[HN Gopher] A virtual Apple Macintosh with System 8, running in ...
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A virtual Apple Macintosh with System 8, running in Electron
Author : graderjs
Score : 145 points
Date : 2021-04-28 10:21 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| danieldrehmer wrote:
| Well, he did say he was sorry
| dasKrokodil wrote:
| With the amount of distraction this provides, it should really
| have a NSFW warning :)
| domano wrote:
| Why do so many people complain it is not native? The author even
| said himself that it should be native. Clearly this is just
| something he did for fun - why would anyone get upset about it?
| xrd wrote:
| Pro tip: If you are upset about paying for your Adobe Creative
| subscription, you can run this electron app and then open Adobe
| 3.0.5, from 1993. Totally free.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Pro Pro tip:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20150325211532/https://helpx.ado...
|
| (click the checkbox)
| wazoox wrote:
| Gives an error 302, then an "Adobe signup" form. What were we
| supposed to see?
| dmitrygr wrote:
| you need to press ESC to avoid the redirect. Sorry. Looks
| like this: https://imgur.com/a/ibNSrcl
|
| You'll see direct downloads of CS2 and keys for it, direct
| from adobe themselves. A while ago they got too lazy to
| keep running the activation servers, so they posted non-
| activation-requiring downloads and keys to all the
| products.
| [deleted]
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Sure, "running in Javascript", because electron is just a
| browser, so there's nothing to prevent this from running in any
| other browser with modern JS support?
| mambodog wrote:
| It does: https://jamesfriend.com.au/projects/basiliskii
| dmitrybrant wrote:
| I'm not sure why this keeps appearing on HN, but I hope it's some
| kind of postmodern critique of everything that's wrong with our
| field.
|
| This is taking Basilisk II (which is already a native app that
| runs on all major platforms!) and recompiling it into javascript,
| so that it can be run less efficiently and more bloatedly in
| Electron. Can we please stop doing this to ourselves?
| tl wrote:
| I played with both this and Basilisk II when it hit HN about 9
| months ago. Basilis kII is harder to setup, mostly driven by
| fears of hosting Mac roms leading to incomplete instructions
| and shady download sites. And Mini vMac (like Basilisk II but
| for older Macs) was also far easier to get up and running.
|
| Macintosh.js is one download and ships with a handful of
| interesting productivity tools and games. Why Basilisk II
| cannot do the same (one is as legal as the other) is an open
| question.
| bombcar wrote:
| Clearly Macintosh.js doesn't care, and if Apple whips them
| with a DMCA they'll just go away (it's a toy project).
| dylan604 wrote:
| What would be the point of the DMCA though? I understand it
| is Apple, and their infinitely funded lawyers need
| something to do. However, this is an old and dead OS that
| generates $0 income for them. If this was a method to use
| modern/current release of the OS without buy Apple
| hardware, then I could understand the lawyers.
| ben_w wrote:
| Don't underestimate the power of left hands not knowing
| what the right hand is up to.
|
| A previous employer was once sent a C&D by the lawyers of
| a well-known British corporation, demanding that my
| employer stop distributing a certain app, apparently
| oblivious that said corporation had paid my employer to
| make and distribute that app on their behalf in the first
| place.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| So, the apparent improvement here is that they just don't
| care about hosting and distributing Mac roms openly.
| slacka wrote:
| > fears of hosting Mac roms leading to incomplete
| instructions and shady download sites
|
| I'm a bit of an emulator hobbyist and have played with the
| native version of Basilisk II. If you weren't an outsider and
| part of the communities on reddit/discord you'd know the
| torrents trackers to use (public and private). Sure, there
| are shady sites, but that's not the emulators fault. And the
| fix is definitely _not_ killing the good performance of a
| native emu by transpiling it to JS. Improved documentation
| could help send new users down a better path.
| rvanlaar wrote:
| I wish the community made it easier to find this
| information. Which reddit and discord should I sub to?
| anthk wrote:
| This is HN. If you can't get LCIIsI and/or Quadra 650 ROMs
| right, then this page should change its name.
|
| Back in the late 90's/early 00's we had it more difficult to
| finish a lot of emulation tasks because you couldn't get
| these with ease.
|
| Now you can set System 7.5.3 with ease and legally except the
| ROM.
|
| I think the Gen-Z generation it's pretty much spoiled and
| this should be changed.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Technically, Basilisk doesn't run natively on M1 macs, but
| seems to be running fine with Rosetta intel emulation :)
| bombcar wrote:
| It should be possible to run a PowerPC emulator
| (Sheepshaver?) on M1 using x86 Rosetta, and in that emulator
| run original Mac programs and get 4 layers of emulation.
| dunnevens wrote:
| It's been some years since I played with it, but I think
| vMac worked on PPCs? If so, then you could run vMac inside
| of Sheepshaver and get 5. If the early version of Virtual
| PC works in vMac, then you could get 6.
