Thread

Developing for 68k Macs on a modern(ish) Mac?

68kMLA Development 19 posts Sep 27, 2014 to May 25, 2016

#1 Sat, 27 Sep 2014 - 02:48 68kMLA

Is it possible to develop for 68k Macs on my MacBook running Mavericks? If now, my iBook G4 or iMac G4 (can boot OS 9) running Tiger? Basically, if possible, I would like to develop for 68k Macs, mostly for System 6 on a Macintosh Plus on a modern(ish) Mac. Is this possible? If so, what tools would I need to use?

#1 Tue, 1 Apr 2008 - 02:42 PPCMLA

I have a used titanium g4 for sale. It has some small 3 very small dents on the top, it has been hit in the corner (hardly dented the lcd frame or the bottom case but did leave the white plastic white part cracked though now held together with tape this is very small) it also has one other small crack on the top case but again this one was hardly noticeable. It will come with a Power supply (White apple bradded) and I have a dead battery (the battery is beat up a bit but it would be included if you want to fill that void it has been opened before and has two cracks in it on the top of it that you will not see since its the part that goes into the computer) Other then that there are only some scratches typical of a used computer. The screen is bright and I can not find any dead pixels there is some wear on it but is not very noticeable when the screen is on. It is running leopard with no problems but I will Have to reinstall 10.2 (to be legal) but at least you know it will run it. It has a 60gb hd, 512mb ram, airport.

Its a great computer Would like to get $550 via Paypal shipped/insured to any Paypal verified addresses in the continental USA, but I will consider reasonable offers. I can also provide some pictures (They may not be great quality but should be enough to see the condition)

eBay ID: GTGEBA

#2 Sat, 27 Sep 2014 - 03:02 68kMLA

grab a copy of Metrowerks Pro 6.0.... and Mac OS no newer than 10.4 Tiger. You can run it in classic mode...you can also copy the compiler tools into Metrowerks Codewarrior Pro 7.0 from what I understand and use that.

Also the guy developing Browsy for system 6 is looking into using Retro64 Gcc from Linux... probably builds on Mac as well there are limitations to that however that have been brought up.

If you want to develop on a 68k mac you'll be in for a long wait to hunt down Metroworks Pro 4 its nearly unobtainuim. (I still haven't gotten a copy of it and I've been looking for awhile)

#3 Sat, 27 Sep 2014 - 15:29 68kMLA

You can start coding now and compiling later, you will need a minimum of a Text Editor - Text Wrangler is the best for OSX and its System 6/7 counterpart - BBEdit. You can write up the code and save it as text (.txt) file.

Now which environment to program in? C/C++ or 68K Assm? You can try to find MetrWerks Pro or you can use Symantecs C/C++. Codewarrior (6 Pro is the last 68K version) is another C/C++. There are others out there to look for.

You will also need ResEdit or Super ResEdit to built your resource forks.

#4 Sat, 27 Sep 2014 - 16:26 68kMLA

Elfen said:
You can start coding now and compiling later, you will need a minimum of a Text Editor - Text Wrangler is the best for OSX and its System 6/7 counterpart - BBEdit. You can write up the code and save it as text (.txt) file.

I've been wondering if there was a version of Text Wrangler for the classic Mac OS. Do you happen to know the last version of BBEdit that will run on OS 9 that I can use on my PB 1400cs?

#5 Sat, 27 Sep 2014 - 17:48 68kMLA

BareBones Inc still has BBEdit for OSX.

But searching the Internet, the freeware version used for System 7 - 8 BBEdit Lite 3.5 can be found. I found it here:

https://www.vulcanhammer.org/downloads/macintosh.php#.VCbkfEZ3zTM

- Scroll down a bit, its like the second item going down.

I have BBEdit Lite 4.0.1 on my system and it works fie on OS 9.22; I just can not find it on the net. BareBones gave up on the Freeware BBEdit Lite on OS 6 - 9 for Text Wrangler on OSX. BBEdit 3.5 should work on OS 9 and 8.

#6 Sun, 28 Sep 2014 - 05:35 68kMLA

Writing code without a compiler seem pretty impractical... for one the old apis are probably not familar and two incremental development is important to avoiding bugs especially with older compilers.

