lproven

... Some people told me that everyone they knew still running classic Amigas had PiStorms in them. It is a cheap upgrade and it's apparently become ubiquitous.

As such, it's odd, but I don't know of fully-working versions for classic Atari ST or 68k Mac hardware.

There are 2 all-FOSS recreated ST OSes I know of now: AFROS, by the team behind ARANYM, and the formerly-commercial MagiX. It shouldn't be that much of an effort to make some bare-metal emulation that can run that on a Raspberry Pi.

Classic MacOS remains proprietary. Some of the comments in this thread hint at why -- that quite a bit of original Finder code at least made it into OS X. Pity. I'd hope that some day Apple might release whatever source it still has.

I'd love a community Copland to play with. :-D

Comment · 11 hours ago

Sadly, I gave the machine away when I moved out of the UK in 2014.

Comment · 15 hours ago

Palm at one point was talking to Symbian about licensing the Symbian kernel for the Arm PalmOS.

I wish that had happened... it might have saved both companies.

Comment · 15 hours ago

I have written about it multiple times, trying to spread awareness.

https://www.theregister.com/software/2022/06/21/risc-os-is-3...

Search the Reg for "riscos" and you'll find interview with the original core team, looks at the last couple of FOSS releases, the Moonshot effort to go 64-bit and more.

Comment · 15 hours ago

I know about the nanokernel, yes. Without following the links, Gary Davidian (is that spelled right?) did amazing work.

Very very little used it. About the only classic app I ever heard of that could even use pre-emption and background execution were some demanding Photoshop filters. Enough that Daystar Digital built multiprocessor Mac clones just for that alone:

https://lowendmac.com/1995/daystar-genesis-mp/

Within the MacOS kernel it is as coop as ever, and there were no different OSes inside virtual machines. No, Tenon MachTen does not count.

Comment · 15 hours ago

I tried it, about 20Y ago.

It does but not all that much.

I had a Classic II, so a very limited machine.

Not a "road apple" but a "compromised Mac":

https://lowendmac.com/1991/mac-classic-ii/

68030 on a 16-bit bus, max 10MB RAM, no expansion slots so nothing except SCSI.

So, I put 10MB in it, a bigger SCSI HDD, a SCSI Ethernet adaptor on the back, and built both OSes up from scratch.

MacOS 6.0.8 with all the extras: a menu bar clock, hierarchical Apple menu with modular Control Panel, MacTCP, etc.

And MacOS 7.6.1, which doesn't officially support the Classic II as it wants 12MB RAM minimum -- but I had RAMdoubler. OpenTalk, Netscape Navigator 3, Communicator 4, some early Internet Explorer, etc.

Honestly, there was little difference. It was usably quick on 7.6.1 and more stable. So many things that are extras on 6.0.8 are built in to 7.x that it doesn't need that much more disk or memory.

7.x did more, made it easier, and ran well.

But, as an example, on roughly 1MBs ADSL, it took about half an hour to render the top-left quarter of https://slashdot.org/.

Perfectly usable machine, could do email, FTP, Gopher, but forget it on the WWW on of the noughties (2000-2009).

Comment · 15 hours ago

The FOSS version is here:

https://www.riscosopen.org/content/

It runs on all Raspberry Pi models up to the 4, and runs really well. As of version 5.30 it supports the Wifi chip in the Pi so it can connect to WLANs.

The owners of the IP are RISC OS Developments Ltd (ROD) and they have an enhanced version -- free on the Pi -- called RISC OS Direct, with an IPv6 stack and a modern WebKit browser:

https://www.riscosdev.com/direct/

They also sell more capable hardware for it.

There is another fork of the OS that is still proprietary. That's owned by 3QD. They used to sell upgrades for real Acorn-compatible kit but there's none of that that isn't vintage now, so it focuses on a software emulation that runs on modern x86 machines:

http://www.virtualacorn.co.uk/index2.htm

Comment · 17 hours ago

That is amazing to read. I never knew. I thought it was Workspace Manager, adapted to feel more Mac-like. There is even a clear line of descent:

1. The Rhapsody developer previews, which are NeXTstep with a menu bar at the top and desktop icons, and a Platinum skin.

2. Mac OS X Server 1.x which has cascading finder windows, an icon view by default, and some other things much like that.

3. Mac OS X 10.0, which I used, or tried to use, as a daily driver, with a broadly Mac-like experience with an Apple menu, but with app names next to it containing global "about" and "quit" options, and so on.

It never did acquire any of the nice stuff that came in with System 7 (e.g. drag-and-drop customisable Apple menu stored in folders in the System Folder) or MacOS 8 (e.g. folder drawers that shrink to tabs).

Comment · 17 hours ago

The counterpoint is RISC OS for GNOME.

GNOME 3 was trying to built a clean modern minimalist desktop without all the clutter inherited from the design of Windows... But all they know is, very visibly, Windows and KDE.

RISC OS is that clean legacy free desktop. It's unlike anything else, built from scratch by a team not interested in what the rest of the world was doing.

And it's still alive and still updated and works well on modern hardware. Several separate efforts are building 64-bit replacements today.

Comment · 17 hours ago

You are getting your versions muddled up.

You are describing attributes of the NeXT-based OS X but calling it MacOS 9.

MacOS 9 was the final version of Classic. No preemption, weak virtual memory, weak cooperative multitasking, no virtual machines for anything.

MacOS 9 is the OS that ran inside the Blue Box on Mac OS X for backwards compatibility.

Comment · 17 hours ago

I fervently agree.

I wish that there was some edict from KDE Project management telling everyone working on the Plasma desktop to spend a week in Haiku or something.

The amount of indirect "open a dialog box, click 6 tabs down, then enter a value" stuff in KDE that is a single drag in Haiku drives me mad.

Comment · 17 hours ago

This is not quite correct as I understand it.

32-bit Haiku can run old Be apps, but must be built with ancient GCC.

64-bit Haiku is built with modern GCC but it is not binary compatible with old BeOS.

Comment · 1 day ago

Bought my first one 3 years ago. It's used occasionally -- I'm not a gamer at all but I have a little kid and she likes it.

Comment · 1 day ago

It took me a little hunting, so:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternating_caps

Found via:

https://wiki.c2.com/?CapitalizationRules