|
| If someone knows of an emulator that would run under early
| 90's DOS, then you could get to 7.
| yesimahuman wrote:
| Something can be fun and ridiculous without it being some kind
| of critique on our field.
|
| Last time I used Basilisk II to set up a Mac 8 VM there was
| considerably more work involved to get it working. With this
| I'm deep in nostalgia in just a few clicks.
|
| This is purely awesome.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| On a side note, I wonder if this could run on iPads, since it's
| just JavaScript. If I could run Photoshop 4 decently, it
| suddenly becomes interesting.
| bombcar wrote:
| I believe you can load vMac but you need a developer account:
| https://namedfork.net/minivmac/
|
| The "browser emulators" might be able to be made to work with
| iPad Safari.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Yeah, I was thinking on a web site. Avoid the whole App
| Store thing. But Mini vMac looks cool too.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| A project like this is purely for fun anyway. Maybe the author
| thought an Electron version would be a fun side project?
|
| Edit: interestingly, it looks like he also has a Windows95
| emulator in Electron.
|
| https://github.com/felixrieseberg/windows95
| dmitrybrant wrote:
| That's even more bizarre, since that uses the "v86" emulator,
| which can literally run in a browser tab with one click:
|
| https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows95
| Forge36 wrote:
| >Should I use this for [serious application]? >Probably not.
| This is a toy - it's not the best nor the most performant way
| to emulate an old Macintosh. It is, however, a quick and easy
| way to experience a bit of nostalgia if you're not trying to do
| anything serious with it.
|
| This accomplishes it's goal and an interesting/unique way to
| learn about many different technologies and how they can link
| together. That it brought someone joy is not a good reason to
| deride our field.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| I really wonder: why wrap it in Electron, instead of simply
| hosting the emulator as a regular webpage on one of the free
| hosting services?
|
| The "hard part" of making it run in a browser engine is already
| done. WASM is supported across all browsers with good
| performance. There is absolutely no advantage of running it in
| Electron, and it's harder for the user to install (since
| Windows SmartScreen will most likely block the installation,
| and the macOS version is distributed as a zip file.
| chacha2 wrote:
| Copyright and hosting presumably. Lot easier to throw an exe
| on GitHub.
| qeternity wrote:
| How? Throw it on GitHub Pages.
|
| Same DMCA implications.
| coldnose wrote:
| Hear hear
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Back in the late 90s and early 00s we used to do things like
| running Bochs[0] instances inside of OSs running on Bochs
| instances recursively.
|
| Back then we thought it was funny, but these days that just
| seems to be how software works.
|
| [0] Hey guys, remember Bochs? https://bochs.sourceforge.io/
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| Bochs was the go-to emulation platform when I tinkered with
| OS dev in the 00s.
| anthk wrote:
| Bochs is the best option to setup Windows 98 before loading
| the final image under Qemu.
| tomxor wrote:
| What would have been more interesting is compiling basillisk2
| or minivmac to WASM and seeing how well it performs compared to
| native (I think this may have already been done with the
| later). That might actually result a good convenience
| performance trade-off allowing for some interesting use cases:
| e.g popping a quadra emulator with a specific disk image into
| an arbitrary web page as an interactive figure in an article
| commenting on some part of personal computing history.
|
| But transpiling it to JS and then wrapping in electron... just
| seems like some weird masochistic exercise in how to make
| things worse for no benefit.
|
| then again:
|
| > Should this have been a native app? Absolutely.
|
| Maybe the author was fully aware of that, but this makes me
| wonder what their motivations were.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| > Maybe the author was fully aware of that, but this makes me
| wonder what their motivations were.
|
| Shits and giggles, possibly. There's something deliciously
| ironic and outright hilarious when totally mismatched
| platforms from different time periods are mashed together
| like this, and it still works somehow.
| userbinator wrote:
| Adding more abstraction just for the sake of it is definitely
| somewhat trendy these days, although it's been like that in the
| industry for a long time; only the extremes the web stuff goes
| to is a relatively recent phenomenon.
|
| The hardware manufacturers probably like this "artificial
| inflation of requirements"...
| jackcviers3 wrote:
| Maybe we should make electron more efficient?
| lpcvoid wrote:
| Or maybe we should blast it into the sun.
|
| On a more serious note - something went terribly wrong if we
| consider it a good idea to keep wrapping (slow) abstractions
| and wrappers around things which work perfectly fine.
| alfonsodev wrote:
| Lately I've been seeing an interest in revisiting Hypercads from
| the classic Mac OS, I wonder if it could be run here, I'm curious
| about using it myself.
| outofpaper wrote:
| If you are interested in Hypercard you should checkout the
| Internet Archive's collection of Hypercard Stacks:https://archi
| ve.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22hypercard_...
|
| They all run in browser thanks to pce-js.
| amelius wrote:
| Does this allow me to finally test my websites in Safari?
