> At this point, the system was trying to find a framebuffer driver so that the Mac OS X GUI could be shown. As indicated in the logs, WindowServer was not happy - to fix this, I’d need to write my own framebuffer driver.
I'm surprised by how well abstracted MacOS is (was). The I/O Kit abstraction layers seemed to actually do what they said. A little kudos to the NeXT developers for that.
With that said, I haven't developed drivers for any other platforms, so I really can't say if the abstraction is good compared to what's used by modern systems.
That said, indeed, the abstraction layer here is delightful! I know that some NetBSD devs managed to get PPC Darwin running under a Mach/IOKit compatibility layer back in the day, up to running Xquartz on NetBSD! With NetBSD translating IOKit calls. :-)
Steve was not a developer but he made it his business to care about what they cared about.
But that's a hazy, 20 year old memory.
I had been under the impression that DriverKit drivers were quite a different beast, but they're really not. Here's the layout of a NS ".config" bundle:
./CG6FrameBuffer.config/English.lproj
./CG6FrameBuffer.config/English.lproj/Info.rtf
./CG6FrameBuffer.config/English.lproj/Localizable.strings
./CG6FrameBuffer.config/CG6FrameBuffer_reloc
./CG6FrameBuffer.config/Default.table
./CG6FrameBuffer.config/Display.modes
./CG6FrameBuffer.config/CG6FrameBuffer
Now, on OS X:
./AirPortAtheros40.kext/Contents
./AirPortAtheros40.kext/Contents/_CodeSignature
./AirPortAtheros40.kext/Contents/_CodeSignature/CodeResources
./AirPortAtheros40.kext/Contents/MacOS
./AirPortAtheros40.kext/Contents/MacOS/AirPortAtheros40
./AirPortAtheros40.kext/Contents/Info.plist
./AirPortAtheros40.kext/Contents/version.plist
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10006411
"At some stage in the future we may be able to move IOKit over to a good programming language"
Remember: there was a short window of time where everyone thought Java was the future and Java support was featured heavily in some of the early OS X announcements.
Also DriverKit's Objective-C model was not the same as userspace. As I recall the compiler resolved all message sends at compile time. It was much less dynamic.
Usually the difference between something being well-abstracted vs poorly-abstracted is how well it's explained.
I'm not an LLM post hater, but it definitely has been a bit draining lately. This is exactly what I love to see here.
Although if it were me I'd probably annoy the heck out of him asking why he had a Wii on the airplane!
Can’t wait for his sequel “I received a Cease and Desist Letter from Apple; Feeling encouraged, I registered the trademark ‘Wii subsystem for macOS’”.
I don't think that's a healthy way to look at it - dude was just getting some work done, but maybe I'm a broken human being who's churned out more code than I would ever admit while sitting in 32C on a cross-country flight.
TIL Wii has only 88MB of RAM. Fortunately games weren't electron-based.
We truly had to get away with less back then. These days it feels like there is a bit more headroom where 8 GB is on the downtrend, 16 GB is becoming the most common, and the user's apps are enjoying the extra fat.
But man, this is way ahead of what I could do. What this dude accomplished blew my mind. Not only the output (running MacOS on a Wii), but the detailed post itself. A-MA-ZING.
YUV appears to be a PAL-specific color space. I wonder how off an NTSC Wii would be. Presumably it would have the wrong color space until an equivalent conversion scheme was devised for NTSC.
I was surprised to see regional color spaces leak into the project, but I presume that Nintendo's iOS (the coincidentally-named system this is replacing) could handle that abstraction for game developers.
A side note: you embedded .mov videos inside <img> tags. This is not compatible with all browsers (notably Chrome and Firefox), which won't load the videos.
[ ](image_url.png)
(Of course, I can also right-click and do "Open image in new tab", but that's one click extra...)
Congrats on the awesome project, BTW! You were lucky that I wasn't sitting next to you on the plane. I would have wasted so much of your time asking dumb questions.
If you like this story, you might also like the story of how Mac OS X was ported to Intel as well.
