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Comment by jasoneckert | Hacker News Reader

The 1990s had a lot of weird stuff like this - platforms, operating systems and software were exploding, and nobody really knew what the end result would be so they focused on ensuring they had a hand in everything.

Running Mac OS and Mac OS apps using MAE on Unix workstations was one example. But there were others too - some I remember are NeXT on Solaris with OpenStep, Mac LC systems that had a DOS compatibility card (486 CPU) to run DOS/Windows apps, and Unix SysV running in Mac OS using A/UX.

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Interix: an entire replacement posix subsystem for Windows NT, which included gcc, opengl, and motif. I ported a million line UNIX molecular modelling app to NT in 2000.

The System 7 that runs on A/UX is actually a unix process running on top of the A/UX kernel (which exposes the necessary Macintosh Toolbox features to run the specific version of System 7).

Which is, AIUI, why A/UX could not usefully be ported to PowerPC.

Which led to Copland, which didn't work out, and so led to the NeXT acquisition.

The ROM-based toolbox would not support more than one program running at a time. It was an odd limitation that a Unix could run only a single Mac application at a time.

> Which led to Copland, which didn't work out, and so led to the NeXT acquisition.

I remember the brief life of MkLinux. It brought a number of PoweMacs we had stacked in corners back to life as Unix workstations on sysadmin and developer desks (in 1998 or so).

I didn't know that. Interesting -- thanks!

I never used MkLinux myself, but I am happy to hear it was useful to someone...

It was OK. I remember at some point someone must have flipped something in the install image that added a Windows 95 theme to fvwm. Whoever it was, I hate that person.

The LC 68030 series had an Apple // emulation card. I had one. Later they had the “Houdini” “DOS Compatibility Card” for 68040s and the PowerMac 6100 series. I had one of those two.

Yes, but both were full computers running independently from the host. Sadly, the Apple // emulation card prevent my Color Classic from connecting to the network at home.

> and Unix SysV running in Mac OS using A/UX.

Likewise, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MachTen

MachTen was actually amazing, especially the fast boot time.

(There was also WebTen, which was essentially Apache, Perl and probably MaySQL running on a basic kernel, without a window manager, but with MacOS ineropability and files system sharing.)

NeXT on Solaris with OpenStep was the genesis of how Java would be born and some Objective-C based projects at Sun were later ported into Java.

Sometimes I wonder how it would have turned out if Solaris had embraced Objective-C instead.

Fascinating (as your comments usually are; we seem to come from quite similar tech interests and beliefs.)

Do you have any examples or citations? This is new to me.

Don't forget the Sun 386i and its DOS environment.

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