Installing PowerPC software on 10.8.5 machine

[kstock]

At JNUC, someone mentioned that they had been successful installing PowerPC software on a 10.8.5 machine. I need to install Pearson TestGen 5.5 on a teacher machine and Pearson keeps telling us it should work. However, the disk they keep sending us is a PowerPC version. Does anyone know how that is done?

[CasperSally]

For Pearson test generators, we install on a PC and copy the banks to a network share for safe keeping in future.

Then install the latest test gen software (there's a download on their site I believe) that works in 10.8+. Then dump the q/a banks on mac from the network share (they're just files).

[damienbarrett]

As far I know, the only way to do this is inside a virtual machine running 10.6.8.

I'd love to see if someone has managed to get the Rosetta framework to run in 10.7+ but doubt it's possible (also; didn't Apple license Rosetta from some company?).

[blackholemac]

I second @CasperSally][/url][/url. I contacted Pearson and after a bunch of mucking around, they released the newest version of TestGen for me. We keep an old Mac or two here. I installed the PPC version, copied the test banks out and then made them (by themselves) into a second installer of their very own that is chained to the main TestGen install. That is basically the strategy I use for ExamView as well.

As for Rosetta, they licensed it from a company called Transitive and later Transitive was acquired by IBM and the software snuffed:

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/10/22/how-one-of-apples-most-important-pieces-of-software-came-from-a-small-uk-startup/

[bcourtade]

I also was able to get access to the newer TestGen by bothering a few Pearson reps. They finally directed me to this request form to get access to the download: http://www.pearsonhighered.com/pearsonhigheredus/ircrequestaccess/irc_countries_selection.page?productCode=pearsonhighered&forced_logout=forced_logged_out