Mac OS 7.1.1 Source Code

fanman93 · Post by **fanman93** » Tue Nov 16, 2010 10:14 pm

I noticed something interesting on the BetaArchive FTP: Source code (apparently complete) for Mac OS 7.1.1. Normally I leave these things alone, but I really couldn't help taking a look. After the download, I saw many directories in the archive. I decided to look in the "OS" one, since that's what I'm mainly interested in looking at. After having heard that the original System 0.x was developed on the Lisa with Pascal as the primary language, I expected to see a lot of pascal source. To my surprise, the were a lot of ".a" files, and only some files which stored C code. I knew that the C code relied on other code to function, but I had no idea what ".a" files were. I tried doing a search on Google, and it turns out the only programming language I can find that uses those file extensions is ADA. This, to me, is very surprising, because I never would have thought that they would use that compared to Pascal. After further reading, however, I found out that ADA was loosely based on Pascal. Is this so far-fetched? Or am I completely missing something here?

mathieudel · Post by **mathieudel** » Wed Nov 17, 2010 1:09 am

Maybe .a just stands for assembler... I would need to look at at least one file to be affirmative though...

fanman93 · Post by **fanman93** » Wed Nov 17, 2010 1:21 am

I'd really rather avoid distributing the source code. All I can say is, get a BetaArchive account.

Arbee · Post by **Arbee** » Sat Nov 20, 2010 5:23 am

The .a files are 680x0 assembly language. And yes, you really don't want to be distributing that stuff, even though Apple uses none of it since OS X 10.5 dropped Classic support.

Incidentally, in spite of the file names and everything, that source is for the Universal ROMs from a time shortly after the first PowerMacs shipped and not System/MacOS itself.

fanman93 · Post by **fanman93** » Sat Nov 20, 2010 12:35 pm

Interesting. Although, the files for the MMU (if they're labeled correctly, that is) could be useful for, say, Basilisk II and getting A/UX up and running.

Arbee · Post by **Arbee** » Mon Nov 22, 2010 7:46 pm

The problem with A/UX isn't a lack of a knowledge of the MMU (MESS 0.140 implements nearly all of the features of the 68030's MMU), it's that the 680x0 emulator itself needs to be able to interrupt instructions in the middle and restart them with no side effects. That's 1) difficult and 2) will result in a much slower emulation than you currently see.

Ambassador · Post by **Ambassador** » Fri Dec 24, 2010 9:24 pm

The problem with A/UX isn't a lack of a knowledge of the MMU (MESS 0.140 implements nearly all of the features of the 68030's MMU), it's that the 680x0 emulator itself needs to be able to interrupt instructions in the middle and restart them with no side effects. That's 1) difficult and 2) will result in a much slower emulation than you currently see.

Not to mention the emulated hardware has to be very specific and precise. I suppose one could make new A/UX drivers, but something tells me that would be quite an undertaking.