Run Mac OS System 7 in your browser • Hacker News Board

Re: Run Mac OS System 7 in your browser

#101

Post by malandrew » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 6:05 PM UTC

rjsw wrote: post #77

malandrew wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried to get an Alpha Emulator working on OS X so I can try OpenGenera, but there really isn't anything that really works out there except for one paid piece of software. I believe the freeware emulator was the origin of the paid one and the freeware one is no longer maintained AFAICT.

Genera itself is commercial software, if you have a licence to use it then you may as well just compile the emulator for OS X, I can't see any reason to have an emulated Alpha layer as well. Someone could try compiling either the MIT or TI Explorer emulators to js I guess.

I know it is commercial, but I think everyone here can agree that running something like OpenGenera solely on a javascript emulator in the browser is a total non-solution for anything production use and doesn't really compete for sales to customers. What it accomplishes is the opportunity to just try something out to determine if I want to purchase a copy and explore it further.

Furthermore, there is a lot of value in having something out there that brings more attention to LISP machines and the novel ideas they introduced. Right now the barrier to trying OpenGenera out is remarkably high. Even googling for Genera or OpenGenera doesn't show a product page among the top results and the symbolics website is a glorified advertisement page.

Re: Run Mac OS System 7 in your browser

#102

Post by kevb » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 6:22 PM UTC

pbreit wrote: post #80

Wow, remember when you had to hold the mouse button down to select a menu item!

It took me a few tries to quit Kid Pix because of this. But now that I think about it when the change was introduced to not require click and hold (7.6? 8.0?) I hated it.

Re: Run Mac OS System 7 in your browser

#103

Post by rjsw » Wed, Oct 30, 2013, 12:16 PM UTC

malandrew wrote: post #101

rjsw wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genera itself is commercial software, if you have a licence to use it then you may as well just compile the emulator for OS X, I can't see any reason to have an emulated Alpha layer as well. Someone could try compiling either the MIT or TI Explorer emulators to js I guess.

I know it is commercial, but I think everyone here can agree that running something like OpenGenera solely on a javascript emulator in the browser is a total non-solution for anything production use and doesn't really compete for sales to customers. What it accomplishes is the opportunity to just try something out to determine if I want to purchase a copy and explore it further. Furthermore, there is a lot of value i…

If you want to find out what a Lisp Machine was like just run an emulator for either the MIT or TI ones on your desktop. Both are still being worked on, it wouldn't help their development to have extra translation stages into javascript. Any OpenGenera emulation in a browser would need to download a disk image containing all their commercial software, I can't see them wanting to put this on the web.

There are several Mac emulators that can run on desktop machines, the advantage of this new one to me is that you can package up a snapshot of a particular System version and the software that would have been used with it, I think we need to preserve key stages of computer development for the future.