[kitsunesoba]

In the case of SheepShaver at least, there’s a Mac ROM that can be extracted from a freely available Mac OS update that works just fine. Not sure of the legality of that, but it’s got to be better than downloading ROMs of Macs you don’t own.

[orionblastar]

There was once an Apple Development CD that was given out with all sorts of Mac ROMs and System install files and other things. I used to have a copy of it but lost it.

I think it was given out before Steve Jobs came back to Apple. It was at a developer conference. They wanted developers to support the Macintosh at a time when Apple was struggling financially. The files on the CD could be used with emulators so they could get more Mac developers that way.

I remember people well selling copies of that CD online for a while. Then it ended up on The Pirate Bay before it was taken down or lost seeders.

[LeoPanthera]

That sounds like the Macintosh "Legacy Recovery" CD. You can still find copies floating around the web.

[Tloewald]

Actually for years if you were a registered developer (which cost ~$500/year iirc) you got a monthly CD-ROM and issue of develop magazine (which was very good). The CD-ROMs periodically had archives of pretty much every major stable OS release (along with the current and bleeding edge releases, developer tools, and an On Location free text retrieval index that worked better than Spotlight does now).

[WWLink]

I remember that! The developer membership was really expensive, but if you were a student you got it for $99/year.

Between the free shirts, the monthly mailings, and the hardware discounts it was totally worth the high price.