MachTEN

[Bunsen]

MachTEN

BSD4.4, runs as a MacOS 7/8/9 process. Not freeware.

Just curious, is anyone using this?

 

[QuadSix50]

I've known about them for years, and I've always wished I could run this on my older Macs. Thankfully now it's more at reach than the stratospheric price it used to be (or at least I was under the impression that it used to be very expensive back in the day).

 

[Bunsen]

Found some interesting stuff on the MachTEN FAQ

A1. What is MachTen?
... The UNIX operating system runs in concert with the Macintosh operating system. When MachTen is running, you still have access to the Macintosh Finder desktop and Macintosh applications ...

Even though MachTen gives the appearance of being just another Macintosh application, its operation is more like that of a co-resident operating system. MachTen and MacOS share the processor -- when MachTen has control, it pre-emptively multitasks the UNIX applications; when MacOS has control, it runs the Mac applications using its cooperative sharing.

Since MachTen runs on top of MacOS, there is no need to partition the hard drive or to install separate MachTen-specific device drivers. MachTen maps the UNIX file system to the MacOS file system and uses the MacOS device drivers. This means that there is a single, consistent file system and that third party devices, such as network controller boards, automatically run with MachTen...

MachTen is a full-fledged operating system that, for portability reasons,

uses as much of the device driver software that's available in the

Macintosh. Where necessary, it will operate directly with the hardware.

So it's kind of like A/UX in reverse (and yes, it will run on 68ks).

/edit/ v2.3 with BSD 4.3 runs on 68ks and System 7-8. I've written to ask about availability, as it's not in their store, nor is a download link immediately obvious/

That's a neat hack - taking control of the CPU from the co-operative multitasking MacOS ("NO, I'm NOT giving it back!!") to run a pre-emptive environment.

I assume this would also mean that any MacOS compatible CPU accelerators are fully useable too, as the driver side of things is taken care of by the co-resident MacOS.

I've been tempted to front up the $99 for this OS a few times

 

[Bunsen]

A13. What add-on hardware is supported?
Because MachTen sits on top of the Macintosh file system and interoperates

with the Finder, all add-on hardware should work under MachTen. MachTen has

been used with Syquest drives, Bernoulli drives, Zip drives, accelerators,

multiport serial cards, ethernet cards (NuBus, SCSI, PCI) and video cards,

among others. In cases where MachTen takes control of the hardware (e.g., to

implement virtual memory), there could be incompatibilities.

F2. Can I use third party accelerators with MachTen?
CPU accelerators tend to make use of Apple's memory management hardware.

Therefore, in general, you can usually use accelerator boards as long as you

are not using MachTen VM. DayStar boards are generally not compatible with

MachTen.

Darn it

D3. Why is Tenon's X so much faster than eXodus or MacX?
... Tenon sends the output of the X commands

directly to the Macintosh hardware screen buffers instead of using

QuickDraw. ...

Tenon's X is said to be the fastest on the Mac market. X11perf benchmarks on

a 25MHz 68040 Centris yield an XMark of 1.1 -- better than a SPARCStation 1!

On a 40MHz Quadra 840av, the X performance rivals a SPARCStation 2. XMark

ratings are not yet available for the native X performance on a Power Mac,

but Tenon's architectural advantage carries over to that platform as well.

And it's available for download

 

[TylerEss]

For what it's worth, the xTen you can download is a time-limited demo; also, I'm quite disappointed that they still want to sell Professional MachTen (the 68k version) for $99 when it hasn't been revised or updated in about ten years. Furthermore, they'll sell it to you but refuse to provide any support.

*grumble*

I'd love to have MachTen on my SE/30, but only so I could do things like 'for i in `ls`; do echo "

" >> file.html'; done

If you really need UNIX on your 68k you probably want Linux or BSD; MachTen is only useful to let you do UNIX-isms in MacOS, IMHO.

 

[pee-air]

I'd love to have MachTen on my SE/30, but only so I could do things like 'for i in `ls`; do echo "

" >> file.html'; done

Don't know why you would want to do that, but to each their own. The resulting file would be a text file, not an html file. And there are much easier ways of doing the same thing with basic shell commands. Why script for something that doesn't need to be scripted?

