[hertel]

Disclaimer: I bought my first Apple late last year and have a lot to learn, so any directions will need to be very simple or very detailed...

I have longed to play my favorite games for months but problems just keep appearing.

I bought Mac-formatted SimFarm and SimCity 2000 (mid 90's games) thinking there would be no problem for my 2Ghz, 512Mb ram Macbook. However, they gave me a "file not recognized" error and a tech at an Apple store let me know that they were built for a previous OS and there is absolutely no supported fix at all, period, for my machine because it hase an Intel-based processor and different OS configuration.

Not that easily discouraged, an employee at the Apple retailer I purchased from told me there may be unsupported fixes in message boards; I found an archived recommendation to another user to to install OS 7.5.3 and run old games in OS X with SheepShaver. I downloaded Sheepshaver, but it needs the software from an old OS to run. I found the official Apple website with the free version of OS 7.5.3 and 19 .bin files that will supposedly form the OS. I used another downloaded program, StuffIt Expander, to turn the 19 .bin files into 19 .smi files. The ReadMe file on the Mac OS 7.5.3 download site says to put those files on my desktop and double-click and it will automatically go, but it instead gives me a "the following disk images failed to mount" warning because "the file is not recognized". I downloaded and decompressed all 19 files again to make sure it wasn't a bad file, but achieved the same results.

So, I am looking for the easiest and cheapest way to play SimFarm and SimCity 2000 on my MacBook.

My questions:
-What do I need to do to put the 19 .smi files together into 1 file to use with Sheepshaver?
-Or, where can I get a full version of OS 7.5.3 to use with Sheepshaver?
-The games' packaging have no indication that they work with only a select OS, will they function with OS 7.5.3 if I do get it up and running via Sheepshaver?

Any help is greatly appreciated! Since no step seems to be too small for me to screw up, so please be very detailed. Please let me know if there is further pertinent information I need to provide to diagnose the problem or get a solution. Thanks again!

[MacosNerd]

System 7.5.3

I think you have a lot of work ahead of you trying to get this up and running for a game but good luck.

[Eriamjh]

I think one of the 7.5.3 disk images on apple's servers is corrupt. I was never able to get it to install on an old machine.

I have a copy of 7.5.3 from a powermac 7300. It's like an 80MB disk image. I think it might work with SheepShaver...

[CharlesS]

Yes, Intel-based Macs don't include any support for the Classic environment, so you can't run any software written for any Mac OS prior to 10.0. The cheerleaders on this board have been rooting for Apple to remove this support from OS X even on PowerPC machines as well, just because they can. Isn't that wonderful?



Anyway, I just tried downloading the nineteen files and mounting them, and it seems to work. However, I have on my disk a .dmg from a long time ago that I made from the nineteen parts, consolidating them, and I know I've installed from that before, so I know it works. If you send me a PM, I could e-mail it to you.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

You should be able to copy the contents of the 19 smi files into one folder/image and run it from there and it should work. I've simply mounted them all then fired off the install instead of copying to floppy or mounting them one at a time. I had an old OS CD to install from when I set up sheepshaver.