Now that the MacBook Neo has an A18, I wonder if you could get MacOS running on an iPhone? :)
Honestly, I would have said the same. Great work!
Yes, I know about Ardi Executor being libre and enhanced now, but that's not the point.
I'd love to spawn MiniVMAC with a free system ROM replacement and a free Mac OS 7 reimplementation.
EDIT: also, I just noticed on a second pass the system is addressing 78mb of ram, potentially meaning the ram spans the gddr3 and sram, I'm amazed this works as well as it does with seemingly heterogeneous memory
Surely, it must be a better option than Linux if you want to get the most out of a PC computer? At least for 10 more years.
I'm not sure why it would. Why would anyone want to hack on different proprietary software with no supplier support and whose days are clearly numbered (Apple's move to ARM)?
For usability I mean. It's clearly an interesting technical feat.
So to have a fully fledged and more usable computer, for those who don't want to purchase the Apple hardware.
And the latest Mac OS still supports Intel, so you'll get many more years out of a machine. For what I know, the last 10 versions of MacOS are still very usable.
https://github.com/Wack0/entii-for-workcubes
See also: https://gbatemp.net/threads/windows-nt-ported-to-wii.667959/
Always great when your debugging feedback is via a led xD
https://web.archive.org/web/20050828114013/http://www.ipodli...
Not to distract too much from the main topic, but what do you think about the Hopper disassembler? I have only used Radare2, IDA Pro, and Ghidra. Though, I haven't used the latter two on MacOS. What do you prefer about Hopper? I have been hesitant to purchase a license because I was never sure if it was worth the money compared to the alternatives.
I like using it for disassembling UIKit (for my day job working on iOS apps), and overall, I like the UI/UX and how it feels like a native Mac app.
I've tried Ghidra, and while extremely impressive and capable, it might be the most Java-feeling app I've ever used. I'd love for someone to whip up an AppKit + SwiftUI shell for it.
You are correct about the UI/UX. I do think Hopper is ahead of others in that regard. Though, Radare2 being a CLI tool is nice as well. Though, I haven't attempted to use Radare2 for MacOS/iOS disassembly. Though I must ask, why are you disassembling UIKit? Looking for private API behavior or working around bugs? I've been learning more about iOS in my spare time, because despite my love for Swift, I have never used it for iOS. I only have used Swift for MacOS automation, i.e., AppleScript replacement via the Accessibility, Core Foundation, AppKit, etc..
> Ghidra, and while extremely impressive and capable, it might be the most Java-feeling app
I chuckled while reading this because I had the exact same thought when I first used Ghidra. I haven't tried Ghidra on MacOS because I will not taint my machines with the impurities of Java. I also do not want to enable Rosetta, so that was another obstacle in trying Ghidra on MacOS. In Ghidra's defense, using Java was a pragmatic choice. The "write once, run anywhere" promise of Java is likely a near-necessity for a disassembler for government operations.
EDIT: Oh interesting, the final paragraph says NT has been ported, didn't know that. Sadly, no pun is mentioned in that project.
This is exceptional work. Unlike the low-effort slop posts I see here on "Show HN".
The build-in-public era of hacking has really turned this field into an influencer economy.
Similarly, "zero mention of AI" is just a surface-level observation that says nothing about how the project was completed and everything about your own insecurities defining the word hacker.
My favorite was “it’s impossible to know which DB is failing from a stack trace”. I created STAIN (stack traces and instance names): a ruby library that would wrap an object in a viral proxy (all returns from all methods are themselves proxies) that would intercept all exceptions and annotate the call stack with the “stain”ed tag.
They've also been useful more than once, e.g. you can do that to know what iteration of a loop failed. There are of course other ways to do this, but it's hard to beat "stupid, simple, and works everywhere" when normal options (e.g. logs) stop working.
Impressive work! Now run Dolphin on it. ;)
> - Everything is magenta.
was fun too
My favorite part of our online world.
>Go ahead and downvote me. I am correct on every single thing I said
> The Wii uses a PowerPC 750CL processor - an evolution of the PowerPC 750CXe that was used in G3 iBooks and some G3 iMacs.
Hilarious.