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Run Mac OS System 7 in your browser
- latchkey 13y agoWow, I totally forgot about needing to hold down on the mouse button to keep menu's open.
- nkrumm 13y agoIncredible. I can't remember... were the labels really "Hot" "Cool" "Essential" and "In Progress"?
- reaperhulk 13y agoThey sure were :)
- gilgoomesh 13y agoHypercard "Player"? Oh the pain, it's all coming back to me! (To those who don't understand... Hypercard was originally free but when it was spun off as part of Claris, they tried to charge for the real thing and only offered the "Player" for free. Hypercard was already disintegrating from neglect but this really hastened its demise.)
- msutherl 13y agoI really wish a proper version of Hypercard was in this emulator. I'm too young to have used it at the time, but from what I've read it stands for an important ideal of what personal computers can be that's been forgotten and I'd like to experience what that was like first-hand.
- joezydeco 13y agoHyperCard was the World Wide Web...in a parallel universe. If Apple had put just a bit more work into making stacks friendly to the internet, the world might be a completely differently place right now. Or not. Who knows.
- mambodog 13y agoI'll see what I can do about getting a Hypercard-specific demo together.
- hugs 13y agoAs a kid, HyperTalk was the first language I fell in love with. It got me hooked on programming. I've always wanted to recreate it for the web, but never thought of doing it this way!
- voltagex_ 13y agoI wonder who owns Hypercard these days and if it could ever be released into the public domain. Edit: Seems as if Apple now own it again as part of FileMaker Inc.
- Samuel_Michon 13y agoHowever, SuperCard is still around and just received an update for Mavericks. SuperCard can even convert HyperCard stacks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperCard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperCard
- bonaldi 13y agoYou could tell their heart wasn't in Hypercard Player: putting "set the userLevel to 5" into the message box would essentially turn it into Hypercard.
- netghost 13y agoWhich to a kid learning to make neat things with his computer was a gold mine.
- Tarang 13y agoJust brilliant!
- nonchalance 13y agoDo you plan on making this open source? I ask because other similar projects were not made open source
- mambodog 13y agoIt's already built from two open source projects: PCE[0] and Emscripten[1]. It patches Emscripten a little, and PCE a lot, so I'll need to separate those patches out and add them into the build process. Basically the code is not really in much of a state for other people to hack on just yet. However, for GPL compliance with PCE, a dump of the source is available[2]. [0] http://www.hampa.ch/pce/ http://www.hampa.ch/pce/ [1] https://github.com/kripken/emscripten https://github.com/kripken/emscripten [2] http://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/pcejs20131028.zip http://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/pcejs20131028.zip
- krosaen 13y agoThe Mac Classic II was my first computer, wow does this bring back some old memories :)
- gpcz 13y agoThe "Sorry, a system error occurred" dialog box is still deeply startling to me after all these years, even when I'm anticipating it. (I caused it to happen by moving the System file from the System Folder to the root Macintosh HD and restarted.)
- Segmentation 13y agoNow I just need Sim Ant, Artillery and The Oregon Trail.
- adamzegelin 13y agoDon't forget Lemmings!
- dubcanada 13y agoOh my... I would be in heaven if I had Sim Ant!
- austinz 13y agoI had a Macintosh Plus when I was a kid. (My dad wrote his Ph.D dissertation on it, and he had a HD and some game disks before I somehow destroyed them.) I remember that computer fondly. When I was in first grade we got a new machine, and we took the Mac Plus out and left it next to the apartment complex dumpster that morning. By the afternoon it was gone. Sometimes, I still think about it...who picked it up, whether they plugged it in and found out it was still completely functional, and if they still have it today. Memories.
- lectrick 13y agoMy parents still have our old Mac Plus. And it still works. It is a gorgeous relic. I can't believe you just left it at a dumpster. Do you realize how much that thing costed, new?
- runnr_az 13y agoWow. That's awesome.
- geuis 13y agoSo well done! Lots of great fun memories here.
- nnq 13y agoAnyone knows of any Lisp Machine emulator anywhere? The later generation ones with high res graphics and stuff preferably. That's an experience I'd like to try...
- rjsw 13y agoThere are several but none of them will run in a browser.
- malandrew 13y agoI've tried to get an Alpha Emulator working on OS X so I can try OpenGenera, but there really isn't anything that really works out there except for one paid piece of software. I believe the freeware emulator was the origin of the paid one and the freeware one is no longer maintained AFAICT.
