Running PowerPC applications on the ARM M1

I have a few PowerPc applications that havent been converted to intel and probably wont ever be translated in the future since the company in charge went bankrupt -- for example one of them is Fallout 2 by MacPlay/Interplay. I dont currently have a windows computer that can play them either. Heres the things that ive tried so far:


  • Considering that PowerPC is also RISC based like the M1 Mac, I thought it would be possible to maybe have a naitve conversion. Turns out RISC ISA and ARM ISA is drastically different --and they were also using a now outdated version of cocoa--, so I dont think a simple conversion using ghidra as a source would work. (Or would it? Im not a ghidra expert). Not to mention that the game is 32 bit PowerPC and the M1 is 64 bit ARM.
  • I tried using QEMU (with the MacOSX 10.4 powerpc for an iBookG4 disc I had lying around) as a VM to run the game, but the game has a error upon boot and doesnt work. A bit strange considering I installed everything from both discs.
  • For those also wondering, PowerPC applications cannot be installed on modern macs anymore and have the application icon crossed out to display that. Macs have not supported PowerPC applications since 10.6 Snow Leopard if I recall correctly.
  • BootCamp on a M1 Macintosh is not possible as of yet, so running windows isnt an option.
  • I've also tried SheepShaver (and it works perfectly under Rosetta 2), but it cant launch the game since its emulating MacOS9. If you have a application, however, that works under MacOS9, I recommend using SheepShaver.

With that being said, does anyone else have any ideas on how to run old PowerPC applications on a M1 Mac (including anything short of full on reverse engineering)? I mean it would be cool to write something in C++/OpenGL that can read and run the game files, but I dont have the time as now to do something to that scale.

Does anyone else have any ideas? Or am I just out of luck running the old games (just calling them old feels weird to me, but they are from the early 2000s) in my collection.



MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.2

Posted on Apr 18, 2021 8:45 PM

Reply

Similar questions

4 replies

Apr 19, 2021 5:22 AM in response to triscuitcircuit

Do not confuse the original Rosetta which could transcode PPC applications into Intel, and which was last implemented in OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard), with Rosetta2 on Apple Silicon Macs that transcodes Intel x86 binaries to arm64 binaries.


Matti Haveri is correct about what you need to run those old PPC applications, and as far as I know, Apple no longer sells the Snow Leopard client or server DVD. I am keeping a white 2007 MacBook around because it has Snow Leopard 10.6.8 installed on it.

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Running PowerPC applications on the ARM M1

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.