[Solved] Problems installing Snow Leopard (10.6) as a guest on High Sierra (10.13.6)

[Gravelpits]

I will try to heed the guidelines. This is my first post. Here goes:

I am attempting to create a VM running Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) using a late version of VirtualBox (5.2.22 r126460) on my MacbookPro 9,1 (2012) running Mac OS 10.13.6 (High Sierra). I have a piece of VERY IMPORTANT software I would like to run, namely "F/A-18 Hornet: Operation Iraqi Freedom", which is a 2005 PPC game requiring Rosetta.

During startup, the install disk hangs just after

Code: Select all

AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement: initialization complete

giving the dreaded

Code: Select all

still waiting for root device

which I guess means there's a problem with my install media? The 10.6 install image I have is identified by hdiutil imageinfo as:

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Mac OS X 10.6 Install DVD.dmg
Checksum Type: CRC32
Checksum Value: $977CE522

I tried converting the DMG directly to ISO, but that hung at the same place at boot. I was reading on another forum about how picky AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement with regard to cpuid specifics, so I don't know if maybe the problem is there?

I've been stuck on this problem for a while now. Help me, @socratis, you're my only hope!

-John (Gravelpits)

[Gravelpits]

I worked around the problem of booting from the *.dmg by burning it back to a DL-DVD and then enabling passthrough and booting from the physical disc. Slow, but it works!

[socratis]

That could work... Or you could have converted the DMG to ISO, or after you burned it into a DVD make an ISO from that DVD. Which is a good advice in any event if you want to have a backup.

BTW, I don't have my hopes too high for the game working properly, it is a game with high requirements on the graphics and that's not the strongest characteristic in a VM. I hope it does...

Marking this as [Solved].

[Gravelpits]

Indeed. When I try to launch the game.app, it terminates with an OpenGL error dialog. I tried upgrading to 10.6.8 but that didn't resolve the problem, which isn't too surprising since the game is from 2005 and Snow Leopard was released in 2009. The error suggests there may be a problem with resolution, which I am troubleshooting now. The VM has only one supported resolution (1024x768) while the hint from the OS in the VM log file calls for 800x600. I've attached a screenshot.

If this doesn't work, how on earth is one supposed to run PPC code these days? Still -->

OIF screenshot (BW)

screen.jpg (63.03 KiB) Viewed 2278 times

[socratis]

When I try to launch the game.app, it terminates with an OpenGL error dialog.

Not surprising. There are no advanced graphics offered with the OSX Guest Additions (GAs), and at the moment (I hope) the GAs can't even get installed on 10.6, they require 10.7 or greater. So, no OpenGL graphics for you at this point in a VM.

If this doesn't work, how on earth is one supposed to run PPC code these days?

Get an older Mac, one that can run 10.6.8. Or use a VM, but not for anything graphics intensive. You can still run PPC code there.