Catching up with QEMU

So I was looking for some backed up files when I bumped into my Mac OS Anthology collection. I wondered if those files were complete and whether they worked.

I remembered that there was a lot of talk about QEMU a couple of years ago and I had a copy of one of the prototypes somewhere with Mac OS 9.2. It wasn't great. But it worked. I wondered if I could run Mac OS 8.6, as I have this British copy of that version. I know it's silly, but I'm annoyed to see American English everywhere. Seeing the 'wastebasket' instead of 'trash' is nice.

Well, it turns out QEMU can't run Mac OS 8.5, nor 8.6. I decided to run 9.2 instead.

I was aware of the Mac OS 9 lives community, so I decided to start from there. Maybe they are talking about QEMU as well. Well, they were, but Emaculation was ahead in the curve. Mac OS 9 Lives however, had something nice in store: a bespoke Mac OS 9.2.2 installation and tools. So I downloaded and tested on QEMU and it was good. I then downloaded the screamer version from Emaculation with the virtio drivers and it was better. Next thing was to patch the screen resolutions with bespoke numbers to match my Mac's.

I got an M2 Macbook Pro. And Mac OS 9.2.2 runs on QEMU smoothly.

Now what?

I've noticed Mac OS 9 Lives has a list of apps in development. For Mac OS classic! "That is impressive" - I thought to myself. I could do something similar. Might be fun.

And so the idea was born. I will code something for classic Mac OS. I just need to figure out what.

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