implementing Carbon — #7

Post #7 by Mike Richardson

Source Forum	68kMLA
Category	Development
Post Date	Fri, 31 Jul 2009 - 18:25
Original URL	https://68kmla.org/bb/threads/implementing-carbon.18131/

Post

Only if they are already Carbon applications, there never was a carbon for 68k.
classic 68k programs call trap instructions to get into the toolbox

68k CFM and PPC CFM applications call via "InterfaceLib" and other libraries.

So a 68k binary isn't going to give a damn about your CarbonLib it will just trap away and crash if there is no Mac ROM or emulator.

[...]

Prior to Carbon, all the structures were very very opaque and applications bit twiddle in GrafPort and WindowRecords themselves. Carbon tightned that all up and required accessors. So even if you had a CarbonLib, any application expecting to twiddle its own bits or use low memory variables would misbehave.

Click to expand...

So basically, it's Just Not Possible to write something that's the Macintosh equivalent to WINE (a compatibility library), because Apple made the System Software reliant on hardware-specific behavior. The only way to run Mac executables is to run the Mac OS on (real/emulated) hardware.

It's not impossible, but it would be very difficult. That is why the Classic environment is what it is - a full blown copy of OS 9, running in a sort of virtual machine. It was just so much easier to do it that way, I can kind of understand now.