[HN Gopher] When Apple Built a Mac OS Running on Top of Solaris ...
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When Apple Built a Mac OS Running on Top of Solaris and HP-UX
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 165 points
Date : 2022-03-20 05:38 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lunduke.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lunduke.substack.com)
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Macintosh Application Environment was a Virtual Machine (VM)
| before VMs became popular.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| VMs were quite popular before this project, dating back to the
| 1960s.
| mnd999 wrote:
| Indeed, the previous poster might be interested in z/VM for
| example.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Windows used to run on top of DEC Alpha too
| karmakaze wrote:
| I worked at a spinoff company that actually had DEC Alphas for
| the purpose of running Win NT. We never actually did though,
| running our VMS versioned product on it instead. Later I
| canibalized about 3 or 4 machines in the office starting with a
| Digital PC with localbus graphics to get a hardware platform
| capable of running NeXTSTEP 3.3. Ran it for a few weeks and it
| was totally worth it. Got to see what Xcode would be like way
| in advance.
| mbreese wrote:
| But that wasn't in an emulator, right? I never used it, but I
| thought that was a separate build that ran on a DEC Alpha, not
| emulated on the primary Unix OS.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Correct; NT had builds for at least MIPS, Alpha, and x86.
|
| Edit: Here we go:
|
| > Windows NT 3.1 was released for Intel x86 PC compatible,
| PC-98, DEC Alpha, and ARC-compliant MIPS platforms. Windows
| NT 3.51 added support for the PowerPC processor in 1995,
| specifically PReP-compliant systems such as the IBM Power
| Series desktops/laptops and Motorola PowerStack series; but
| despite meetings between Michael Spindler and Bill Gates, not
| on the Power Macintosh as the PReP compliant Power Macintosh
| project failed to ship.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT#Supported_platfor.
| ..
| foobiekr wrote:
| And PowerPC.
| monocasa wrote:
| And i860, though that one was unreleased and just a
| development forcing function for portability.
| robk wrote:
| I spent a summer internship doing qa on the networking bits of
| nt on alpha at DEC. A bit sluggish but pretty smooth overall.
| rcarmo wrote:
| I've been seriously considering running BasiliskII on a Raspberry
| Pi again, if only for that wonderful sense of unfettered
| simplicity.
|
| Too bad most document formats have evolved beyond the versions of
| stuff I can run on it.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| That is very interesting.
|
| But long term, given it is apple and ignore the sever part (which
| it should go now but not then), these are bad mix.
|
| Still Steve did try to get linux as base (including talking with
| Linus) but even that is not right.
|
| It turned out the strange bsd-cum-message based os work fine.
| MBCook wrote:
| Do you have a source for the Linux part? I've never heard that
| before and would like to know more.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| The discussion with Linus is in the autograph coming out when
| he passed away.
| ksherlock wrote:
| In 1996 (prior to the NeXT reverse merger) Apple and OSF
| started working on MkLinux which was Linux+Mach for PowerPC.
| Apple dropped it a couple years later.
|
| The Walter Isaacson Steve Jobs biography doesn't have any
| mentions of Linux or Linus Torvalds FWIW.
| paxswill wrote:
| > There was a time when Apple has email mailing lists. Here is
| the MAE User list. And Apple published the archives for people to
| search. I tell ya. Was a different time at Apple.
|
| Apple still has a handful of mailing lists (they're mostly dead
| though): https://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo
|
| Unfortunately many of the archives are restricted to members.
| ylee wrote:
| My first year at Columbia, the university set up a single
| computer lab in the engineering building
| (<https://cuit.columbia.edu/computer-lab-
| technologies/location...>) with HP 9000 workstations. Although
| they booted into HP-UX and its Motif window manager, MAE provided
| Mac emulation and, in practice, was usually used because most
| students were unfamiliar with X Window, of course.
|
| MAE was slow and unstable, and by the time I graduated Macs, I
| believe, replaced them, which made the lab consistent with what
| most of the other computer labs had.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| > _Is it a virtual machine? Yes. Yes it is. Mostly._
|
| > _It is, essentially, a 68040 emulator with a Mac ROM and System
| 7.5.3 sitting on top of it._
|
| It sounds like they basically reused the same design that they
| used to build PowerPC Macs that could run (legacy) Motorola 68k
| applications.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_68k_emulator
|
| When you ran a legacy 68k app, the code of the app itself ran
| under CPU emulation. But they ported some of the system to
| PowerPC, and when the legacy app called into those particular
| parts of the system, that part of the code ran natively. Some
| lucky apps (with the right workload) ran surprisingly fast.
