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Ssheven: A modern SSH client for Mac OS 7-9

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Re: Ssheven: A modern SSH client for Mac OS 7-9

#121

i believe that before OSX, the OS itself had no terminal/shell/command prompt, and I suspect Macs were very rarely used for development back then; it was only with Unix-based OSX that it became hugely popular.

Who WAS Apple's customer base during the classic MacOS era? I remember Apple II's dominating when I was in school back in the 1980's. Then in the 1990's when I was in college, all I remember seeing anywhere were PC's. DOS and then Windows for the masses, and this new thing called Slackware Linux for many of us in the CS department. In the 2000's I started hearing about Macs, but only for creative domains like Photosh…

Journalists, photographs, printed press guys. Magazine people for example.

Re: Ssheven: A modern SSH client for Mac OS 7-9

#122
post #18
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't last Mac OS 9 versions have memory protection? I mean there's a reason it's hard to run 9.2 on an emulator — it requires a working MMU.

Mac OS 9 has virtual memory (it uses virtual address translation and it can swap pages to disk), but it still has a single address space that is shared between every application.

Ah. I remember reading "it has virtual memory" and assumed that this includes each process running in its own address space.

Was it common for applications to reach directly into kernel memory instead of using proper APIs?

Re: Ssheven: A modern SSH client for Mac OS 7-9

#123
post #53

>input latency feels high because redrawing the screen is slow (along with all the encryption, which is also slow) Is modern encryption a challenge to those old machines? Is it because of specialized encryption hardware or sheer brute force? Or is it just this implementation that's slow? I used telnet back in the 68k days.

the crypto code actually has some 68020 assembly (credit to the mbedtls devs), it could probably be made faster, but I would need to sharpen my assembly skills a lot doing the initial key exchange before timeout is barely possible for a 68030 at 16MHz, takes the better part of a minute! of course, on the later PPC machines it's a complete non-issue

A g4 with Altivec can play 720p video...

Re: Ssheven: A modern SSH client for Mac OS 7-9

#124
post #110

i believe that before OSX, the OS itself had no terminal/shell/command prompt, and I suspect Macs were very rarely used for development back then; it was only with Unix-based OSX that it became hugely popular.

Classic MacOS had Macintosh Common Lisp. Even today, it’s the most pleasant, elegant and friendly programming environment I’ve ever used.

Classic MacOS had also ExperLisp, Procycon Common Lisp, MacScheme plus two embedded Lisp Machines as NuBUS boards: TI MicroExplorer and the Symbolics MacIvory.

Re: Ssheven: A modern SSH client for Mac OS 7-9

#125
post #108
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far it's working well on my LC III (68030 with 36mb ram)! I'm writing this comment from the LC III using w3m over ssh :)

36mb ram? that is a like a power house!

LC III is a real sleeper. It's much better than the previous in the series. The case is great to work with, it's small, runs cool (if you replace the hard drive it should be no problem to remove the fan), and is faster than any compact. And it takes the 36MB RAM.

Re: Ssheven: A modern SSH client for Mac OS 7-9

#126
post #32
post #16

the machine it's probably tested on: http://www.cy384.com/projects/centris-650.html

Whenever I see these I’m baffed we could ever run a full GUI on these things, when the machines of today often have issues running one.

With the exception of (high-resolution) video, I still do much the same things I did on my computer 20 years ago. Most of it involves fetching and sending text over the internet. It's a little prettier now, the protocols are more advanced, and (crucially) it's a lot easier to develop and distribute applications[0], but in the abstract sense there's absolutely nothing new and nothing older machines couldn't handle given the right set of protocols - i.e. less JSON, less downloading raw application source code and expecting to run them in less than 100ms.

[0] The web is good, actually. It sucks, but it's also pretty good.

Re: Ssheven: A modern SSH client for Mac OS 7-9

#127
post #117
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did exactly what you told me to I suggest reading up on how the SSH protocol works

You must be young. The gap between 1989 and 1999 in computer terms is inmense, far more than the gap between 2010 and 2020. You could emulate a 1989 m68k Mac/Amiga on a Pentium 3 from 1999, for example with BasiliskII/UAE.

Performance increase did not stop; smaller, better designs. The exponential is just a bit lower.

We don't realize it, just as someone using a text terminal may have not realised it between 1985 and 1995, if every response after a key press was already instant.

For typical GUI interfaces, tasks like tossing video data around, and so on, computers became approximately inifinitely fast sometime c. 2005 - 2010.

Re: Ssheven: A modern SSH client for Mac OS 7-9

#128
post #49

oh hey everyone, author here, ssheven is still beta quality, so I wasn't really posting about it anywhere yet, but it's usable and has the core functionality working ok I plan to do a writeup about it, and the experience of developing for old macs, once I finish the 1.0 release edit: btw, this is my first project for the classic Mac OS, I hope to inspire others to also jump in, retro68 is a very usable toolchain (big…

I’d love to hear more about retro68, your experience finding documentation for the various APIs. Stackoverlow didn’t exist when these APIs were in use.

Apple used to produce good paper documentation, my stack of Inside Macintosh is on the floor behind me.

Re: Ssheven: A modern SSH client for Mac OS 7-9

#129
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some sort of NAS solution that would be compatible with older versions of Mac OS http://netatalk.sourceforge.net/ :)

You have to run the 2.x series to interoperate with older "classic" Macs. Nearly everything these days packages the 3.x series and thus only works with more recent OS X clients.

Netatalk 2.2 will work on a NetBSD server.

Re: Ssheven: A modern SSH client for Mac OS 7-9

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just unrelenting hunting on Craigslist, eBay, and Facebook Marketplace. I think I got the PTPro on Craigslist. I actually have a PowerCenter 150 slim-profile Desktop (and a spare Sonnet G3 400/1M CPU upgrade for it) that's currently in storage. I haven't decided if I should try to find a good home for it yet. The PowerTower Pro replaced it in my office collection because I wanted a box I could cram full of esoteric t…

What do you even do with the OrangePC? I guess all of this is quite obsolete, but to run old windows on it?

Well, mostly I just like the novelty. I have a Radius Rocket 33 (68040) and an OrangePC 290 (Cyrix 5x86) in my 7100/80. It's kinda fun to play with a classic Mac a PPC Mac and a classic PC all in one box. I finally got them to run DOOM II bots against each other.

The OrangePC 660 has an NVIDIA RIVA 128 on it, so I use it to play with old CAD/CAM software sometimes and it's kind of fun (similar to the 7100) to fire up some cross-platform games (e.g. Myth TFL/II, Quake 1/2, etc. and get the Mac side playing against the PC side).

At the end of the day it's all just technological novelty and esoteria, of course.

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