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OS9Map

yllan.org

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Re: OS9Map

#21

Post by VorpalWay »

generalpf wrote: post #4

16 MB RAM required, 32 MB RAM recommended... how refreshing! Great work.

For the time when OS 9 was relevant that would have been a RAM hog. My iBook (first generation) had 32 MB RAM on board (plus an upgrade slot, how refreshing).

Sure, that wasn't top of the line, but it would definitely restrict your ability to multi task with other programs at the same time. My memory is that many programs used far less than that, allowing you to easily have 5-7 programs open (I had a RAM upgrade for a total of 64 MB).

Re: OS9Map

#22

Post by yllan »

I’m the author. This is an experiment of mine in figuring out how to let Mac OS 9 connect to modern network services and environments.

Since Mac OS 9 doesn’t have out-of-the-box support for modern secure networking protocols, you often have to go through a proxy, which is pretty painful. I wanted to make it possible for an old Mac to connect to modern web services on its own.

There are also two related projects for connecting to Bluesky and Mastodon:

https://yllan.org/software/PlatinumSky/ https://yllan.org/software/Palaeomastodon/

Those also add emoji text rendering, since emoji have become such an important part of modern internet culture. Mac OS 9 does support some early Unicode, but it is, after all, nearly 30-year-old software, so that support is naturally incomplete.

The main reason I chose Mac OS 9 is that these modern services are actually fairly demanding for old machines: parsing JSON instead of a more compact binary format, handling generally large images, doing cryptographic computations, and so on. I think 68k machines would probably struggle too much. If the goal is to run independently without relying on a proxy, you really need something with relatively modern specs.

BTW, I haven’t actually run this on real hardware either. I used QEMU during development. I do have an iBook G4 signed by Woz, but it stopped booting a few years ago.

I’d also like to thank bbenchoff’s MacSSL:

https://bbenchoff.com/pages/MacSSL.html

and cy384’s opentransport-mbedtls:

https://github.com/cy384/opentransport-mbedtls

Both were a big help.

Re: OS9Map

#23

Post by lampiaio »

yllan wrote: post #22

I’m the author. This is an experiment of mine in figuring out how to let Mac OS 9 connect to modern network services and environments. Since Mac OS 9 doesn’t have out-of-the-box support for modern secure networking protocols, you often have to go through a proxy, which is pretty painful. I wanted to make it possible for an old Mac to connect to modern web services on its own. There are also two related projects for c…

I absolutely applaud you. I'll try running it on a PowerBook G3. About the emoji support: is it something that could work system-wide?

Re: OS9Map

#24

Post by maelito »

Shameless plug : I'm working on https://cartes.app, a Web OpenStreetMap app.

Far less difficult as coding for an old OS obviously, but still a challenge !

The Web has plenty of potential, but constraints too, mostly because of dominant actors, such as Apple that hid the PWA install button... Or Firefox not having any install banner, whereas chrome does.

Can't post it yet as a proper subject, it can't handle top page load.

Re: OS9Map

#25

Post by amatecha »

guerrilla wrote: post #7

Hmmm. I wonder what the most beefed up OS 9 computer would be... I loved that OS so much.

The fastest I could find is the G4 "MDD" tower: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g4/specs/powerma... ... Though the 800mhz iMac G4 is a nice alternative (which I happen to have): https://everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac_800_17_fp... Makes for a great Mac gaming machine since it is pretty fast, looks great, is a fully self-contained computer with display, and can run both OS 9 and OS X.

Looks like the most truly-OP upgrade you could do is a dual-1.8ghz G4 upgrade card which is kind of crazy to consider: https://www.sonnettech.com/publicfiles/pdfs/pdf_datasheets/d...

Re: OS9Map

#26

Post by favorited »

fleeno wrote: post #14
guerrilla wrote: post #7

Hmmm. I wonder what the most beefed up OS 9 computer would be... I loved that OS so much.

I believe from Apple officially it would be the dual 1.25ghz MDD G4. I had one new, and still have it running today!

And, unofficially, MacOS9Lives can boot directly to OS 9 on FW800 PowerMacs, which have 1.42GHz processors with 2x the L3 cache. Officially, those machines only supported OS 9 via Classic.

I used it to install OS 9 on my G4 Mac mini, and, aside from an annoying bug where the USB mouse is completely unresponsive after booting 50% of the time, it works great.

Re: OS9Map

#27

Post by CursedSilicon »

yllan wrote: post #22

I’m the author. This is an experiment of mine in figuring out how to let Mac OS 9 connect to modern network services and environments. Since Mac OS 9 doesn’t have out-of-the-box support for modern secure networking protocols, you often have to go through a proxy, which is pretty painful. I wanted to make it possible for an old Mac to connect to modern web services on its own. There are also two related projects for c…

As a retro enthusiast, these projects are all absolutely delightful!

I need to get a GPU for my MDD G4 and then I'd love to try them out on real metal

Re: OS9Map

#28

Post by CursedSilicon »

amatecha wrote: post #25
guerrilla wrote: post #7

Hmmm. I wonder what the most beefed up OS 9 computer would be... I loved that OS so much.

The fastest I could find is the G4 "MDD" tower: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g4/specs/powerma... ... Though the 800mhz iMac G4 is a nice alternative (which I happen to have): https://everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac_800_17_fp... Makes for a great Mac gaming machine since it is pretty fast, looks great, is a fully self-contained computer with display, and can run both OS 9 and OS X. Looks like…

You can get a 1.67Ghz G4 Mac Mini on eBay with OS 9 preinstalled. It's wicked fast (especially with an IDE SSD adapter)

There's faster single thread accelerator cards that were made for a while by a guy on the 68kMLA forums, but that was many years ago. I think Action Retro on YouTube has one that broke 2Ghz

Re: OS9Map

#30

Post by watersb »

anonymousiam wrote: post #18

I was hoping this article had something to do with Microware OS-9, but it doesn't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS-9

MC6809 forever!

(The Hitachi clone is also quite nice.)

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