If you really need UNIX on your 68k you probably want Linux or BSD; MachTen is only useful to let you do UNIX-isms in MacOS, IMHO.

I concur.

 

[Bunsen]

Or to run MacOS and a *nix concurrently (as there's no equivalent to MOL for 68ks) and/or run a *nix on a machine/with hardware that's not supported by A/UX, Linux or BSD

 

[MacTCP]

I never saw this before. It looks interesting.

 

[paws]

so I could do things like 'for i in `ls`; do echo "

" >> file.html'; done

Don't know why you would want to do that, but to each their own. The resulting file would be a text file, not an html file.

Err. A HTML file IS a text file. It'd just be a matter of putting the header and footer in, then you'd have something a browser could parse. And you could easily put that in the script as well (as in $ echo "" >> file.html).

Mark the script as +x and I think you could even use it to dynamically generate a web page of images each time it's loaded. I think it's quite clever.

And there are much easier ways of doing the same thing with basic shell commands. Why script for something that doesn't need to be scripted?

What's your idea of 'basic shell commands'? ls, echo and >> is about as basic as it gets! And a script is nothing but a list of shell commands.

 

[pee-air]

But you wouldn't be running an html server in MachTEN. Would you?

And I misinterpreted his script. I didn't see the "img src=" part. I was thinking that he was merely creating a text file containing a directory. So I was thinking:

$ ls >> file.html

But his little script would actually create a file containing:

...

I'm just taking a guess at what the files in that directory might be called. So his script wouldn't literally create a file containing filenames file1.jpg, file2.jpg, etcetera -- unless that just happened to be the names of the files in the directory.

On of those days... My apologies.

 

[paws]

But you wouldn't be running an html server in MachTEN. Would you?

You might. Or you could run a regular Mac HTTP server but do stuff like this in MachTEN. I think that's one of the uses for it...

 

[TylerEss]

You're getting there; the idea is that I've got a directory of image files that I want to have in a webpage... before I write the HTML, I'll pre-generate the 15 or so image tags and then type my HTML around 'em... just to save a little effort.

Those kinds of workflows are what I miss from UNIX when I'm using my classic Macs, and are (what I think) MachTEN is best for (at least in these modern days).

 

[MacJunky]

Haha, this thread reminds me that somewhere I have MachTen 2.2 and 4.1.1 but at the time did not have enough HD space free on my older Macs to install them so I have never used them.

Perhaps I should dig up the installers and a SCSI drive+cables sometime?

 

[dbraverman88]

Bunsen,

This looks very cool. Liker virtualization software, I imagine that this will take quite a bit of RAM for it to run smoothly. Do you have any idea what the system requirements should be for smooth operation? I would be very surprised if this worked well even with an 040 if you are running other apps in your MacOS at the same time. It reminds me quite a bit of running Cygwin on Windows.

David

 

[Bunsen]

No idea at all. They still want $99 for it

 

[dbraverman88]

I am surprised that after all of this time of no upgrades the software is still $99.

 

[Maconthemove]

Would they give a "68kmla" club discount?

 

[alk]

I would be very surprised if this worked well even with an 040 if you are running other apps in your MacOS at the same time.

Remember that Mac OS uses cooperative multitasking. This means that the application in the front gives up time to other tasks. If the application in the front decides not to give up time, it can effectively monopolize the CPU (ignoring certain interrupts, etc), so performance probably isn't that bad and might actually surprise you. In some cases, cooperative multitasking gives better performance than preemptive multitasking, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if applications like this or emulators like VPC actually perform better on earlier systems than OS X. In fact, one of the early performance improvements that was commonly practiced for early versions of VPC was to make a specific System Folder for VPC and replace the Finder with Virtual PC with a few ResEdit mods to make it launch at startup. That guaranteed that only system tasks could interrupt VPC.

Peace,

Drew

 

[conceitedjerk]

I've been thinking about picking up MachTen for a while now...

Will probably do it in the next week or two, as I've just purchased a similar product called AmiWin/X for my Amiga 2000. Been itching to learn to develop for Unix... maybe I'll pick up an old 68K based Sun machine too and do some real cross-platform development