- rjsw 13y agoGenera itself is commercial software, if you have a licence to use it then you may as well just compile the emulator for OS X, I can't see any reason to have an emulated Alpha layer as well. Someone could try compiling either the MIT or TI Explorer emulators to js I guess.
- malandrew 13y agoI know it is commercial, but I think everyone here can agree that running something like OpenGenera solely on a javascript emulator in the browser is a total non-solution for anything production use and doesn't really compete for sales to customers. What it accomplishes is the opportunity to just try something out to determine if I want to purchase a copy and explore it further. Furthermore, there is a lot of value in having something out there that brings more attention to LISP machines and the novel ideas they introduced. Right now the barrier to trying OpenGenera out is remarkably high. Even googling for Genera or OpenGenera doesn't show a product page among the top results and the symbolics website is a glorified advertisement page.
- LadyMartel 13y agoOh my god, Kid Pix! I wasted countless hours doodling stick figures. Good times.
- unimpressive 13y agoWith this and the windows emulator in the spotlight[0], I feel that I should go ahead and link to Jason Scott's project to port MESS to the browser: http://jsmess.textfiles.com/ http://jsmess.textfiles.com/ http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3375 http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3375 http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3569 http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3569 [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6624554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6624554
- mambodog 13y agoHi, I hacked this together, though most of the credit should go to Hampa Hug's very nice emulator[0]. I'm posting this now as I saw the neat Windows emulator project and figured today was a good day to talk about emulation :) My reasoning for putting this together is that I think it's really important for people to learn from what's come before, and the web is the most accessible place to do that. I've written a post[1] that goes into the rationale a bit further, and also addresses the legal aspect of this demo. Ultimately I would love for there to be an interactive online museum of personal computer history. I'd also like to get a demo of NeXTSTEP working; for the OS which begat the world wide web to be running inside the browser would be pretty neat. [0] http://www.hampa.ch/pce/ http://www.hampa.ch/pce/ [1] http://jamesfriend.com.au/why-port-emulators-browser http://jamesfriend.com.au/why-port-emulators-browser
- sgt 13y agoI would very much like to see a demo of NeXTSTEP working!
- Tloewald 13y agoWonderful job, but it would be nice to have (a) more interesting applications (e.g. MacPascal, HyperCard -- the full version not the Player) and also command-key support (it actually wigs out if you use command keys).
- wil421 13y ago+1 I would love to see NeXTSTEP.
- muglug 13y agoSpent a good 10 minutes playing with Kid Pix, having not heard of it before. Turns out it has a fun history - it was designed to be usable by a 3-year-old: http://red-green-blue.com/kid-pix-the-early-years/ http://red-green-blue.com/kid-pix-the-early-years/
- randomhunt 13y agoI did exactly the same! The Moving Truck icon is inspired...Photoshop could learn a few things ;-)
- throwaway1979 13y agoSame here. Surprised to see it has more features than MS Paint! The UI is so simple. As a non-professional, Photoshop feels way too intimidating.
- chc 13y agoIs it really a bad thing that software targeted at pros isn't ideal for people who aren't pros? It seems a bit like complaining that your oven doesn't remove screws very well.
- ljosa 13y agoI have floppy disk images of MORE, the greatest Outliner that ever existed. Is there a way to mount the images so I can install it?
- azinman2 13y agoWow this takes me back. Lovely combination of apps to be there... quite impressive what was done with so little system resources. Nice to see pagemaker & word striped down to their bare essentials.
- tmallen 13y agoFeature request: Oscar the Grouch in the trash can. I noticed that ejecting the Kid Pix disk made the machine unusable.
- omot 13y ago1991... that's when I was born.
- sgt 13y agoI'm much older than you, since I was born in the 80s. And by 80s I mean the 1880s.
- amrnt 13y agoIt has 4 GB memory same as my macbook air :)
- CervezaPorFavor 13y ago4 MB. It's quite mindblowing to think that now a low-end laptop has 1,024 times more RAM.
- bluedino 13y agoToo be fair it has been 25 years.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mrottenkolber 13y agoI admittably have a weakness for vintage human computer interface design, but for some reason, they don't make them like they used to anymore.
- rahoulb 13y agoThe Spatial Finder, showing which files and folders are open. sighs wistfully
- netghost 13y agoUnfortunately, the "showing which files and folder are open" bit really really confused a lot of folks. I answered a lot of questions about why their icons were broken. Otherwise though, it was brilliant.
