System 7 natively boots on the Mac mini G4

more the fault of MB of ram and HDDs being quite slow to be honest.

> In my case, first I tried using the latest Python 3.13.9 both from Windows 7 (bad idea due to resource fork loss) and macOS 10.14.6 Mojave, but neither worked: it seems like that version of Python was just too new. I then retried with Python 3.8.10 instead (which I chose thinking it might be more period-appropriate for the script's age) on Mojave, which worked flawlessly.

Ah, classic Python. Removing features [0] and breaking perfectly working software just because the feature is old, ugly, and not widely used.

[0] https://github.com/elliotnunn/tbxi/issues/1

As an European, Classic Macs (and current ones) were just for arts/writting people. If you knew what CMYK was in order to print a newspaper, you were a Mac user.

I emulated Mac OS 7 under XP times, and i was impressed that you could get far faster speeds emulating the M68k (and partially the PPC) compared to Intel X86 without any hardware accelerating chip (IntelVT) or kernel modules trapping X86 instructions running it at native speeds. I mean, PPC and M68k chips where much easier to emulate than X86 on itself.

On software, Classic Mac users can just resort to IRC and Gopher clients and visit the public https://bitlbee.org IRC servers in order to connect 'modern' accounts and being proxied to a Mac IRC client. And for Gopher, you have gopher://hngopher.com, gopher://magical.fish and the like. Sadly you don't have an easy TLS library as Amiga users have (AmiSSL) where even modern web can work on it (and IRC over TLS, Gemini...).

Altough... if Amiga m68k emulators run fast with the Rosetta like tech for PPC... you would just fire up Workbench and then AmiSSL. Crude, but it would work. If not, here in the Apple subdir you can get, maybe, some TLS enabled browsers:

gopher://bitreich.org/1/lawn

and

gopher://happymacs.ddns.net/1Vintage-Mac-Software-Archive

MacSSL:

https://github.com/demoniccode12/MacSSL

Usenet will work fine without any TLS, and there's tons of content out there.

Kinda sorts. The systems that the "MacOS on CHRP" thing ran on had a very strange looking device tree, with some bizarre combination of PC and Mac peripherals.

  Apple Cobra Open Firmware CHRP 1.1 B3 built on 08/18/97 at 13:04:24
  Copyright Apple Computer 1994,1996,1997
  Copyright IBM Corporation 1996
  All rights reserved.
   ok
  0 > dev / ls 
  ff82ec18: /cpus
  ff82ee08:   /PowerPC,604e@0
  ff82f600: /chosen
  ff82f750: /memory@0
  ff82f8d8: /memory-controller@fec00000
  ff82f9d8: /openprom
  ff82fab8: /rom@ff000000
  ff82ff48:   /boot-rom@fff00000
  ff830060: /options
  ff830828: /aliases
  ff830c78: /packages
  ff830d00:   /deblocker
  ff8314c8:   /disk-label
  ff832090:   /obp-tftp
  ff835db8:   /mac-parts
  ff836578:   /mac-files
  ff837de0:   /fat-files
  ff839700:   /iso-9660-files
  ff83a148:   /bootinfo-loader
  ff83b7d0:   /xcoff-loader
  ff83c060:   /pe-loader
  ff83c7d0:   /elf-loader
  ff83da18:   /terminal-emulator
  ff83dab0: /rtas
  ff83dc70: /pci@80000000
  ff83ff38:   /isa@b
  ff8414e0:     /nvram@i74
  ff841ad0:     /rtc@i70
  ff842500:     /parallel@i378
  ff842988:     /serial@i3f8
  ff843020:     /serial@i2f8
  ff8436b8:     /sound@i534
  ff850288:     /8042@i60
  ff8515f8:       /keyboard@0
  ff854b88:       /mouse@1
  ff8554c0:     /fdc@i3f0
  ff858730:       /disk@1
  ff85bac0:     /op-panel@i808
  ff85bba0:     /pwr-mgmt@i82a
  ff85bed8:     /timer@i40
  ff85c070:     /interrupt-controller@i20
  ff85c250:     /dma-controller@i0
  ff85c738:   /pci-ide@b,1
  ff85d028:     /ide@0
  ff85db78:     /ide@1
  ff85e6c8:       /cdrom@0
  ff862e60:   /mac-io@d
  ff863468:     /scsi@10000
  ff865298:       /disk
  ff8660c8:       /tape
  ff8671b8:     /adb@11000
  ff867cb0:       /keyboard@2
  ff8685a0:       /mouse@3
  ff8687c0:     /escc-legacy@12000
  ff8689b8:       /ch-a@12002
  ff868b08:       /ch-b@12000
  ff868c58:     /escc@13000
  ff868e40:       /ch-a@13020
  ff869500:       /ch-b@13000
  ff869bc0:     /via@16000
  ff869cb0:     /interrupt-controller@40000
  ff869e70:   /cirrus@e
  ff86e2c8:   /pci1022,2000@f
   ok
  0 >

Refer to the "Macintosh Technology in the Common Hardware Reference Platform" book for more information, if you're curious about the Mac IO pieces.

The Motorola Yellowknife board seems remarkably similar to this system, as well as the IBM Long Trail system (albeit with Long Trail using a VLSI Golden Gate versus a MPC106 memory controller). Both of them use W83C553 southbridges and PC87307 Super I/O controllers.

The architecture is kind of weird, but the schematics on NXP's website can probably elucidate a bit more on the system's design.

It was because of QuarkXPress and Photoshop. In the same way WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 were dominant for business computers.

Wish someone would try to create native MacOS classic on x86 hardware.

There are so many Unix or Linux ABI compatible kernels like the recent Moss written in rust.