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How to run FreeHand by virtualization (I can't get it to work.)


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I know there are a lot of FreeHand users on this forum since we have had discussions in the past and I was wondering how successful people are getting it to work on a modern computer? When I try to import FH work into Affinity I can't 100% of it to come across so somehow I need to get Snow Leopard to work. I was wondering if anyone was using using FH via virtualization? I tried to get SL to run via VMware's Fusion but it seems like wants to have SL Server(?) which doesn't make any sense to me. Anyways it someone has this set up I would really like to know how it is done. I've got a lot of FH work stored that I would love to access again and I have 64gb of ram so I can easily run two operating systems side by side.

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I don't remember the details very clearly anymore but I believe the problem, at least for Macs, is that Freehand was originally a Power PC app that would not run at all on Intel Macs & even Freehand MX, the last version ever released, only runs on Intel Macs running an OS version that supports Rosetta, which (contrary to what the Adobe link says) means Snow Leopard or earlier.

 

What I have done to "rescue" my old Freehand documents is to use an older Mac I have that can run Snow Leopard natively, & used Freehand MX to export them to (I think) eps files, which I subsequently imported into Affinity Designer.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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I still have a PowerMac that has FreeHand and Leopard on it but it is S-L-O-W. Was hoping to run it on a brand new iMac instead. I just bought a Snow Leopard disc but haven't made it work yet. I might have to make the disc into a disc image first and then install the disc image in Fusion? I could go into the old computer and convert everything to EPS but it would be so much nicer to do on a new machine. My old Mac Mini only had 16gb of ram so it would have been hard to run Snow Leopard at the same time I ran Sierra but with 64gb that wouldn't be a problem so it would be nice to put those advanced specs to use.

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I doubt that it would work with an old PowerMac but what I did with my older Intel iMac running Snow Leopard was to remote into it from my newer one, so at least I did not have to go back & forth between two screens & two keyboards. The older iMac is also a 2008 model, a 20" one slower than my main iMac, but obviously it is still faster than any PowerMac.

 

I don't have any experience with Fusion so I can't say what would work with that. If you figure out anything that works with it, please let me know.

 

EDIT: I said "remote into it" but what I meant was using Screen Sharing.

Edited by R C-R

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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You might have better luck searching the web for a Freehand user support group & asking about it there. If you still can't find a virtualized solution, maybe you could do something with an AppleScript to automate your copy of Freehand to do exports of your files to fh10 format, which Affinity Designer can open.  That way, you could let the PowerMac grind away for as long as it takes to do all the exports without you having to do each export manually.

 

What version of Freehand do you have? I know Freehand MX can save to fh10 format, but I don't know if it is scriptable or will run on a PowerMac.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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