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I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

bryankeller.github.io

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Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

#111

Post by Groxx »

glenstein wrote: post #42
NetOpWibby wrote: post #24

Before figuring out how to tackle this project, I needed to know whether it would even be possible. According to a 2021 Reddit comment: There is a zero percent chance of this ever happening. Feeling encouraged, I started with the basics: what hardware is in the Wii, and how does it compare to the hardware used in real Macs from the era. I LOL'd

I almost think such projects are worth it just to immortalize comments like these. There's a whole psychology of wrongness that centers on declaring that not-quite-impossible things will definitely never happen, because it feels like principled skepticism.

They're kinda like high-effort shitposts. Which are my absolute favorite kind. The worse the effort/reward payoff, and the more it makes you ask "WHY??!!?", the better.

Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

#112

Post by MomsAVoxell »

NetOpWibby wrote: post #24

Before figuring out how to tackle this project, I needed to know whether it would even be possible. According to a 2021 Reddit comment: There is a zero percent chance of this ever happening. Feeling encouraged, I started with the basics: what hardware is in the Wii, and how does it compare to the hardware used in real Macs from the era. I LOL'd

The missile knows at all times where it is, by knowing at all times where it isn’t.

Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

#114

Post by prpl »

inlined wrote: post #77
glenstein wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost think such projects are worth it just to immortalize comments like these. There's a whole psychology of wrongness that centers on declaring that not-quite-impossible things will definitely never happen, because it feels like principled skepticism.

That used to be my thing: wherever our ops manager declared something was impossible, I’d put my mind to proving her wrong. Even though we both knew she might declare something impossible prematurely to motivate me. My favorite was “it’s impossible to know which DB is failing from a stack trace”. I created STAIN (stack traces and instance names): a ruby library that would wrap an object in a viral proxy (all returns…

Adversarial software development is also when I do my best work

Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

#115

Post by nancyminusone »

carlosjobim wrote: post #100

They are successfully porting Mac OS onto every kind of modern computer over at the hackintosh subreddit, and I can't understand why there is so little interest for this stuff in the "hacker" sphere. Surely, it must be a better option than Linux if you want to get the most out of a PC computer? At least for 10 more years. https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/

>better option than Linux

I'm not sure why it would. Why would anyone want to hack on different proprietary software with no supplier support and whose days are clearly numbered (Apple's move to ARM)?

For usability I mean. It's clearly an interesting technical feat.

Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

#116

Post by Groxx »

inlined wrote: post #77
glenstein wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost think such projects are worth it just to immortalize comments like these. There's a whole psychology of wrongness that centers on declaring that not-quite-impossible things will definitely never happen, because it feels like principled skepticism.

That used to be my thing: wherever our ops manager declared something was impossible, I’d put my mind to proving her wrong. Even though we both knew she might declare something impossible prematurely to motivate me. My favorite was “it’s impossible to know which DB is failing from a stack trace”. I created STAIN (stack traces and instance names): a ruby library that would wrap an object in a viral proxy (all returns…

I've seen more than one half-joke-half-serious chunk of code that would "encode" arbitrary info into stack traces simply by recursively calling `fn_a`, then `fn_s`, `fn_d`, and `fn_f` before continuing with the actual intended call, giving you a stack trace with (effectively) "asdf" in it.

They've also been useful more than once, e.g. you can do that to know what iteration of a loop failed. There are of course other ways to do this, but it's hard to beat "stupid, simple, and works everywhere" when normal options (e.g. logs) stop working.

Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

#117

Post by addybojangles »

NetOpWibby wrote: post #24

Before figuring out how to tackle this project, I needed to know whether it would even be possible. According to a 2021 Reddit comment: There is a zero percent chance of this ever happening. Feeling encouraged, I started with the basics: what hardware is in the Wii, and how does it compare to the hardware used in real Macs from the era. I LOL'd

So much has happened in the tech world because someone wrote at one point, "You can't do that"

My favorite part of our online world.

Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

#118

Post by bsimpson »

NetOpWibby wrote: post #24

Before figuring out how to tackle this project, I needed to know whether it would even be possible. According to a 2021 Reddit comment: There is a zero percent chance of this ever happening. Feeling encouraged, I started with the basics: what hardware is in the Wii, and how does it compare to the hardware used in real Macs from the era. I LOL'd

> Readers with a keen eye might notice some issues:

> - Everything is magenta.

was fun too

Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

#119

Post by LoganDark »

mackid wrote: post #89

Congrats, great project and great writeup. That would have won MacHack back in the day. Now that the MacBook Neo has an A18, I wonder if you could get MacOS running on an iPhone? :)

I wonder if you can place an A18 from a Neo onto an iPhone board, and then make that work somehow... You wouldn't be able to use the one originally from the iPhone because it's differently fused to only accept iOS images.

Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

#120

Post by xattt »

glenstein wrote: post #98
inlined wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That used to be my thing: wherever our ops manager declared something was impossible, I’d put my mind to proving her wrong. Even though we both knew she might declare something impossible prematurely to motivate me. My favorite was “it’s impossible to know which DB is failing from a stack trace”. I created STAIN (stack traces and instance names): a ruby library that would wrap an object in a viral proxy (all returns…

Well you're doing gods work as far as I'm concerned. Conflating difficulty in practice with impossibility in principle is, to my mind, a source of so much unnecessary cognitive error.

The declaration of an impossibility of a given task or goal is a reflection of the perceived barrier by the individual, rather than the task itself.
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