The “Instructions → Read Before You Install” document is a 32-bit Universal app, so it won’t run on a modern Mac, but if you open its package and navigate to one of the "Contents → Resources → language " folders, you’ll find a PDF with the “Read Before You Install” document.
The first page lists the system requirements:
An Intel processor or a PowerPC G4 (867 MHz or) or G5 processor
A DVD drive
Built-in FireWire
At least 512 MB of RAM (additional RAM is recommended for development purpsoes)
A built-in display or a display connected to an Apple-supplied video card supported by your computer
At least 9 GB of disk space available, or 12 GB of disk space if you install the developer tools
The installer itself (“Install Mac OS X”) is a universal binary with two architectures, PPC and i386:
... - /Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD/Install Mac OS X.app/Contents/MacOS>file Install\ Mac\ OS\ X
Install Mac OS X: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures: [i386:
- Mach-O executable i386] [ppc:
- Mach-O executable ppc]
Install Mac OS X (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386
Install Mac OS X (for architecture ppc): Mach-O executable ppc
Well, ‘better’ is subjective to what the task at hand is. For my purposes I want to browse older HFS-formatted CD/DVD-ROMs. And Intel machine would provide no advantage and emulating a newer version of MacOS will degrade performance. You could argue that in that case I should simply run Mac OS X 1.0, but the Finder was pretty rough in earlier versions, so I’m happy to give up some performance to get to 10.4 Tiger which is pretty reasonable.
I think it’s actually more complicated than that, as we’re not talking about just emulating a processor. The whole machine architecture needs to be emulated for the old OS to run. So even if the Intel emulation were faster than PPC emulation, it may be that emulating the Intel Mac’s architecture is not.
The other issue is whether it’s even possible. I’m pretty sure that when I was getting this set up I saw a reference to UTM not being able to emulate an Intel-based Mac. It can, of course, emulate Intel processors. So I’m not saying it wouldn’t be possible to get an Intel version of Mac OS X/MacOS running in UTM by treating it as a ‘Hackintosh’, figuring out the right collection of settings, and using the OS hacks to get MacOS to run. But it would be a lot of effort for something that wouldn’t produce any meaningful advantage for my use-case. Installing Mac OS 10.4 on UTM’s emulated PPC Mac, in contrast, was fairly straight-forward.
Thanks for checking. I will look at that today on my Intel Mini. I guess since I had only PowerPC then, I had assumed there were two versions as opposed to a universal app.
This is very useful information. I have a Snow Leopard Server boot drive on my MacPro so that I can run some PPC apps. So Tiger via UTM emulation could solve that. I also use Sheepshaver to run 68k apps, also on my MacPro. The UTM emulation of Tiger on Mx chips could run both.
Or maybe I just keep some old hardware around for the few times/year I need to do this.
Re: UTM; I have downloaded a 10.4.6 system zip file. I then expanded it with Archive Utility so I now have a .dmg file. How do I install that on UTM? I’m rusty on using emulators.
I suggest using the instructions at that link. You’ll need a bootable disk image of the installer DVD. There are ways to create one if you have the DVD (even with MacOS 14 which can’t read HFS filesystems) so if you need help with that let me know. Otherwise archive.org has a disk image that should work:
Note that different emulation products do different things and support different versions of Mac OS.
mini vMac emulates a 68000 processor and the early compact Mac models (128, 512, Plus, SE and Classic). As such, it won’t be able to boot any system newer than 7.5.5, and will probably perform best with System 6.0.8 (emulating and SE or Classic).
Basilisk II emulates various 68K processors and is intended to run Systems 7 through 8.1.
SheepShaver emulates a PPC and is designed to run Systems 7.1.2 through 9.0.4. Of particular note is that it can not run 9.1 and 9.2, which is what Apple bundled with G4 systems.
PearPC emulates a PPC and is designed to run 10.1 through 10.4. It can not run 10.5.
QEMU (which is what UTM is based on) can emulate 68040 and PPC G4 processors and can run systems 7.1 through 10.5.
