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People write drivers and kexts for Mac OS and Windows - and most drivers in Mac OS do not interface with open source interfaces. Writing drivers has little to d

by epcoa 3y ago

People write drivers and kexts for Mac OS and Windows - and most drivers in Mac OS do not interface with open source interfaces. Writing drivers has little to do with the source availability really. I’ve written drivers and kexts for OS X. Never really bothered with the XNU source. Classic Mac OS is also much simpler and built with more primitive tooling, so reverse engineering it is eminently doable, just that’s a bit beyond what anybody in the community wants to do. I think the Venn diagram of those that are interested in classic Mac OS (sizeable but small) and those sentimental about the Wii is not highly overlapping. People have hacked Palm OS to shit - this type of thing is certainly doable regardless of source if one is inclined (I could, but I have literally thousands of other hack projects that are more interesting to me). > third-party attempt to "port" it to new hardware. There hasn’t really been any with X either - Hackintoshes have always been quite limited in scope. I barely would calls those ports.

duskwuff 3y ago
> Classic Mac OS is also much simpler Debatable. :) It's certainly less sophisticated, but I'd argue that it was a much weirder system architecture than OS X, and that's probably discouraged some reverse engineering. (For instance: parts of the OS were interpreted 68k code, and were interworked with native PowerPC code; significant components of the OS were patched in during system startup; there was a multitasking kernel but almost nothing used it...)
- epcoa 3y ago
  > For instance: parts of the OS were interpreted 68k code, and were interworked with native PowerPC code In the grand scheme of computing devices, not particularly weird, I mentioned Palm OS for a reason, and I don’t think it changes my stance about the overall simplicity of reversing those old systems with modern tools and someone with some experience in this area — the time and the inclination are the real barriers. “… So I had to actually do a lot of reverse engineering for this project - a lot of boring reverse engineering of very boring APIs …” is a key quote by the regular HNer doing rePalm. Yes you need special skills, but it’s the time that gets you in the end. Especially for hobby projects. No one is getting rich on this stuff.

by epcoa 3y ago

duskwuff 3y ago

> Classic Mac OS is also much simpler Debatable. :) It's certainly less sophisticated, but I'd argue that it was a much weirder system architecture than OS X, and that's probably discouraged some reverse engineering. (For instance: parts of the OS were interpreted 68k code, and were interworked with native PowerPC code; significant components of the OS were patched in during system startup; there was a multitasking kernel but almost nothing used it...)

epcoa 3y ago
> For instance: parts of the OS were interpreted 68k code, and were interworked with native PowerPC code In the grand scheme of computing devices, not particularly weird, I mentioned Palm OS for a reason, and I don’t think it changes my stance about the overall simplicity of reversing those old systems with modern tools and someone with some experience in this area — the time and the inclination are the real barriers. “… So I had to actually do a lot of reverse engineering for this project - a lot of boring reverse engineering of very boring APIs …” is a key quote by the regular HNer doing rePalm. Yes you need special skills, but it’s the time that gets you in the end. Especially for hobby projects. No one is getting rich on this stuff.