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Who needs a MiSTer?
Earlier in this thread 8 posts
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😄
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When I first got my original Raspberry Pi, I wondered why nobody ever made a bare-metal m68k emulator so it could boot directly into Macintosh. It's still not something I've seen anybody do, over a decade later.
So I set Codex some homework; no dependencies, no referencing existing code (but it is allowed peek at the annotated Mac ROM disassemblies that are out there). It set up a working cross compilation environment that can build for qemu and real hardware, and is making progress
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If this goes anywhere, I want to hook it up to an LCD panel in a 3D-printed enclosure. What I'd like to see is some form of device passthrough, to let it read from real floppy drives, use real ADB keyboard/mouse (I do have a USB dongle). I just think it would be neat to have a kernel you can just load onto any Raspberry Pi to get a retro Macintosh
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Well how about that, we've (almost) booted to desktop
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And booted to desktop on real hardware (Raspberry Pi 1 Model B) 😎
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Verified that the kernel boots on a Pi Zero, and that it can boot from multiple different contemporary boot disks. The next big task will be to give it some kind of keyboard and mouse support. The mere fact that I can boot a $5 Pi Zero to the Macintosh desktop — with no Linux or 'OS' — tickles me
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Keyboard and mouse via uart, I can finally click around the OS now
Conversation (19)
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Steve Troughton-Smith
@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social · Jun 26
Mouse and keyboard now hooked up to USB input in qemu 👌
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Steve Troughton-Smith
@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social · Jun 26
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Misc screenshots from this Raspberry Pi Macintosh kernel, which now runs at 1X speed at 60fps (in qemu, not on real hardware yet) and supports qemu's usb sound device (as well as keyboard and mouse), and running multiple different versions of the Macintosh System
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Steve Troughton-Smith
@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social · Jun 26
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Macintosh Guided Tour, qemu-system-arm
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Steve Troughton-Smith
@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social · Jun 26
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For decades I, like all of you, have used many a Mac emulator that will error out in weird situations with unimplemented traps or the like, and have no recourse. 'Oh that just doesn't work in ', etc. So it's pretty refreshing, while working on this one, to be able to ask Codex to add all the debug information I need to actually dig in and *fix* these things. And it will happily disassemble the apps triggering the crash to validate the fix against the assembly code
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Steve Troughton-Smith
@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social · Jun 26
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Case in point: Mini vMac halts with a system error during this Macintosh Guided Tour disk. My emulator fixes the underlying SysError, so I can continue into the rest of the tour. If I only had vMac to work with, I would be none the wiser
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Steve Troughton-Smith
@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social · Jun 26
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I might never have seen this 'Amazing' game. Or the 'Training' menu in Finder 👀
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Steve Troughton-Smith
@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social · Jun 26
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…or this penguin!
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Steve Troughton-Smith
@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social · Jun 26
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This emulator work has also highlighted that the archives of the original Macintosh system disks on the internet aren't pristine, and not everything functions out of the box like it should ☹️
To be expected, of course, but it's a shame there are no 'original' copies preserved
Backup Disk 690-5023-A
Guided Tour 690-5002-C
System Disk 690-5003-C
Write/Paint Tour 690-5006-C
https://www.macintoshrepository.org/1762-mac-system-1-x
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Steve Troughton-Smith
@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social · Jun 27
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Internal and External floppy support & MacPaint
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Steve Troughton-Smith
@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social · Jun 27
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This demanded a custom build of Lights Off for m68k that runs on the original Mac 128K System 1.0 😄
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Steve Troughton-Smith
@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social · Jun 27
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If I knew how to re-cap my boots-to-checkerboard Mac Classic, I probably wouldn't have dreamed about making a Raspberry Pi Mac for the past decade 👀
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Steve Troughton-Smith
@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social · Jun 27
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The internet doesn't really keep a list of software that ran on the original 128K Mac, and I'd kinda like to know what to test my emulator against. Beyond MacWrite and MacPaint, did this model Mac actually have any compatible apps?
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Steve Troughton-Smith
@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social · Jun 27
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Aside: I think I might have fried a Raspberry Pi 4 via the GPIO pins trying to set one up 🥲 I have this beautiful little 3D-printed Kevin Noki case that would have been absolutely perfect for my mini Mac, but I didn't have the pinout instructions and decided to wing it.
Also now Raspberry Pis cost a whole heck of a lot more than they used to
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Steve Troughton-Smith
@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social · Jun 27
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It takes a billion tokens to build a Mac
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Steve Troughton-Smith
@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social · Jun 27
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The original Macintosh is /barely/ a computer; it's a ROM-based UI framework on stilts. You can boot to the startup screen Happy Mac just by feeding the bytes of the ROM to an m68000 one by one. It does almost nothing out of the box
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Steve Troughton-Smith
@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social · Jun 27
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SmoothTalker
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Steve Troughton-Smith
@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social · Jun 27
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USB is 'easy' in qemu — Codex had no problem whatsoever adding working keyboard, mouse, and audio devices — but trying to bring up real physical USB devices on an actual Raspberry Pi is a nightmare. It was a nightmare back when I was writing my own Pi kernels by hand a decade ago, but it's still a nightmare today
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🏳️🌈Donnie🏳️⚧️
@macbraughton@infosec.exchange · Jun 28
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@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social I’ve learned to love qemu over the last year. Haven’t had any issues getting it to do what I need.
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Christian Kent 𝘊𝘒 :＼﹥
@whophd@ioc.exchange · Jun 28
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@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social THAT is my jam