PCE.js Mac Plus Emulator Running Mac OS System 7 | Hacker News Reader

PCE.js Mac Plus Emulator Running Mac OS System 7

jamesfriend.com.au

124 pointsvmorgulis26 comments

Hi, I'm responsible for this. Most credit goes to the PCE emulator, on which this is based: http://www.hampa.ch/pce/

I wrote a blog post about the rationale behind this project: https://jamesfriend.com.au/why-port-emulators-browser

Also as a bonus, here's The Oregon Trail: https://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/mecc/oregon-trail.html

Thanks for putting this on the web - my first interaction with a computer was on an old mac plus. It was "broken" from my dad's work and I "fixed" it by taking it apart. It turns out the box was just overheating. I am curious if the original Kid Pix had a typo of Meun Bar, or if that is somehow an error in creating the emulator? http://i.imgur.com/FtNCQwL.gif

I bought a Macintosh SE recently at a thrift store that has KidPix on it. My housemates threw a party recently and I decided to leave it out on the table with KidPix open.

Around 10-15 people at a time crowded around and had loads of fun with it the entire night. It's amazing how something so primitive compared to what we have today made everyone's night that much more interesting.

To me it proves how little progress has been made in term of UI in the last 20 years.

The original developer of Kid Pix was my professor at University of Oregon, Craig Hickman. Brings back memories of using Kid Pix during my UofO days.

this is good. I forgot the old menus on the mac required a click and hold.. plus chooser (that odd thing that let you connect printers).

if only it had shuffle puck and strategic conquest

edit: This one has shuffle puck and some other programs, but not the version I remembered. https://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/pce-js-apps/

Shuffle puck!

The Dark Castle one took me right back to high school. Nostalgia++!

The UI of the Mac in the System 7 and (especially) before was a fantastically easy thing to pick up. Everything was explorable and discoverable, and the tech world has only seemed to regress since then in terms of interfaces. Now the general population's level of understanding regarding the grammar of UI is such that that level of simplicity might not be required, but the early Apple Human Interface Guidelines are still a good read.

Not immediately crashing on my Note 3 is a welcome suprise, although the interface is not responsive to the stylus.

Yeah, unfortunately I couldn't get touchmove events to work as the emulated CPU is blocked during the gesture. You can try tapping your stylus in different places to move the mouse, however.

Back in the days when I was a child firmly living in DOS/Windows 3.1 land, I was always wondering whether that rumor that you can brick a mac by just dragging the system folder into the trash was true or not.

Now I know that, yes, it was true.

Thank you for this piece of art. This was an amazing trip back memory lane.

I actually miss that interface -- it's just so simple, especially the finder. The biggest surprise is that you have to hold the mouse button down while selecting menu options (i.e., you can't just click the menu to open it, then click the item); feels so weird now!

As an old-skool Mac user, it never really occurs to me to lift my finger while the menu is open.

I've been using Linux for years so I've probably just forgotten. After I switched away from the emulator, going back to using the control button for copy/paste/etc. left me feeling disoriented briefly. Those old habits really come back quickly.

Major trip down memory lane!

We still had those in school (around 2003). I vividly remember playing shuffle puck and cannon fodder instead of doing what we were supposed to do.

edit: should have been one of the Macintosh Classics if memory serves right

Holding down option while I select "About this Macintosh" doesn't seem to work. Not sure if it's getting sent to the emulator properly (Key Caps also seems to act oddly).

Cool port!

Option is mapped to Control on a mac.

Option is alt.

https://9to5mac.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/applecompactkeyb...

On this emulator, option is mapped to ctrl.

I also noticed that square and curly braces aren't being sent through correctly (a disappointment on discovering an ancient version of BBEdit and trying to write a Hello World app).

Excellent, It's never too late for a happy childhood!

This is awesome. Major nostalgia trip for me as it was my first computer.

I wonder if we could run a browser inside this thing. Imagine: a browser in a system emulated in an Emscripten-based emulator running in a browser...

With System 7.1 you could run WannaBe (http://mindstory.com/wb2/) which I'd love to use again (I used it a lot in the dying days of OS 9 when any modern sites would kill a browser).

It'd also need MacTCP, but I'm not sure if that would work inside the emulator.

omg the nostalgia...we still had this in our classroom when I was in grade 7 in 2000...I used hypercard to make stick figure animations frame by frame that would shoot fireballs like in dragonball z and all the classmates would gather around to see it....

our school had a wide variety of Apple computers starting with the old green screen Apple II to this tiny black and white cute looking Mac OS....oh god those lunch recessses I spent just tinkering while it was raining outside feeling snug and comfortable drawing animations line by line

this was a nice trip down memory lane. and a reminder of steve job's early DNA shaping Apple's products...man I wish I could just pick one up for nostalgia

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