Building Basilisk II for iOS (2021) | Hacker News Reader

Building Basilisk II for iOS (2021)

blog.gingerbeardman.com

102 pointsalden531 comments

Very cool. I got MinivMac running on the Raspberry Pi — with a 7" LCD display I made pretty convincing "classic Mac" running on modern hardware.

I may have to revisit it. I was able to get THINK C installed and was trying to figure out again how to open/compile one of the old apps that I had written back in the late 80's. The thought of writing Mac "Toolbox" code again, using ResEdit is hilarious to me.

EDIT: wow, guy has some great 1-bit art too [1]. MinivMac Raspberry Pi on the workbench [2].

[1] https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2021/03/22/asanegami-morning...

[2] https://imgur.com/XgnGYH9

That MinivMac Raspberry Pi looks nice. I don't quite get from your post who made it.

EDIT: nevermind, after cyberstalking you a little bit I found some more info: https://magpi.raspberrypi.com/articles/systemsix-a-modern-ho..., https://www.engineersneedart.com/systemsix/systemsix.html

Yeah I did two similar projects — the first just setting up the emulator.

But when I wrote an e-ink calendar that looked like the old Mac OS, I made a simplified version of the "enclosure" I had done for the earlier emulator.

So they look similar but differ in function (and scale, the e-ink display is smallish so had to scale down the compact Mac accordingly).

Excellent, amazing, incredible, best emu for Mac 68k ever, but can never get on the AppStore (boo AppStore!); only for developers. Still...

Even ignoring the app store emulator policy, Basilisk II requires ROM images doesn’t it? And they could never distribute that.

It doesn't have to be bundled with the emulator. The user could provide it.

Yes but the software is useless without it. And I believe that violates one of the other App Store rules.

Even if it doesn’t I imagine Apple would see this as promoting piracy of their software (the ROM and MacOS classic) and refuse to let it in under any reason they could try to justify.

Basically I don’t think it would ever get on the store period.

Apple could supply those ROMS perhaps. They won't, but it seems a shame to ignore their own heritage.

Now, from Apple's point of view? That's old news, and the future is more compelling. Totally get it.

But it is stuff like this which keeps the iPad in the catagory of "toddlers toy" for me personally. It's really nice hardware too.

I own one. Was given to me. It really did end up being used as an excellent toddler toy!! The various touch games I found were really good and did promote some key skills.

In the past Apple made old versions of their classic system available for free. Notably that included 7.5.3 which is what I use https://web.archive.org/web/19991002011823/http://download.i...

I would have to check about ROM files!

I did not know. Spiffy!

When Steve came back to Apple he had ALL lab prototypes destroyed. ALL.

No surprise there.

Not never. For the original Mac ROMs, we’re just over halfway the 75 year for copyright expiration (in the US). ‘Only’ 37 years to go.

(If I’m not mistaken, the first software for the ENIAC is out of copyright. I don’t know whether any of it still exists, though)

Isn't it "75 years after the death of the author?" (Although I have no idea who the "author" would be in this case.)

Nit: There was no “software” for the ENIAC, programming was done with plugboards and cables. The very concept of software would require a stored-program computer, which ENIAC was not.

American copyright law before 1976 was radically different from the current situation (which was largely implemented with the Copyright Act of 1976). Probably most importantly, unpublished works, and works without an explicit copyright mark (on paper!) were not under copyright. This is why nearly every single bit of software IBM wrote and provided to customers and users in the 50s to mid 70s is public domain; it was never copyright to begin with.

Anyway, the copyright term in the USA and elsewhere too, have been repeatedly extended. I say it's a distinct possibility that some works under copyright now, will still being under copyright another 100 or even 1000 years from now. That is, assuming anyone is still around to sue and be sued over such things.

I suspect that AI generated content is (eventually, not the current versions) going to destroy copyright as a concept.

The generally-stated reason for copyright is to incentivise the creation of more works, but when those works can be made for less than the cost of the food needed to feed a human for long enough to ask a machine to make it[0], the economic value disappears and only tradition remains.

However, that's assuming it's purely economics; if art is humanity's version of peacock tails, then the effort is the point, and even an uploaded brain will be dismissed as "not capable of real art".

[0] I don't know how much power a genuinely human level creative AI would consume, but let's compare one of the current image generators:

For the human, 10 seconds to type in a prompt * minimum cost of keeping a human alive ($1.90 abject poverty threshold) = $0.00022

For the AI, maximum power draw of Mac mini M1 * 90 seconds to create an image = 3,510 joules; at $0.1/kWh[1] that's $0.0001

The cost of the AI doing the thing is about half the minimum possible cost of getting a human to ask the AI to do the thing.

[1] Close enough: https://www.energybot.com/electricity-rates-by-state.html

I assume the web port of BII should work, though?

https://jamesfriend.com.au/projects/basiliskii/BasiliskII-wo...

Or, even better: https://system7.app/

Yes, but you lose the screen size and scaling optimisations and close integration with iOS Files.app

You can install it using AltStore (though without my screen size and scaling modifications) it was hat floats your boat.

I'd much rather that Apple relaxed its position on emulators and old software. I think if someone figured out a way to compromise iOS and variants using nearly 40yo software run in an emulator, this would be an amazing feat, and ultimately only serve to make the host OS more secure, stable and resilient. I also think the copyright argument is stillborn because there is no market for 40yo software, so copyright holders are no longer able to earn from it no matter what happens.

Of course, me too. But right now you can install through AltStore or build it yourself, or wait forever for Apple to change.

A sibling post shows UltraPaint running on his iPad Pro: https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2021/04/17/turning-an-ipad-p...

I use a mix of apps but these days use mostly Deneba artWORKS, which is essentially an enhanced UltraPaint or a cutdown Canvas 3.x depending on your point of view. Their plugins can all be shared. I have another blog post about that. https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2021/04/25/mixing-external-t...

Thanks for the link. I never used MacOS back in the day, but it looks beautiful running on the iPad. I used iPads from the first to the 2017 Pro model as my primary computers on the go, but the lack of a terminal and Unix tools (zsh, rsync, openssh) did them in for me. I miss the the Apple Pencil, which I found fantastic for drawing.

Do you have any videos of you drawing on the iPad in artWORKS or UltraPaint? Would love to see it, since I don't have an iPad to try it on.

I'll prepare some time-lapse video/animation of my next drawing. This might be of interest: https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2021/07/30/playdate-1-bit-il...

Followed this guide a while back and got it working - an iPad makes a wonderful classic Mac, especially with Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

Even thought about getting an iPad mini and putting it in a Mac Plus enclosure, but the fact I’d need a developer account put me off somewhat, couldn’t be bothered to keep rebuilding the app.

With a developer account it's a once a year rebuild. Without it's once a week unless you automate it with AltStore.

This is incredibly useful software(if you can get it working). I used sheepshave to retrieve some old game files to run in ScumVM awhile back, since apparently new macs can’t mount ‘*.img’.

There is now experimental support of 68k Quadra emulation in qemu too.

I wish it expand to the whole 68k Mac line.

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