Due to Apple's licensing agreements, all three major publishers of VM software (VirtualBox, VMWare and Parallels) check the host platform and will refuse to allow Mac OS X to install if you don't meet the license terms (Mac hardware, and a server version of the OS for version 10.6 or older.)

For newer versions (including all of those compatible with PowerPC Macs), you can download updaters from Apple but you will need to get the original installer from another source.Ī virtual machine environment like VirtualBox can run modern versions of Mac OS X in a VM, but only on Mac hardware. These will run on 68000-based Macs (and emulators.) I think 7.5.3 will run on a 68030-based Mac as well. You can download image files for System 6.0.8, 7.0 and 7.5.3, and the updater to bring 7.5.3 up to version 7.5.5.

You can get some old copies of Mac OS from Apple's Older Software download page. Classic Mac OS will usually install in an emulation environment, but Mac OS X usually won't install without a lot of hacking. You should be aware also that Apple doesn't license Mac OS for use on non-Mac hardware.

You can perform searches to find people making them available, but since they are protected by copyright, it is only legal if you own the hardware in question (which, of course, undermines many of the reasons for emulation.) There are some emulators, however, which don't require a ROM image. Note that many of them require an image of the ROMs from the model Mac you're trying to emulate. You will find links to many different Mac emulators for a variety of platforms. The right choice will depend on what kind of hardware you need to emulate, whether or not you have a Mac ROM image available, and what version of Mac OS you want to run.Ī good place to start your search is E-Maculation. I didn't realize that BBCode doesn't like double-quotes around URLs)

Mac plus online emulator