E-Maculation

I have been thinking that since we can emulate Mac OS, we should be able to run it natively on an actual PC. There is OSX86, but why not do it for the classic Mac OS? We would probably have to convert the 68k code to C. I think this would be a cool project because it would be a classic Macintosh clone but for PC architecture. What would your opinion be about this? Any ideas of how we could convert the 68k code to C?

Oh dear.

Kokokills wrote:There is OSX86, but why not do it for the classic Mac OS?

Because the 68k CPU for which the classic Mac OS is written is completely and utterly different from an Intel CPU.

We would probably have to convert the 68k code to C. [...] Any ideas of how we could convert the 68k code to C?

This makes about as much sense as making an airplane by gluing lots of butterfly wings to a dolphin.

I think this would be a cool project because it would be a classic Macintosh clone but for PC architecture.

Except it wouldn't be able to run any applications, since all of the classic Mac OS applications would still require the 68k architecture. This is why we have emulation.

I don't know if you're old enough to remember the old "Star Trek project" from the very early 1990's... and while it's already been done, it was ultimately cancelled.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Star_Trek

yeah, just write an OS that does nothing but start an emulator (SheepShaver, Basilisk) :D

Or, write a bootloader that starts an emulator.

Basically,

BIOS/UEFI
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V
Bootloader
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Emulator/special hardware drivers
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Mac OS ROM
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System
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Finder
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V
Extensions
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Control Panels
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Desktop

By patching the rom enough, it is possible; just be unstable.

I did something like this a while back using existing solutions:

FreeDOS -> FUSION (68k Mac Emulator for DOS) -> Mac OS 8.1

The hardest part was giving it any kind of I/O. I don't believe FUSION listened for any inserted media like floppies or CDROMs. It didn't communicate with devices like modems, serial or parallel ports either. I think Sound worked since the sound card drivers were loaded with FreeDOS, and the video was more than adequate as-is.

Far from perfect, but I'd imagine this is similar to what you have in mind.

UbuntuXP wrote:By patching the rom enough, it is possible; just be unstable.

By the time you've "patched the ROM enough" you'd have written an entire new operating system.

iMic wrote:I did something like this a while back using existing solutions:

FreeDOS -> FUSION (68k Mac Emulator for DOS) -> Mac OS 8.1

You could probably get much more flexibility by making a minimal Linux installation capable of running Sheepshaver or Basilisk II, but there wouldn't be much point to it.

It would be cool to have MacOS run natively on a PC, but as has already been mentioned, there isn't really much point.

I wonder how much effort it would actually take to do this though? Probably quite a lot.

If memory serves, I once made a bootable floppy disk which would boot to DOS and load Fusion PC from the hard drive. I *think* it worked, but I can't remember.

Stephen Coates wrote: If memory serves, I once made a bootable floppy disk which would boot to DOS and load Fusion PC from the hard drive. I *think* it worked, but I can't remember.

Such an approach would be the most promising methinks, just replace "floppy disk" with "thumb drive".
Even more, a ≧ 4GB USB thing should hold the whole stuff, host OS, FusionPC and one or two MacOS images.
I forgot the little I knew about configuring DOS for USB, mouse, CD-ROM...

I´ll wait for proceedings in patience.
If needed, I might prepare bootable images for FusionPC in English, my volumes are German mostly.

Here's how I think this would work.

1. Make a bootable USB flash drive with FreeDOS installed.
2. Set it up for launching the mouse driver (such as ctmouse.com) and fusion in autoexec.bat.
3. Copy disk images and ROM you want to use.
4. Set up fusion.
5. Test on a computer with BIOS or in BIOS mode on UEFI.