So, your choice of what apps you need/want to run is going to dictate your choice of emulator:
If your app needs/wants System 6 or older, your need mini vMac. In particular, some really old games fall into this category, because Apple deleted their original sound manager in System 7. Lots of old games are silent when played on System 7, even on physical Macs from that era.
If your app is compatible with System 7 or 8, then you’ve got a few choices.
If you want to run 9.22 (the last classic Mac OS), natively, it looks like QEMU is your only option.
I think (but someone will need to confirm), that an emulator running Mac OS X 10.1 through 10.4 (which has Classic support) should be able to run apps via a System 9.22 installation, even if it can’t boot 9.22 directly.
Note that all PPC builds of Classic Mac OS (7.1.2 through 9.22) include 68K emulation, and should run any 68K app. On real Mac hardware, it could run almost any 68K application but could not install any 68K system extensions. And depending on how old the app may be, some features may not work (e.g. the sound manager issue I mentioned above).
I still have my SE, which is configured to dual-boot 6.0.8 and 7.5.5. Although I can run these systems via emulation, this Mac has floppy drives capable of reading/writing the old 400K/800K media, and there is no way to connect such a drive to a modern computer. So I can download abandonware for my Apple IIGS and run it natively.
Apple distributed software on CDs and DVDs at the time. The disk image in the zip file, if it’s based on one of Apple’s distribution discs, should contain one of:
A retail installer. Which is a bootable DVD. Boot the disc to perform a clean install/reinstall, optionally erasing the target storage media. Run the installer app from the root of the image to upgrade a running system
A platform-specific installer. These are similar to the retail installers, but were bundled with specific model Macs. They may not include the full set of device drivers included with retail installers.
In general, it is not recommended to use this for installation onto other model Macs. I don’t know how this might affect emulators.
System-restore media. These are bundled with hardware and typically contain an image of the factory default hard drive. On DVD, there will be one large disk image. Or it could be a bunch of CDs, each one containing some of the disk image (concatenate the pieces together to get the whole image). I think these discs are bootable, and will boot to a minimal system that can do little more than erase your hard drive and install the image content to your storage media.
Like platform-specific installers, it is not recommended to try and install these to Macs other than the model they’re intended for. They will likely have a stripped-down set of device drivers, customized to what Apple shipped on that model.
But these system restore discs sometimes include additional software (bloatware to some). My 2002 PowerMac G4, for instance, included a 10-song music sampler pre-loaded into iTunes, Graphic Converter and a few apps from the Omni group (Graffle and Outliner, I think). If you didn’t buy the corresponding hardware, you do not have a license for this content and installing/using it would be piracy.
These system restore discs were typically bootable. So you could do a clean install by booting the disc (which would then let you format the storage medium) or if you were already running an older version of macOS, you could run the installer package to perform an upgrade.
All that having been said, to set up an emulator, you’re probably going to be starting with a blank disk image representing your hard drive, so you’ll need a bootable DVD image containing a system installer. I recommend an image of a retail DVD, if you have or can make one. You’d then tell the emulator to boot it and (if it all works properly), it should format and install to your hard drive image. But since @jzw already shared a link to instructions, I’d start with that.
Thank you. I downloaded that .ISO file but in UTM I get the “No valid state…” dialogue - see image. I do not understand the note in the guidance for how to fix it. Further, I saw that it could take six hours to install - but this was watching a YTube video from three years ago. I hope it’s much quicker than that now?
I downloaded another installer toast image from Archive org I then renamed it to an .iso file. I imported it to TMU then moved it to top of the list then saved the settings. The .iso file is in my downloads folder. Is where I store it a problem? When I hit the start button I get this message:
I’m not sure about using a Toast image. I made mine from my original Leopard DVD following the directions given earlier. I’ve run into the errors also for different reasons. I’m still learning the UTM program and its quirks which there are some but I think your problem is the image. Just renaming the file might not make a difference. You can also try to use the disk image option instead of ISO when you’re setting up the install drive if it is a .dmg file.
