silicon, macOS 26 or later, and an image of your own Tiger 10.4 PowerPC install DVD (the README shows how to make one in Disk Utility). Ptolemy does not include or download Apple software.

First start: Ptolemy is signed ad hoc, not notarized. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway, or run:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Ptolemy.app

This is a beta of a hobby project. What has been tried and what is known not to work: see the README. Most applications and games have never been tried; reports are welcome.

SHA-256 (Ptolemy-1.0b1.zip): 47c1108385f15507c3f00b467361d4f6b2d3fb95516c31b2f92c1739b2310792
SHA-256 (Ptolemy-1.0b1-macOS15.0-15.x-NOT-TESTED.zip): 6b90f1e673f02dbcc5fb87421bb1fff58c1acb7722029de0f70d242854f0e6bd.