#7 Sat, 4 Oct 2014 - 16:46 68kMLA

Funny you would say that, Cb88. I used to do that all the time in the 1980s and 90s. From punching out punch cards on an IBM Punch Card Typewriter to writing assembly code, doing it on paper by hand and then typing up the code. Then run the program through my head to see if it runs logically. Once I'm satisfied with the code, then I compile it and with my programs, its about 95% bug free. 95% bug free is hard to obtain and many programmers would not want to do this and they end up with buggy software. This is just an exercise in logic, which is easy. I do not know why programers don't do this and assume their work is right when most of the time it is not and then spend hours and hours of debugging the software. Running the code in your head and making corrections as needed saves you (the programmer) for hours of debugging headaches.

#8 Sat, 4 Oct 2014 - 21:22 68kMLA

I used to write and modify direct machine code on the 6805 variants. Until i finally got my hands on an assembler to make use of mnemonics. Made life easier.

Everytime I added a block of machine code, I had to go and fix all the indirect/relative jump calls because of the now re-arranged addressing from moving things around/adding code. Thank god an assembler does all this for you.

I used to be real heavy into 6805 programming/hacking back in the day. Not so much anymore. I havent messed with it in a few years. I moved over to AVR. It was funny, I used to dump integrated ROM code from 6805 stuff using a well-placed glitch.

#9 Mon, 6 Oct 2014 - 00:42 68kMLA

I did the same thing for 6502, TechKnight. I know EXACTLY what you went through!

#10 Mon, 6 Oct 2014 - 23:36 68kMLA

techknight said:
It was funny, I used to dump integrated ROM code from 6805 stuff using a well-placed glitch.

Wasn't the CUDA ADB controller (341S0788) purported to be a custom 6805 processor? It would be pretty cool if you could pull the code out of one of those. They're found on Macs starting some time around the Quadras and go at least through the PPC Macs.

The supply of scavenged ones must run out eventually. It might be nice to be able to program up a replacement from a 6805 in the proper package.

On the other hand, it appears that sellers on Ali Express have them for sale for $1 - $1.25. Strange. I can't tell if they're new unused stock or used scavenged from old boards stock...

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/341S0788/1884263656.html

#11 Tue, 7 Oct 2014 - 00:19 68kMLA

Well the trick is the 6805 has to have a command interpreter, the key is to feed in a packet that contains machine code to bitbang a port pin. the glitch is then to bounce into RAM and execute it.

#12 Sun, 26 Oct 2014 - 05:07 68kMLA

I agree you should logically understand the code you write....

however..... he asked for a compiler not an assembler and chances are if you are used to new compilers features you take for granted may be completely broken in the old compilers or non existant.

so better to have it on hand from the get go so you can test incrementally as you go along rather than developing the whole program essentially on paper to find out it won't work without a rewrite.

Also I said retro64 earlier when it is acutally Retro68 and apparently its being used to build the Browsy App for system 6. https://github.com/clehner/Browsy

#13 Mon, 27 Oct 2014 - 17:14 68kMLA

Okay, to summarize the tools I know:

1. The latest, free (as in beer) version of MPW, available from Macintosh Garden. Should run under Classic.

Has a C compiler, and a horribly outdated C++ compiler. No C++ standard library.

2. The compilers and libraries from 1., but run from the Mac OS X command line using the MPW emulator: https://github.com/ksherlock/mpw

3. CodeWarrior Pro 4 (hard to find). The C++ compiler is surprisingly decent for its time, but still horribly outdated. A standard library exists, but I doubt it really conforms to the C++98 standard.

4. Various older compilers might run under Classic, too.

5. My own https://github.com/autc04/Retro68 does run on G4s with Tiger. The only way to get *modern* C99 and C++11 for old Macs. Also, definitely a less polished product than the other options. It works, but you may run into bugs and unfinished features at any time.

#14 Fri, 31 Oct 2014 - 01:39 68kMLA

Since CWP has already been mentioned a number of times, for convenience's sake, you can grab the patches for any version of CodeWarrior from this mirror; ftp://ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de/pub/mac/lang/Metrowerks/ .

Granted, you're still stuck with a fairly old compiler and IDE with its own unique bugs. But at least you'll be able to bypass a few of those bugs.