more A/UX executables

[ChristTrekker]

I've managed to build some new-ish software on A/UX recently. For those of you who don't follow the newsgroup religiously (what's wrong with you?) I thought I'd post about it here as well. The binaries are on my site. I'd appreciate any testing and feedback.

 

[Monster_user]

Just curious, are there any advantages of running A/UX, other than nostalgia?

I've just recently learned of the existence of A/UX, and I've been debating on whether or not to track down a copy.

:b&w:

 

[ChristTrekker]

Just curious, are there any advantages of running A/UX, other than nostalgia?

I'd say mostly nostalgia. For hard-core Unix geeks, it's another platform to test compatibility with, which helps shake out bugs.

 

[z180]

Does A/UX run in a emulator?

I think of hacking around but have no supported hardware.

 

[porter]

Does A/UX run in a emulator?
I think of hacking around but have no supported hardware.

It doesn't run in Basilisk-II as it requires access to emulated hardware, Basilisk emulates parts at the API level.

 

[tt]

How about porting a web browser to A/UX?

 

[ClassicHasClass]

I am toying with porting my updated Mosaic fork, which I maintain for Power MachTen, Linux and OS X, to A/UX. But first I have to get X11R6 going, and some Motif. Tim, what's your thoughts?

http://www.floodgap.com/retrotech/machten/mosaic/

 

[ChristTrekker]

How about porting a web browser to A/UX?

Well, there's lynx, which I've compiled without problems. OH, you meant a GUI browser?

I wonder if early versions of iCab (which are still more recent than workable Netscape, et al, versions) would run in A/UX's Mac environment...hmmm...

Has anyone tried Browser6 (isn't that the name, porter?) in the Mac environment?

my updated Mosaic fork

I'd forgotten about that, but I did have an old version of Mosaic running once upon a time. Maybe you need to retarget Classilla at the Sys 7 API, CHC. If you get X11R6 working, make good notes, because I'll have to do that myself sometime.

 

[Osgeld]

there is a graphical links, its not fancy or anything but very useful, I wonder if that would compile

 

[wthww]

I be to differ. glinks would prolly be the best solution for a browser that supports images, but in order to get that along you are looking at getting the libs for jpeg & png compiled and getting X11R6 onto it. I may install a/ux onto my SE/30 just to poke around with it.

@Christrekker: Does a/ux come with cc, and is it braindead (by this I mean only cc89?)

//wthww

 

[Dog Cow]

I may install a/ux onto my SE/30 just to poke around with it.

That would be a good idea. I'm sure it's tired of being up on that high shelf, not being used.

 

[ChristTrekker]

in order to get that along you are looking at getting the libs for jpeg & png compiled and getting X11R6 onto it. I may install a/ux onto my SE/30 just to poke around with it.
@Christrekker: Does a/ux come with cc, and is it braindead (by this I mean only cc89?)

It comes with Apple's cc. You can get c89, and gcc 2.7.2. There's a 2.8.1 too, but it crashes under 3.1.x, but that may be okay if you're using an SE/30 because you'll probably leave that at 3.0.x anyway. (I was sent a gcc 3.1 binary once, but couldn't get it to work.) Everybody doing anything with A/UX is doing it with gcc, AFAIK.

You can find X11R6 for A/UX online, but IIRC I've never tried it myself. Jpeg, png, and lesstif libraries are available precompiled. Check the usual places: the modern FAQ, aux-penelope, nleymann.de being the primary ones.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

Actually, I'd advise rebuilding zlib, etc. The zlibs that are out there for A/UX are frightfully old and fairly buggy, and ditto for libpng (though libjpeg hasn't been changed in literally a decade and a half, so that's safe to use). libpng and zlib should build fine with gcc 2 -- they build just fine in CodeWarrior, after all (Classilla uses them all internally).

edit: here's a Jagubox mirror that looks like it's fairly intact:

http://mirrors.vanadac.com/ftp.geo.tu-freiberg.de/pub/aux/jagubox/

 

[tt]

There have been quite a few discussions about getting a more modern browser than say iCab on a 68k. It seems (from my limited programming knowledge) the easiest path would be to port an existing one to A/UX or NetBSD instead of trying to make one for Mac OS 7 from scratch. Is it?

 

[ClassicHasClass]

I'd say so, for certain values of "modern." Certainly it may be easier to get a good basis more easily this way. After all, Classilla is just cramming new code into an old, known working code base, and VMS Mosaic did the same thing with X-Mosaic (check out VMS Mosaic: George has done some amazing things with it).

A while ago I was inquiring from people who maintained old System 7-compatible browsers to see if they still had the source code. All of them thought that was a wonderful question, and none of them could find any. It's finding a good basis that's hard, and starting from scratch is a lot of work.

I have a few ideas about this, but they're just ideas, really. In the meantime, you could certainly compile Firefox on a 68K running NetBSD. Running it, and running it well, might be another story ;-) That said, Dillo might be a good choice if you could port it.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

You could cheat and run Firefox sitting on a *nix or *BSD server via MacX... :-D (I've been meaning to try this out with my SE/30 connected to another machine for months now, and haven't gotten around to it yet.)

(For those who don't know, X, as in "X windows", separates the 'application running' layer from the 'display' layer. And they are so separated, that you can have the application running on one computer, but displaying on a second. A few years ago, before GIMP had a Mac OS X-native port, when Apple very first released their X client for OS X 10.3, I ran GIMP on a fast PC, but displaying on my old beige G3.)

 

[tt]

I read a wiki entry on MacX, but there is not too much info. Is it a program that Apple sold or did they include it with some system utilities? Any links to how to use it?

 

[ClassicHasClass]

MacX has a lot of problems, but it works, sort of. I used it as an X server with an old SunOS 4 machine (actually a Solbourne S4100DX if anyone remembers Solbourne) and it mostly worked, but I've had a lot of problems having it talk to the OS X machines. It also has very poor security.

It came with A/UX, but ISTR you could get it separately for some large amount of buxx.

 

[ChristTrekker]

In the meantime, you could certainly compile Firefox on a 68K running NetBSD. Running it, and running it well, might be another story ;-) That said, Dillo might be a good choice if you could port it.

Firefox won't run on 68k NetBSD, AFAIK. Maybe it's changed recently, but when I was looking into it several years ago, the package explicitly blocked builds on 68k NB for some reason I don't recall right now. When I removed the block, I ran into problems.

I'd thought of Dillo as well. FLTK is a small toolkit, and may not take tooooo much work to port. OTOH, it is FLTK2, which may be using features newer than currently available compilers for A/UX are able to handle, i.e. C99 stuff.

All this talk of A/UX devel, particularly browsers, really makes me want to try to glue a ncurses UI to Gecko or Webkit.