Looks like you can emulate the ANS500/700 with MacOS roms even now https://github.com/pappadf/granny-smith/pull/120
Apple Network Server MacOS based ROMs found
- Thread starter eric
- Start date
Yes, in principle it's possible to boot Mac OS with the "prototype" rom (I've tested with system 7.6). However, let me add some voice overlay to manage expectations:
First of all, a small disclaimer: an emulator is of course not real hw, so no result here transfers directly to the real thing. The emulator may be more "forgiving" than real hw, or simply deviate from what the hw actually does.
The system that managed to boot to the finder had two "hacks" that are not fully reflected in the final PR:
First of all a small hack for the VBL interrupt. Out-of-the-box, mac os booting on ANS weren't reciving VBL interrupts properly. Based on available documentation, my understanding is that the graphics adapter (cirrus logic) has no interrupt line at all, so I'm not sure how this should work on real hardware. I did a small hack to drive with with the via.
Second, a "nudge" for the scsi bus scan. The native scsi mgr hangs on every empty-target probe of the two fast/wide 825 buses. The ANS has a lot of potential scsi targets, so the scan effectively never completes without help (or at least take a very long time). This one may very well be a bug in my 825 model; it deserves further investigation, as I've seen similar things under AIX.
Bringing up mac os was just a side activity here, to add some more test coverage to the emulator. The real goal was AIX. However, it turned out to be a very healty excrsise that actually surfaced a number of other underlying emulator bugs.
So in short, yes, in theory it's possible to run mac os
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An additional disclaimer: AI tools were used extensively in this work - not only for coding, but also for debugging and reverse engineering. I know that is a red flag for some, and I fully respect that.
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