Efficient web-based classic Mac emulator

[mihai]

As my MARCHintosh2022 project I've wrapped some work extending the web version of Basilisk II from a few years ago, and have published system7.app and macos8.app.

They feature instant booting (the disk image is streamed instead of needing to be downloaded at startup), much lower CPU utilization, and support for interacting with the "outside world" by dragging files in and out. I also wrote a blog post with more details.

Hope it's useful as a lower-barrier to entry to show others what the classic Mac era was like. The web works pretty much everywhere, and so do these emulators (including on iOS devices).

 

[eric]

This is amazing. Tested it out on an iPad and sim city 2k loaded right up. It's fast! I'll play more tomorrow, great work!

 

[Drake]

My entire life I've been waiting to load OS8 on my mobile phone, today was that day.

Guess I can recycle all these classic Macs!!

 

[landogriffin]

Absolutely amazing!!! Great job!!

 

[PotatoFi]

This is incredible. Marathon runs great! "Nice work" feels like an understatement!

 

[Volvo242GT]

Pretty cool. On my MBP, it seems to be running at Mac Plus speed, at least under FF 78.

@Drake with respect to recycling all your old Macs, I think not... lol

 

[caver01]

This is very cool. Messing around on an iPad Pro with the magic keyboard, but the trackpad has some odd behavior. The keyboard works, but clicking the touchpad does nothing, and the arrow cursor does not respond unless I do a two-finger reverse-pinch which is being interpretted like a click-drag in the emulator.

I have not tried it on a modern mac or PC, just iPad. It is still an incredible achievement! Thanks for posting these.

 

[eric]

@mihai - with your "Dockerfile" approach to building images - I attempted a similar thing wrapping hfsutils, while it worked, it was clunky - so glad to see machfs! One question though - are you able to add attributes and bless system folders? even with hfsutils blessing never seemed to actually do anything.

 

[reallyrandy]

This is great. Are you planning network connectivity at some point? I'd love to browse hotline!

 

[mihai]

@mihai - with your "Dockerfile" approach to building images - I attempted a similar thing wrapping hfsutils, while it worked, it was clunky - so glad to see machfs! One question though - are you able to add attributes and bless system folders? even with hfsutils blessing never seemed to actually do anything.

I have not encountered any issues with blessing of system folders with machfs. It does appear to track where the system folder is, and that appears to be empirically correct.

It also has an API for Finder attributes, which has worked well for me.

 

[mihai]

This is great. Are you planning network connectivity at some point? I'd love to browse hotline!

That's a pretty ambitious project, and something that I'm not likely to have time for. OldWeb.Today does do something like this (using the same original emulator), they have a technical description of what it takes.

 

[mihai]

This is very cool. Messing around on an iPad Pro with the magic keyboard, but the trackpad has some odd behavior. The keyboard works, but clicking the touchpad does nothing, and the arrow cursor does not respond unless I do a two-finger reverse-pinch which is being interpretted like a click-drag in the emulator.

This is being tracked at https://github.com/mihaip/infinite-mac/issues/33.

 

[Byte Knight]

Wow! I thought os9.ca was cool but this is an actual emulator. Nice job!! Agreed that network connectivity would be awesome.

 

[Eric's Edge]

This is very cool. I used to use macintosh.js but found it too much of a resource hog.

 

[pfuentes69]

Hello,
This is insanely great.
I have an issue, though... When I try to upload something to my MacBook (i.e. a game I want to install in a real classic Mac) I just get "document" files.
Is there a trick for not losing the file type info?

Edit: I have also the same problem when trying to move files to the VM. I tried to move an Application or a SIT and the file type is lost.

 

[mihai]

When I try to upload something to my MacBook (i.e. a game I want to install in a real classic Mac) I just get "document" files.
Is there a trick for not losing the file type info?

Edit: I have also the same problem when trying to move files to the VM. I tried to move an Application or a SIT and the file type is lost.

The browser file APIs unfortunately don't preserve metadata (or resource forks). Archives like .hqx or .sits should work though. You may need to manually drag them into the Stuffit Expander icon (it's in the Utilities folder), there's a separate known issue with rebuilding the desktop database that makes the file association not get picked up.

 

[pfuentes69]

The browser file APIs unfortunately don't preserve metadata (or resource forks). Archives like .hqx or .sits should work though. You may need to manually drag them into the Stuffit Expander icon (it's in the Utilities folder), there's a separate known issue with rebuilding the desktop database that makes the file association not get picked up.

Thanks. Actually what I wanted is to “steal” some games of your default setup
I’ll see if I can install StuffIT so I can compress some folders and export.

 

[mihai]

Thanks. Actually what I wanted is to “steal” some games of your default setup

Most of the games are downloaded and installed from existing disk images and archives, see all of the JSON files in https://github.com/mihaip/infinite-mac/tree/main/Library/Games. They have a src_url field the URL where you can get them from.

 

[retr01]

Love this! TBH, it seems to work way better than Basilik or vMiniMac.

I want more options than just Mac SE, Mac II, etc. I'd love to see SE/30, Quadra 950, etc. Oh, SE/30 (24-bit Dirty) and SE/30 (32-bit Clean)?

What is the maximum upload file size?

I want to mount my own HDD or CD images and even start up with my own HDD image. Maybe have a setting to start up my own HDD image?

 

[mihai]

Love this! TBH, it seems to work way better than Basilik or vMiniMac.

I want more options than just Mac SE, Mac II, etc. I'd love to see SE/30, Quadra 950, etc. Oh, SE/30 (24-bit Dirty) and SE/30 (32-bit Clean)?

Out of curiosity, what would the additional ROM options gain you? This is fundamentally a web port of Mini vMac, Basilisk II and SheepShaver, and I've tied to choose a representative set of ROMs that allow the broadest set of operating systems to be run.

What is the maximum upload file size?

It should be 1GB in theory, though I have not tried it in practice.

I want to mount my own HDD or CD images and even start up with my own HDD image. Maybe have a setting to start up my own HDD image?

That's something I'm exploring -- with recent web APIs it should be possible to load a local disk image in read/write mode. You can subscribe to https://github.com/mihaip/infinite-mac/issues/164 if you'd like to get updates.