- workbench 13y agoTotally feel the same, love the look of Mac OS 7/9, NEXT, BeOS, RISC OS, IRIX
- leoc 13y agoThis is wonderful to have. Some insta-feedback: * Double-click stopped working for me once after I tabbed out and back, I'm not sure why. (Win. 7, Chrome 30.0.1599.101 m ) * Could you make it possible to scale up the screen? (Not to increase its resolution, of course.) As of now the screen size is very small even in comparison to the original Mac Plus or SE screens. For one thing that makes it harder to see the individual pixels, and the obvious pixelation was a significant part of the experience. Just a quick and dirty pixel-doubling would be great. (Zooming the page size in the browser causes the sidebar to overlap the Mac screen.) * A means to load and save floppy images would be beyond wonderful to have.
- Samuel_Michon 13y agoThis shows a Macintosh Plus running System 7.0.1. The computer could actually run versions up to 7.5.5 – an OS that came out in 1996. That’s quite amazing, given the Plus was released in 1986. Try running Windows 8 or OS X Mavericks on a 10 year old computer.
- drzaiusapelord 13y agoThat's insane to me. While people were using Win95 in 1996, full color, 3D games (Duke Nukem 3D), etc Macs were still in the dark ages with 7.5 and 8. This was around the time I was in college. I went to a big ugly state school and a close friend went to a fancy private school. In my school, we only had PCs available for general student use. At his school, it was Mac-only with everyone got their own Mac in their dorms. It felt like we were back in the 80s with the tiny screens and the antiquated OS. A newer version of the same OS I used in elementary school when my parents bought a Mac 512k. The labs at that school did have the newer color macs, which were nice, but were a minority there. Incredible how long apple put off the move to a new platform. I guess 1999 wasn't too far off, but for a long while, owning a mac seemed like a step backward.
- linuxlizard 13y agoI think I remember seeing an article where Steve Jobs lamented that Apple sat stalled while Microsoft and the PC industry continued to evolve. This was from an interview shortly after his return to Apple.
- mietek 13y agoTiny screens weren't a requirement. 14", 16", and 21" color displays were available since 1992, with resolutions of 640x480, 832x624, and 1152x870. A 1987 Mac II supported up to 6 displays, forming a single desktop. Not too shabby, eh? However, the OS was behind the times, lacking memory protection and preemptive multitasking. It is incredible how much wasted effort went into Pink, Taligent, and Copland...
- smacktoward 13y ago
- plusbryan 13y agoWow, this takes me back. Hypercard was one of my first experiences with software development. It was really nostalgic exploring all the nooks an crannies of the OS that I explored so thoroughly in my youth. Thank you
- tmimicus 13y agoKIDPIX!
- wsc981 13y agoI loved System 7. To me it felt like an advanced, very usable OS that could still be "understood" by the laymen. Most crashes and bugs originated in so-called Extensions. Bugs could often be fixed by simply moving some Extensions out of the Extension folder and restarting the Mac until the buggy extension was found. Additionally it was possible to restart the Mac with all Extensions turned off by pressing the SHIFT-key on start-up. Most of the OS could be managed by simply moving files in and out of certain System Folder directories.
- mhewett 13y agoThis is really amazing. It's faster than a Mac Plus! But my brain is missing the scratching noise the floppy disk used to make as a program loaded.
- augbot 13y agoI was totally expecting to see Talking Moose! lol.. Excellent work, totally took me back.
- elf25 13y agoBrilliant!
- elf25 13y agoNice but where's Dark Castle? My disk won't fit in the slot.
- pbreit 13y agoWow, remember when you had to hold the mouse button down to select a menu item!
- kevb 13y agoIt took me a few tries to quit Kid Pix because of this. But now that I think about it when the change was introduced to not require click and hold (7.6? 8.0?) I hated it.
- taopao 13y agoThe Apps and Games image takes me back. I remember Cannon Fodder giving my Mac SE nVIR. :(
- rbanffy 13y agoIt would be interesting to see it running System 3. This machine is almost as old as the Windows 1.0 emulator we saw the other day, but System 7 is a much more recent version of the OS, IIRC, from the same period as Windows 3.
- tannerc 13y agoAh, my very first computer! Thanks for making something as simple and silly as this emulator. It brought back a lot of powerful reminders about where the technology (and myself) have come from.