ShapeShifter - A 68k Mac emulator for AmigaOS
ShapeShifter is now obsoleted by Basilisk II which also runs on AmigaOS. This page is only kept for completeness.
What is ShapeShifter?
ShapeShifter is a multitasking Macintosh-II emulator for the Amiga and DraCo computers. It allows to run Macintosh software concurrently to Amiga applications without hardware add-ons or modifications.
Some of the emulation's features:
- Supports MacOS 7.1 thru 8.1
- Color display up to 256 colors on AGA Amigas (16 colors on ECS) and up to 16,7 million colors on graphics cards
- Accelerated graphics with CyberGraphX/Picasso96
- Support for one or two monitors
- No MMU required, even runs on A1200
- Macintosh hard disks can be simulated in Amiga files or Amiga hard disk partitions
- Can use Amiga floppy drives, serial, parallel and SCSI ports from the Mac
- Mac HD disks can be read directly with an HD floppy drive, Mac 720K disks can be used with any Amiga floppy drive. To use Mac 800K disks, you have to own CrossMAC and an original Mac drive. ShapeShifter also supports the Catweasel controller.
- 8 bit stereo sound output (sound cards supported via AHI)
- Sound input with parallel-port sound digitizers
- Access to Ethernet networks
- Simple networking between two Amigas with PLIP
- Text clipboard sharing between Mac and Amiga
- File handler to access Macintosh volumes from the Workbench
- Speed comparable to a real Mac with equivalent hardware
Requirements:
OS2.1, 68020 processor, 4MB of RAM, HD floppy drive recommended. A copy of a Macintosh 512K or 1MB ROM and the Macintosh system software are not included, but required. The ROM can be read off of a real Mac by using a supplied program, the system software can be bought from Apple. Note, however, that reading the ROM is only legal if you have bought the ROMs or own a real Macintosh.
What's new in ShapeShifter V3.11?
- Fixed MacOS 8 Finder file copy bug
- Disabled 68060 Super Bypass mode because of a CPU bug that is triggered by MacOS 8
Download ShapeShifter
ShapeShifter help and links
Some Mac software
Information for developers
MacOS pre-emptively multitasks...on my Amiga!
The ShapeShifter makes it possible.
Christian Bauer