• Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.

Power Machten 4.1.4

LarBob

Well-known member
4.1.x requires a serial number to run after the trial period of 2 weeks.  Tenon was still offering to sell copies of 4.1.4 last year with a serial number.  If you are looking to find the serial number on a physical copy, then I can say that mine was 24 characters on 4.1.1 and 25 characters on 4.1.4 (not counting the dashes that appear at various intervals).
Yeah, I'd be willing to pay for a license, but I've tried to email them a few times over the past year or two and haven't gotten any response.

 

LarBob

Well-known member
Yeah, I'd be willing to pay for a license, but I've tried to email them a few times over the past year or two and haven't gotten any response.
Okay, I checked and the first time I emailed them (at least on my current address) was at the beginning of February 2020. I've tried a few times since then, and I know others have as well. I feel like it's pretty safe to say they're defunct at this point and it should be considered abandonware.

 

pat

New member
Okay, I checked and the first time I emailed them (at least on my current address) was at the beginning of February 2020. I've tried a few times since then, and I know others have as well. I feel like it's pretty safe to say they're defunct at this point and it should be considered abandonware.
If it is considered abandonware, is it possible to share the serial number?

 
I do not know the owner and only exchanged a few emails with that person in 2019, but I did reach out to them via email to indicate that others were interested in purchasing Power MachTen.

I will update this thread with the details of any positive replies on how to proceed with getting a copy.

If it is considered abandonware, is it possible to share the serial number?


I'm not going to share my serial number and would appreciate it if no one posted any license information in this thread.

I'll be posting a comparison of differences between the various MachTen versions (4.0, 4.0.3, 4.1.1 and 4.1.4) soon.

 

LarBob

Well-known member
I sent these all with no response:

qgUutzw.png


From another address on a totally different provider:

image.png

I think it's decently safe to say they're defunct.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I  have not heard anything back from Tenon since I tried to get back n touch with them at the end of last year to see if anyone else could get a copy of MachTen 4.1.4.

 
A Comparison of Power MachTen Versions​

 ​

TLDR: Most people will want to use a 4.1.x release to have gmake, autoconf, and X11R6 libraries available in a more reliable filesystem than on the 4.0 series.

4.1.1 works best on classic systems, but 4.1.4 is needed to run on the pre-emptive multitasking environment in OS 9 (with the Tenon patch for 9.1+).  MachTen appears as a monolithic application to the host and manages all UNIX processes internally, so multitasking on the Mac side among applicaitons that support the feature is not particularly helpful in most cases.  I've found that MachTen performs best on a G3 or better running MacOS 8.5, but you can get a G4 Mac Minis to have a fast affordable computer that runs 4.1.4 well on Mac OS 9.2.2 from Mac OS 9 Lives.

The differentiating feature of the 4.0 series is being able to use dtmount to remount any internal Machten paths on the Mac desktop for read-write access (including remote nfs filesystems), but the feature is broken in releases of Mac OS after 8.1 and accessing files in general through hfs is brittle and slow (especially with lots of writes to small files when compiling).

Below is a comparison of the different versions in a table that's also attached as a PDF to this post.

Code:
                           MachTen 4.0                        MachTen 4.0.3                      MachTen 4.1.1                      MachTen 4.1.4                      

Release Date               199508                             ca. 199606                         199807                             200002                             
(YYYYMM):                                                                                        (4.1 199803)                                                          

Mac OS                                                                                                                                                                 
Compatability:             7.5-8.6                            7.5-9.0                            7.5.5-8.6                          8.1-9.2 (with 9.1 patch)           

Filesystem:                hfs ("ufs")                        hfs ("ufs")                        ffs image                          ffs image                          

Mac OS Extensions:         Extensions > MachTen Libraries     Extensions > Tenon Libraries       Extensions > Tenon DTFST (v. 4.0)  Extensions > Tenon DTFST (v. 4.0)  
                           (single folder)                    (separate kernel, application, and for mounting Macintosh desktop                                        
                                                              X11 folders)                       volumes                                                               
                                                                                                                                                                       
                                                                                                 Tenon Libraries                    Tenon 
                                                                                                 Libraries                    
                                                                                                 (application/kernel) in MachTen    (application/kernel) in MachTen    
                                                                                                 installation folder                installation folder                

X11:                       X11R5                              X11R5                              X11R6                              X11R6                              
                                                              (X11R6 offered as update)                                                                                

Toolchain Changes:         no autoconf                        autoconf 2.7                       autoconf 2.12                      autoconf 2.12                      
                           bsd make                           bsd make                           bsd make                           bsd make                           
                           no gmake                           no gmake                           gmake 3.76                         gmake 3.76                         
                           flex 2.5.2                         flex 2.5.2                         flex 2.5.4                         flex 2.5.4                         
                           gcc 2.7                            gcc 2.7                            gcc 2.8.1                          gcc 2.8.1                          
                           no g++                             g++ 2.7                            g++ 2.8.1                          g++ 2.8.1                          
                           yacc                               yacc                               yacc                               yacc                               

Userland Changes           n/a                                applications, libraries, and UNIX  applications, libraries, and       none (same as 4.1.1)               
                                                              pwd/group files                    hosts/resolv.conf files                                               

Applications Added         n/a                                lwsrv                              bash                               apache                             
                                                              rpcgen                             bzip2                                                                 
                                                              setstackspace                      cvs                                                                   
                                                              uucp                               jar                                                                   
                                                                                                 license management                                                    
                                                                                                 (chklicense/chnglicense/displaylice                                   
                                                                                                 nse)                                                                  
                                                                                                 macmake                                                               
                                                                                                 perl                                                                  
                                                                                                 rcs                                                                   
                                                                                                 rpm                                                                   
                                                                                                 serialver                                                             
                                                                                                 shar                                                                  
                                                                                                 ssh                                                                   
                                                                                                 tcsh                                                                  
                                                                                                 ufs utilities (fsck, dump, newfs,                                     
                                                                                                 restore, etc.)                                                        

Libraries Added            n/a                                malloc.h                           ncurses                            none                               
                                                                                                 pthreads                                                              
                                                                                                 objective c                                                           
                                                                                                 more mac os side dev libraries                                        
                                                                                                 msg.h                                                                 
                                                                                                 sem.h                                                                 
                                                                                                 shm.h





View attachment table-machten-versions.pdf

 

LarBob

Well-known member
I  have not heard anything back from Tenon since I tried to get back n touch with them at the end of last year to see if anyone else could get a copy of MachTen 4.1.4.
Indeed, they seem to have basically disappeared. I wish someone had a backup of their FTP server, or someone eventually shows up who used to work there.

I wonder if the domain will be renewed in 2025 and how much longer the site will stay up.

 
Top