virtualbox.org

Since Apple has forsaken its long time users, I'm still using obsolete MacOSX Snow Leopard 10.6.8 in 64 bit mode on my 2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo MacMini with 8 gigs memory. Apple withdrew support for Rosetta in Lion, and I'm very reluctant to abandon 20 years worth of history in one long-standing yet obsolete application. So I've been staying with Snow Leopard until I'm absolutely forced to move...

Now one of my favorite apps, NisusWriterPro at nisus dot com, will no longer support Snow, and I will need to run it in Lion or Mavericks. So the solution seems to be to run VirtualBox/Mavericks under Snow. When things settle down and I've got used to the new and apparently very different facilities in the new MacOS, then to switch and instead run VirtualBox/Snow under Mavericks.

I've used a Mac for a long time (my first was a Mac Plus ), and my hard drive is already partitioned into three partitions to separate my Snow Leopard OS from my data and from other stuff. I'm about to upgrade my hard drive to a SSD, and anticipate partitioning it into 4 partitions, the current three and a fourth for Mavericks. I understand that I can still boot Snow and Mavericks from separate partitions, but I'm hoping this strategy using Virtual Box will enable me to have both available concurrently.

There should be no problems eventually running Snow under VirtualBox since I'm running Snow already. Which version of VB should I use? How much hard disk space will VirtualBox take? If it takes lots, I'm wondering where I should allow for this space? Lastly, any recommendations, cautions, or comments on the viability of this strategy?

All recommendations, cautions, help, and tips are very very much appreciated.
Thanks a million, Cris

After struggling to get Snow Leopard installed into VirtualBox on my MacBook Pro (I want to install a more recent Mac OS, but also need Rosetta, so want a 10.6.8 VM to run it in), I found - virtualbox-snow-leopard blogspot com, which describes the steps required to get Snow Leopard (non-server) to install on VirtualBox. Sorry the forum won't allow me to post the actual u r l. Hope this helps - worked fine for me. Obviously, this doesn't solve your Mavericks on Snow Leopard problem, but you'll need it eventually, and maybe just as easy to start by trying to run the SL VM first, so you know you have somewhere to go.