My 27" iMac (late 2015) using an Apple external USB CD/DVD drive would not read any CD-ROMs after upgrading to Monterey. It read and wrote to DVD-R just fine, but I would have to mount CD-ROMs on my wife’s slightly older iMac by physically moving the drive to her desk. I finally left the drive attached to her machine. I haven’t even attempted using it on my new Mac Studio M2.
Data discs with Mac software, especially older ones, may be formatted for HFS. macOS 10.15 (Catalina) dropped support for HFS. Since Monterey (macOS 12) is newer than that, it won’t have support either. See the rest of this thread for further discussion.
Data discs with PC software or platform-agnostic data are probably formatted with only ISO-9660. Any Mac should be able to read these.
Hybrid discs (with both Mac and PC partitions) may have special problems. They typically contain both an HFS formatted partition and an ISO-9660 partition. macOS 10.15 and later can’t read the HFS partition, and they won’t try to read the ISO partition. But you can use a few magic command-line commands to mount the ISO partition. See previous posts in this thread for a discussion about how to do that.
Audio CDs should just work. You should be able to play/rip them with iTunes or Music.
DVDs are always formatted with UDF, and should always work. (Blu-Ray discs are also formatted with UDF and should be readable if you have a Blu-Ray drive connected to your computer.)
If you have a CD-ROM with HFS-formatted data volumes, then that’s the reason for your problems. If your wife’s older Mac is running macOS 10.14 (Mojave) or an older version, then that’s why it can read the discs.
Since moving the drive to your wife’s computer works, then it’s highly unlikely that the drive has a hardware problem.
Right. After posting this, I realized it was Mac-created archive and backup CD-ROMs that weren’t readable. So that makes sense. I don’t really have any commercial CD-ROMs anymore that have anything relevant on them.
My solution to accessing these backups was to also attach a USB drive dock to my wife’s iMac, and copy all the CDs to a 1TB drive. I have a stack of 500GB to 2TB drives which I currently use for archiving, so this brought the older archives into the collection.
So this wasn’t really a problem for me, I was just curious what the issue was.
Hallelujah! I finally found an installer disc for 10.4 Tiger that worked. Installed all the updates. Safari doesn’t work - which I expected. Are there any other browsers I could use? How would I get them onto the Tiger VM? Also I wonder how I can share a file from my host MBPro? Interestingly I plugged in my generic USB floppy drive to the USB hub and it saw the folder on it! The familiar sounds of a floppy being read from the 90s… Annoyingly it the crashes the system - see attached screenshot.
I ran Disk utility to repair permissions but no change. Wonder what’s wrong there? Update: I just added the .iso of the Film Art disc to the list of drives in UTM and it appeared on the desktop. And it works - only problem is the sound is choppy. I think this is a known bug and guess I need to research it. Perhaps I could add application installers (eg Monolingual) to the desktop if I put them in a folder and add that as a drive?
Glad to hear you found a proper installer. There’s no doubt that the UTM app is finicky about what works and what doesn’t. I had to set the memory at 1MB for the install as 2MB or 1.5 would stall the process at the same point every time: the “Essentials Package.” I googled that error and found some very old posts regarding the memory issues.
As for a browser, the only thing I know of that is not being updated anymore is TenFourFox:
Glad you got this working @steve17. I was going to try and do a new install myself to see if I could advise on the issue you were having, but didn’t have time to do so yet. Well done persevering!
For sharing files between the host and the guest, follow the “AFP” instructions in the “File & Screen Sharing” section of the previously linked page:
It works very well. As for a browser, I installed the last version of TenFourFox7400.
Monolingual is a .dmg so I just added it to the drive list. I forgot to deselect all the excess languages when installing. I followed the AFP instructions but it didn’t work. I think they are old as I couldn’t locate one of the suggested targets.
Just reboot/shutdown the VM although that can cause corruption and then you might have to reinstall again. It happened to me a few times although you do want to give it time if it’s updating.
link. You’ll need a bootable disk image of the installer DVD. There are ways to create one if you have the DVD (even with MacOS 14 which can’t read HFS filesystems) so if you need help with that let me know. Otherwise 
