Getting Vim to run on a Macintosh Plus with System 6 is actually a project I’m currently working on. The old Mac Vim binary versions 5.7 and 6.2 will only run on System 7 and up, and in my testing require a computer with color capabilities.

Progress is slow. There’s a lot of surface area; Vim’s codebase, the Macintosh toolbox routines, getting the code to build with CodeWarrior in a VM, setting up all the right libraries, and then running/testing it in a different VM.

Current status is that Vim can startup and you can enter text and quasi save it to a file. Movement commands work. But there’s a LOT more to do.

Resources to get started for those who may be curious:

https://github.com/vim/vim-history/ older source code, I’m currently working off the 6.2.350 tag

https://vintageapple.org/ amazing site for technical info

https://macintoshgarden.org/ resource for old Mac software