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This is rad — great work! You think it could run A/UX?

Open geoff-nixon opened this issue 11 years ago • 3 comments

So I've been meaning forever to try to get an emulator up and running with A/UX, but kept putting it off; and now it looks like aux-penelope is shutting its doors in a couple of weeks. So I'm scrambling a bit. I was able to wget most of the site, but there are a bunch of weird errors with jagubox directory.

So anyway, my question. Before I just dive in head first here: how much of a "Mac Plus" is this? It seems like the "hardware" requirements might be too steep. And in my head I think of a Mac Plus as terribly slow compared to what was my first computer, an SE/30, though I'm not sure how accurate that impression is considering I was maybe five years old when I made it. (Damned Plus couldn't run my HyperCard stacks.)

So anyway, what's your assessment? Any suggestions?

geoff-nixon avatar Jan 31 '14 15:01 geoff-nixon

The emulated mac can be configured to run much faster and with more memory, but still only supports a 68000 processor, and also only a black and white screen. What are the system requirements for A/UX?Cheers, James

On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 11:53 PM, Geoff Nixon [email protected] wrote:

So I've been meaning forever to try to get an emulator up and running with A/UX, but kept putting it off; and now it looks like aux-penelope is shutting its doors in a couple of weeks. So I'm scrambling a bit... I was able to wget most of the site, but there are a bunch of weird errors with jagubox directory. So anyway, my question: before I just dive in head first here: how much of a "Mac Plus" is this? It seems like the "hardware" requirements might be too steep. And in my head I think of a Mac Plus as terribly slow compared to what was my first computer, an SE/30, though I'm not sure how accurate that impression is considering I was maybe five years old when I made it. (Damned Plus couldn't run my HyperCard stacks.)

So anyway, what's your assessment? Any suggestions?

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/jsdf/pce/issues/3

jsdf avatar Feb 02 '14 01:02 jsdf

Basically: a Mac II. I don't get the feeling that the handful of instructions changed with the 68010, nor even the additional ones added with the 68020 would be a barrier, since Apple's binary releases generally ran fine on all of these. But the UNIX layer makes heavy use of an (off-chip with Mac II, later integrated in the 68030/40) PMMU which came standard. Basically that would be the deal breaker, I think.

There's a somewhat cryptic reference on the wikipedia page, which says: "In theory it can be used with other processors such as the 68010 by simulating the coprocessor interface in software."

But I don't know what that would really entail. Do you? By chance are you familiar with any of this?

geoff-nixon avatar Feb 02 '14 05:02 geoff-nixon

FWIW i think i remember installing A/UX on a mac classic a long time ago... but it was like, over 20 years ago and i could be mis-remembering. But it was definitely an early Mac.

jywarren avatar May 03 '20 20:05 jywarren