|
| Looking at the MAE architecture diagram, it looks very similar,
| with some of the Mac system sitting atop the 68k emulator but
| some of it sitting atop a layer that doesn't go through
| emulation.
| marcodiego wrote:
| > When you ran a legacy 68k app, the code of the app itself ran
| under CPU emulation. But they ported some of the system to
| PowerPC, and when the legacy app called into those particular
| parts of the system, that part of the code ran natively.
|
| Sounds like qemu-user.
| jchw wrote:
| I think qemu-user is a cleaner split due to the syscall
| interface being the barrier. IIRC, what Apple was doing was a
| bit more interesting because there _wasn't_ a clean boundary
| between what was emulated and what was native.
| marcodiego wrote:
| So it is like box86, which translates some API calls?
| jchw wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken, System 7 itself was not entirely
| ported to PowerPC. So the OS itself still needed m68k
| emulation for some components.
|
| But yes, box86 sounds a bit closer based on my
| understanding.
| compsciphd wrote:
| So a related story (or why I'm not sure Mac OS running on HP-UX)
| is that strange.
|
| I was interning at the Naval Research Lab in the mid 90s while in
| high school and was part of a team building what the called the
| "Secure Tactical Access Terminal". That ran both HP CMW
| (comparmentalized workstation) an MLS (multi level security)
| version of HPUX. A big problem on ships is that they have a
| severe lack of space, so having multiple systems running at
| multiple classification levels (i.e. command and control machines
| running JMCIS and normal "office" machines running windows),
| didn't work so well. so we leveraged the work on CMW machines and
| provided them with a soft windows (remember them) installation in
| each compartment that were isolated from one another. So what
| might have previously been 4 machines on a ship, could be
| consolidated into one.
|
| We had a test deployment on the USS Theodore Roosevelt (not many
| HS kids back then could claim that they had stuff they wrote
| running on an aircraft carrier, so that was cool) and the project
| was well received by command of the carrier, but soon after the
| Navy made their decision to transition to NT, and there are
| famous stories about that.
| karmakaze wrote:
| Great story. I recall SoftPC but not SoftWindows. The Wikipedia
| page has something interesting to say:
|
| > Unlike most emulators, the SoftWindows product used
| recompiled Windows components to improve performance in most
| business applications, providing almost native performance (but
| this meant that, unlike SoftPC, SoftWindows was not
| upgradable).
| racingmars wrote:
| Not too long ago, I got a SunPC Accelerator card (basically a 486
| PC on an SBus card) for my SPARCstation 20, and installed the
| Macintosh Application Environment, so I have Solaris, Mac System
| 7, and Windows 3.11 running on the SPARCstation 20!
|
| Screenshot of everything happily co-existing:
| https://i.imgur.com/ctvlzCX.gif
| azalemeth wrote:
| That sumo wrestler is quite something. I miss Easter Eggs in
| Apple's software -- there are a few in modern versions (e.g. "cat
| /usr/share/calendar/calendar.lotr") but I think that picture
| highlights their sense of humour back in "the day".
| perardi wrote:
| I think a lot of the old Easter eggs are soon to be lost in
| time, like tears in rain.
|
| But one I remember: Breakout.
|
| http://www.mackido.com/EasterEggs/Breakout.html
| logbiscuitswave wrote:
| To me it seems like it's pretty much peak mid-1990s tech
| advertising. Pick up any issue of WIRED from this time period
| and it's filled with advertisements with similar kinds of
| aggressively strange imagery. Things like this were definitely
| memorable - I certainly can never forget the infamous Logitech
| ad with the peeing baby. I wouldn't be surprised if much of
| this style of imagery all came from the same ad firm.
| fouc wrote:
| I think it's more about the fact it was such a new market,
| people could have a lot more fun with it and "mass appeal"
| didn't matter nearly as much. It was still fringe, not
| everyone had a computer at home or in their pocket yet.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| That's quite interesting. I had a mac at home and at the
| university we worked on Solaris machines (laughing at the 3 guys
| sitting in the Windows room); I always thought 'with a bit of
| polish on Solaris or a LOT of improved stability on Mac OS,
| computing is damn near perfect'.
