A self-contained QEMU-based A/UX system for macOS

[emendelson]

For what it's worth, and making heavy us of other people's hard work (especially and crucially by corymalon), I put together a self-contained AppleScript app for macOS that runs A/UX under QEMU. Details and download here. The app is notarized:

https://mendelson.org/auxrunner.html

 

[joshc]

This is really cool, but a few things.

The title/metadata on that page seems to be from a different page?

As for AUXrunner.app, trying it on Monterey on an M1 MacBook Pro, and it tries to open but then closes. What am I doing wrong?

 

[emendelson]

Ah - I simply copied an existing page and forgot to fix the properties. Fixed now. Thank you! (You may need to press Cmd-R to see the updated title.)

As for it not opening, you're absolutely not doing anything wrong. Possibly it works on my systems (two different M2 MacBook Air machines, one running the Sonoma beta, the other running Ventura) only because they're my own systems. Perhaps try this:

First, if the app is in your Applications folder, move it somewhere in your user folder, perhaps on the desktop.

Then open a terminal. Type

xattr -rc

followed by a space (the space is essential). Then drag the AUXrunner app into the terminal window so that its address is part of the command line. Press return, in order to run the command. If the command gives an error message, try again with:

sudo xattr -rc

and enter your password when prompted in the terminal.

If that still doesn't work, I'll scratch my head and try to figure out what's wrong. (And will try to run it on another user's setup on the same machine - after creating the other user...)

 

[joshc]

Yes that command did the trick, thank you! This is the first time I've used A/UX in emulation, so this is pretty exciting for me. I've used it on real hardware but not my own, I was at a friend's place and tried it out briefly on a 950.

 

[emendelson]

Thank you for that. I've updated the page with instructions. I'm about to start another thread about X apps...

 

[rplacd]

Thank you so much for creating this – I've always wanted to thank you for creating the WordPerfect appliance, which helped recover some old files, and now I get to meet you virtually... with another exciting project!
For what it's worth, A/UX aside, having a pre-packaged Quadra 800 emulation alone is a gift already. I may have some fun and try to create a pre-packaged modern Linux install with this as a base.

 

[Phipli]

@MrFahrenheit

 

[emendelson]

Thank you so much for creating this – I've always wanted to thank you for creating the WordPerfect appliance, which helped recover some old files, and now I get to meet you virtually... with another exciting project!
For what it's worth, A/UX aside, having a pre-packaged Quadra 800 emulation alone is a gift already. I may have some fun and try to create a pre-packaged modern Linux install with this as a base.

I'm glad to hear that someone actually tried it! And thank you for your good words!

 

[MrFahrenheit]

This is really cool! Thanks for doing this project.

Which version of A/UX 3 did you implement (file/print server version, or database version)?

I don’t have a machine that can run this but like @rplacd said, having a Quadra 800 emulator alone is really cool to have, let alone a way to run A/UX under emulation.

 

[emendelson]

File/print version. The emulator should run on any modern Mac, I think.

 

[emendelson]

And now updated with the latest code that Cat_7 posted today on emaculation.com (https://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11728)

 

[Udo.Keller]

Thank you so much.
Unfortunately, the latest updated somehow lost the top of screen finder menu bar. Is there anything I can do to get it back?

 

[emendelson]

It's always visible on my copy of it. Perhaps shut it down and restart?

 

[Udo.Keller]

It's always visible on my copy of it. Perhaps shut it down and restart?

Unfortunately, this did not help.

So I changed the startup option to "-display sdl", now it works. The old one works OK with "-display cocoa".

 

[emendelson]

I would never have thought of doing that. Thank you. I've changed the command to "-display sdl" in my app, and will upload the corrected version soon. Thank you again!

Incidentally, I'm running it under Ventura. Are you using a different macOS version?

 

[cat7]

I would never have thought of doing that. Thank you. I've changed the command to "-display sdl" in my app, and will upload the corrected version soon. Thank you again!

Incidentally, I'm running it under Ventura. Are you using a different macOS version?

 

[cat7]

For some time Qemu now has been supporting gtk and sdl besides the native cocoa display when ran on macOS. I haven 't seen your cocoa error before, so any info you can give might be helpful.

 

[Renegade]

Funny, the last version was working flawlessly while this one crashes to desktop on launch without any error message.
Running on a MacMini Intel under Monterey 12.7 .

 

[emendelson]

I had no trouble launching it under Monterey on Intel. Have you tried this: open a terminal, type in

xattr -rc

followed by a space; then drag the app into the terminal window and press Enter. Then try running the app.

 

[Udo.Keller]

I would never have thought of doing that. Thank you. I've changed the command to "-display sdl" in my app, and will upload the corrected version soon. Thank you again!

Incidentally, I'm running it under Ventura. Are you using a different macOS version?

I am using Sonoma.

The main reason for my interest in "-display sdl" is using more than one virtual display...