| schmorptron wrote:
| Haven't tried it myself and don't know anything about the
| details, but the sosumi snap package looks like it's a VM that
| could do the job? https://snapcraft.io/sosumi Edit: Added the
| link
| aaronharnly wrote:
| No, but you could test your website in Cyberdog, the very near
| but doomed OpenDoc-based browser!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberdog
| scroot wrote:
| The old girl was put down too young...
| pjerem wrote:
| Cyberdog. I never heard about this. I quite like the name.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| Thanks!
| spatulon wrote:
| Safari was never released for the classic Mac OS - it was
| released in 2003, two years after Mac OS X was introduced.
| Before that, folks mostly used Internet Explorer for Mac.
| kps wrote:
| iCab is better.
| wsc981 wrote:
| _> Does this allow me to finally test my websites in Safari?_
|
| Nope ... but you might be able to using QEMU (I'm gonna assume
| you use Windows) [0].
|
| ---
|
| [0]: https://dev.to/nicole/running-macos-on-windows-10-with-
| wsl2-...
| moistbar wrote:
| This is so, so many extra layers of abstraction that don't
| need to exist. Just use Hyper-V directly, or better yet use
| VMWare.
| shawnz wrote:
| I have had good success with this:
| https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-virtualbox
| Lammy wrote:
| Please forgive yet another nitpick since this thread is kinda
| negative, but "System 8" is probably what Copland would have been
| named had it been released. The OS we got was "Mac OS 8", and in
| fact the name had already changed with Mac OS 7.6. Supposedly
| this was one of the things used to kill off the Mac clone program
| since the cloners licensed "System 7" but not "Mac OS", but I
| don't know how true that actually is.
| wila wrote:
| Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23981583
| neogodless wrote:
| Tried this on Windows 10 and immediately fired up the
| Civilization II demo... it mostly worked well until I built a
| unit and tried to move. It would take about 30 seconds for the
| unit to move... and I couldn't interact with anything else
| (within the emulator) for that time. Sometimes the unit would
| move correctly, but most of the time it crawled. Odd! But neat
| for the few minutes I played with it before that bug led me to
| just Quit the whole emulator.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Same. It's a shame, as it would have been fun to waste an hour
| on the Civ2 demo. But on the other hand, now I didn't waste an
| hour.
| neogodless wrote:
| I'm just really worried that to scratch the itch, I'll fire
| up Civ5 or Civ6...
| w0mbat wrote:
| It's misleading that the docs cite 1991 but Mac OS 8.0 actually
| came out in 1997. I suppose they are talking about the
| manufacture date of the emulated hardware, not the OS.
| mamp wrote:
| I'd really like to run FullWrite again! So sick of Word
| andrewfromx wrote:
| well done! everything was perfect except the games folder is
| missing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Castle (and risk)
| mambodog wrote:
| I did the browser port of BasiliskII which this wraps
| (https://jamesfriend.com.au/projects/basiliskii) as well as the
| port of PCE (another Macintosh emulator) used on archive.org.
|
| I see a lot of people asking why someone would distribute an
| Electron-wrapped version of a program you could run natively, and
| I see it as an extension of the the same reason why I ported
| these emulators to the browser in the first place: accessibility.
| While you can install BasiliskII natively, it's a bit of a pain,
| especially if you are not super technical. If you find a binary
| floating around online it may not work for your OS version.
| Wrapping it in Electron is one way to ameliorate the OS
| compatibility issue; Chromium has been battle-tested across many
| OS versions. Ideally BasiliskII would have a better OS
| compatibility story (as well as being more portably distributable
| with data files) but, like many open source projects, it doesn't
| have a lot of maintainer-time to make this happen.
| brundolf wrote:
| Maybe one day more things will have been written in modern
| languages that treat cross-platform builds as a first-class
| concern (Rust, Go, etc.), and this kind of "boxing" won't be as
| necessary. Until then, I think your approach is very sensible
| for getting something fun into as many people's hands as
| possible :)
| gilgoomesh wrote:
| Basilisk is written in C++ (a portable language) and it's a
| cross platform project.
|
| This JS boxing is mostly for this type of "hey look, it runs
| on the web" demo. Slower, but clickbait.
| splatcollision wrote:
| Pathways into darkness demo is broken, please fix :)
| mod50ack wrote:
| Frankly, I don't find these sorts of things to be very
| interesting anymore. When Fabrice Bellard first released a usable
| PC emulator in JavaScript something like a decade ago, that was
| really interesting (and I had fun running Linux in Safari on an
| iPod touch!). But at this point, this is just "here's an
| emulator, which I compiled with emscripten (already ported, by
| the way), and which I've thrown into the automatic Chrome tab to
| 'app' maker".
| tyingq wrote:
| Looking at the commit history and closed issues there was some
| actual work involved here to make it a nice plug/play
| experience for the end user. So, yes, the core functionality is
| done for the author, but there was some effort involved.
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