| bgm1975 wrote:
| It almost happened. If I'm not mistaken, Sun was on Apple's
| list of possible acquisitions in the late 90s before they
| decided on Next (Be being the other). Considering Jobs came
| with Next, Apple would have turned into a very different
| company. If fact, I suspect the whole tech landscape would
| probably look a lot different today had Apple bought Sun
| Microsystems.
| perardi wrote:
| Nah, _Sun_ was heavily rumored to be buying Apple. And
| perhaps not so much as "rumored" as "they couldn't make a
| final deal".
|
| https://www.cultofmac.com/463947/today-in-apple-history-
| sun-...
|
| I've been a Mac owner since 1994+, and I followed all this
| soap opera back then. I remember the infamous PRAY cover.
|
| https://www.wired.com/1997/06/apple-3/
|
| _+I am 38, and I feel like an old man these days, you kids
| with your "multitasking" and your "APIs that make sense"_
| Maursault wrote:
| This is not accurate. Sun was never in danger of _being
| acquiring_ by Apple, instead they nearly merged before NeXT
| was acquired, then Sun and Apple nearly merged again in the
| naughts (but I honestly don 't believe Jobs was serious about
| it). But in 1996, Sun nearly _bought_ Apple.
| bgm1975 wrote:
| Ah, thanks for the clarification, clearly my memory of the
| events is fuzzy.
| flembat wrote:
| Nightmare, they might have ended up owned by ORACLE..
| lundukethrow wrote:
| so i used to read lunduke's twitter. his current twitter is
| literally the antithesis of his previous twitter. i have no idea
| what to think about this.
| jasoneckert wrote:
| The 1990s had a lot of weird stuff like this - platforms,
| operating systems and software were exploding, and nobody really
| knew what the end result would be so they focused on ensuring
| they had a hand in everything.
|
| Running Mac OS and Mac OS apps using MAE on Unix workstations was
| one example. But there were others too - some I remember are NeXT
| on Solaris with OpenStep, Mac LC systems that had a DOS
| compatibility card (486 CPU) to run DOS/Windows apps, and Unix
| SysV running in Mac OS using A/UX.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The LC 68030 series had an Apple // emulation card. I had one.
| Later they had the "Houdini" "DOS Compatibility Card" for
| 68040s and the PowerMac 6100 series. I had one of those two.
| AntiRush wrote:
| The System 7 that runs on A/UX is actually a unix process
| running on top of the A/UX kernel (which exposes the necessary
| Macintosh Toolbox features to run the specific version of
| System 7).
| pjmlp wrote:
| NeXT on Solaris with OpenStep was the genesis of how Java would
| be born and some Objective-C based projects at Sun were later
| ported into Java.
|
| Sometimes I wonder how it would have turned out if Solaris had
| embraced Objective-C instead.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > and Unix SysV running in Mac OS using A/UX.
|
| Likewise, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MachTen
| masswerk wrote:
| MachTen was actually amazing, especially the fast boot time.
|
| (There was also WebTen, which was essentially Apache, Perl
| and probably MaySQL running on a basic kernel, without a
| window manager, but with MacOS ineropability and files system
| sharing.)
| dekhn wrote:
| Interix: an entire replacement posix subsystem for Windows NT,
| which included gcc, opengl, and motif. I ported a million line
| UNIX molecular modelling app to NT in 2000.
| awiesenhofer wrote:
| Oh wow, I need to check if my old HP-UX pizzabox (HP 712) still
| boots. I'd love to try this if I can track down the files
| somewhere.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| I used MAE on HP/UX for many years. Worked great. We were
| workstation based designers and couldn't stand Windows so this
| allowed us to stay on the workstation and still have access to
| corporate tools like Office. Had mh wired to pop up the
| appropriate Office app from MAE when those email attachments
| arrived.
| trasz wrote:
| Those are fantastic machines to run NextSTEP, btw.
| ece wrote:
| I have a SPARCstation this might run on as well.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| I have a slew of sparcstations so that would indeed be cool
| if it works. They run Linux though; need to find an old
| Solaris copy then too I guess.
| ece wrote:
| archive.org seems to have it:
| https://archive.org/details/Solaris2.5.1SPARC11972586714
|
| I got one in college, and it was dated even when I got it.
| I'll need to go back to my parents basement to try and fire
| it up again, the VGA adapter and and old install of Solaris
| is about all I can remember.
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