4 ms·
I've come across this in the past when researching modern 68k CPUs. Pretty cool. It's too bad there's not more energy put into manufacturing legacy hardware wi
by kitsunesoba 5y ago
I've come across this in the past when researching modern 68k CPUs.
Pretty cool. It's too bad there's not more energy put into manufacturing legacy hardware with modern processes… something like a Pi Zero sized 68k machine capable of running System 7.5 or Mac OS 8 (which handle monochrome displays well) hooked up to an e-ink display in an ultrabook case would make for a very compelling writing/focus machine… it'd boot nearly instantly from modern storage and would have resource usage in the ballpark of that of a headless Linux install while sporting a full UI.
- fnord77 5y agoFixing all the security vulns of an old system like macos 7.5 would take a long time.
- spijdar 5y agoFixing the security vulns in a non-networked computer would also be a lot less critical...
- kitsunesoba 5y agoNo doubt, but vulnerabilities aren't too much of a concern for a permanently offline machine, as something oriented toward focus probably would be.
- titzer 5y agoHaving an order of magnitude (maybe two) fewer lines of code goes a long way to having fewer vulnerabilities. Given the longer and more rigid development cycle and smaller attack surface, it's reasonable to think there are relatively few defects.
- rbanffy 5y agoIf you go back far enough, you'll need someone who knows how to make an RCE over AppleTalk. Probably doable, BTW. Office (and home) networks were much less hostile back then.
- flatiron 5y agoIf you air gap it why would it matter?
- selfhoster11 5y agoFor a writing machine, it would be preferable to keep it offline so security issues wouldn't matter.
- rbanffy 5y agoYes, but Wikipedia and Google are very handy. Addictive websites not so much.
- setpatchaddress 5y agoProbably not possible if you want to directly run a modern web experience on it. Classic macOS has effectively no memory protection.
- AtlasBarfed 5y agoA fpga platform as the ultimate emulator would be really cool. Asyou say, in a pi sized package even cooler. Only a miniscule market, but still...
- opencl 5y agoNot as cool but if you really want to run System 7.5 on an e-ink display you can already run a Mac emulator on an ebook reader today. https://imgur.com/a/kJRCR https://imgur.com/a/kJRCR
- wk_end 5y agoYou kidding? That's incredibly cool. What are the refresh rates like?
- opencl 5y agoA lot of e-ink devices just run Android so it's relatively easy to run whatever you want on them. Refresh rate depends on how much of the screen is updating at once. Scrolling a whole page is pretty bad, updating a small region is reasonably quick. Some devices have an 'A2 mode' that makes it somewhat faster by just doing black/white instead of grayscale.
- cmrdporcupine 5y agoI mean, classic Macs didn't exactly have turbo charged refresh anyways. Yes, things like scrolling chunks of text is probably faster on an actual first-gen Mac than an e-Ink screen, but they weren't really... turbo for graphics rendering.
- tomxor 5y agoThat is awesome :D I know it should work... it's too easy to make work today, but I can't help imagine being back in the 90s and showing someone classic MacOS running on a tablet. It would blow their mind. Also the e-ink display running classic is very reminiscent of one of the early LCD displays in this old thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Portable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Portable
- tambourine_man 5y agoThis is amazing. Do you have more info on how to do this?
- 5y ago
- musha68k 5y agoYou might be interested in this core: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/MacPlus_MiSTer https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/MacPlus_MiSTer
- rbanffy 5y ago> It's too bad there's not more energy put into manufacturing legacy hardware with modern processes… You can try http://www.mosis.com/ http://www.mosis.com/ or https://europractice-ic.com/ https://europractice-ic.com/ depending on which side of the Atlantic you are. They are intended to make small batch/prototype fabrication processes available to industry and academia. OTOH, I am not optimistic the demand for such a CPU would be sufficient for any size of run that could end up in a low-cost part.
- jll29 5y ago> something like a Pi Zero sized 68k machine capable of running ... hooked up to an e-ink display in an ultrabook case would make for a very compelling writing/focus machine I had a similar idea for a portable writing/focus sub-notebook, except using Linux rather than MacOS. At the time, e-ink displays weren't good enough, but now they are nearly there in terms of refresh rate. I was thinking of an appliance that would mostly be used for editing text, a A5-format or 10" sub-notebook with a very good keyboard and e-ink screen, and potentially one-week long battery life (due to a low-power CPU and the fact that e-ink doesn't consume electricity unless there is a change). The iPad isn't a competitor to this in the sense that it has no or no good keyboard and a poor screen for writing/reading/editing text professionally (glossy, no e-paper quality).
- Cyberdog 5y agoOlder processors were not necessarily more energy efficient than newer ones. I'm willing to bet you'd get better battery life out of something like a modern ARM Cortex-A than any 68k, FPGA-implemented or otherwise, and have it be significantly more powerful besides. But IANA processor nerd.
- nonarkitten 5y agohttps://www.buffee.ca https://www.buffee.ca Drop in replacement for the 68000 that boots in milliseconds (about the same as a real 68000) and leverages the whole rest of the system as is, but with 1000 MIPS of 68K goodness and 512MB of RAM.