Debugging Power Macintosh emulation in MAME has long been a slog because the code spans PowerPC, emulated 68k, and compiled Forth. In 2026 the author enlisted Claude to steer MAME via custom Lua scripts and log files. The AI quickly pinpointed a failure in the 6522 VIA emulation that blocked communication with the Cuda 68HC05, restoring the Pippin’s boot chime and initial logo.

Further work uncovered half a dozen PowerPC emulation bugs and several PCI‑Mac hardware issues. After fixing those, the Pippin displayed a movable mouse pointer. The author then tackled a Power Macintosh 7200, which reached the startup disk polling stage but never initialized its video. Claude identified two defects in the PowerPC 601 core, enabling the screen to power on and show the floppy‑boot routine.

Applying a pull request that corrected atomic load/store emulation let System 7.5.x boot on a Power Macintosh 6100, bringing the Finder up with native SCSI performance. The same fix advanced the Pippin to its CD‑insert animation and gave the 7200 its missing flashing question mark. A later tweak to FPU flag handling finally restored the Graphing Calculator’s 3D demo, demonstrating AI‑assisted debugging can yield tangible emulator improvements.