This rules. It’s exactly the kind of cursed side quest that sounds fake until you read the writeup and realize you actually did the work.
I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii
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Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii
#102Not only is this an insanely cool project, the writeup is great. I was hooked the whole way through. I particularly love this part: > At this point, the system was trying to find a framebuffer driver so that the Mac OS X GUI could be shown. As indicated in the logs, WindowServer was not happy - to fix this, I’d need to write my own framebuffer driver . I'm surprised by how well abstracted MacOS is (was). The I/O Kit…
IOKit was actually built from the ground up for OS X! NeXT had a different driver model called DriverKit. I've never coded against either, but my understanding was they're pretty different beasts. (I could be wrong) That said, indeed, the abstraction layer here is delightful! I know that some NetBSD devs managed to get PPC Darwin running under a Mach/IOKit compatibility layer back in the day, up to running Xquartz on…
There’s a great video of a NeXT-era Steve Jobs keynote floating around—I think the one where he announces the x86 port as NeXT was transitioning to a software-only company—where he specifically calls out DriverKit and how great it is.
Steve was not a developer but he made it his business to care about what they cared about.
Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii
#103As someone who's been trying to do something VERY similar (port Mac OS 9 to the Nintendo Wii U), all I can say is I'm 1) absolutely impressed, and 2) absolutely encouraged, as my project keeps telling me "this is impossible" at every opportunity.
Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii
#104Nice project! Love seeing emulators & ports
Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii
#105If all the AI stories on this site were replaced with amazing stuff like this, the world would be a better place.
I’m SOO happy but also wistfully sad when I open a post like this that I am desperately excited to read and it’s not muddled-thinking- and LinkedInese-riddled slop.
Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii
#106Fun post. Always great when your debugging feedback is via a led xD
How about a piezoelectric buzzer? That's how the firmware on some iPods were first dumped.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050828114013/http://www.ipodli...
Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii
#107Before 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.
100% agree, I find that sometimes I hit a dead end, but the things I build or learn on the way are usable at a later date.
Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii
#108I bet if me-20-years-ago knew that current me would have no fucking clue how to even begin to tackle a problem like this, me-20-years-ago would be very disappointed. Very jealous of your expertise. Awesome work!
Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii
#109Before 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.
Love that it's actually linked as well; too bad that user isn't still active.
Re: I ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii
#110Before 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
Gotta love that particular Redditors follow up comment: >Go ahead and downvote me. I am correct on every single thing I said
The best part is the comment ranting about how the Wii's CPU is so fundamentally different, and then:
> The Wii uses a PowerPC 750CL processor - an evolution of the PowerPC 750CXe that was used in G3 iBooks and some G3 iMacs.
Hilarious.