netizen home registrations open today in our irc channel, as long as you host a cool website with it https://netizen.club/homes/
this is a screenshot that i believe to be from the Mac 512 retail ROM (it says "Insert the initialization disk" in Portuguese). in trying to locate this ROM (the only known dumped Mac 512 ROM is actually the Mac Plus copy) i accidentally found the Unitron 1024's instead.
some misconceptions: Unitron did not work on multiple mac clones, it only changed name:
"Mac 512" is the initial project, which was simply a straight up copy of the original Macintosh with 512K RAM, eventually became closer to a Mac Plus clone
"Turbo Mac" is the same identical machine with improved PAL timings for RAM access which sped it up
"Unitron 1024" is the same hardware with 1MB RAM, in a futile attempt to make it more legally distinct after the lawsuit
none of it fully came to market
the only other known dump of a Unitron Mac 512 ROM is the earliest one, which is identical to the Mac Plus ROM, which caused the Apple lawsuit which shut down the project. had Unitron not rushed to market before they could've made a clean room clone of the ROM (which the eventual Unitron 1024 tried to, too little too late), the Mac 512 project might have passed certification (necessary to be sold) and survived.
i wanted to investigate these more before uploading them but i lost interest. here they are
it looks like they're (at least partially) compiled from C(?), not sure how complete they are, not sure how much of them are still just copied from apple roms. both have the same build date, smaller one seems to boot and the larger one just sadmacs. functionally the only difference i could see are graphics. the sources are as far as we know completely lost.
Operating systems aren’t actually that interesting or important. Their purpose is to let people run apps with a minimum of fuss
The purpose of an app is to let people do a specific thing they want to do, which is usually something unrelated to computers. The things people want to do are the important part, not the apps
Tech culture is a vast collective effort to deny these obvious facts because they threaten our sense of our own importance. We’d rather create imaginary kingdoms to rule than admit we exist to serve others
new on the #linkcache
mini-itx.com - A website maintained since the mid 2000s dedicated to the Mini-ITX form-factor of motherboards
Tom's Toys - A collection of web toys, games, tools and experiments
Mike's Digital Pog Page - Maybe we should bring these back along with 88x31 web buttons
3D GIFs by Dave Sutton - A wonderful, free-to-use collection 3D web animations that retain a GeoCities-like charm
re: danger: linux
@jk Linux can't be a cohesive system because Unix never reconsidered configuration as it evolved from a pile of CLI tools with man pages and a dedicated expert admin to a graphical OS where the user is the admin. an operating /system/ would solve the configuration problem once for all programs. in practice *nix people hear this, think "windows registry" and then implement their own config file parser. or they go GNOME and use dconf (good!) but also remove settings for fun
danger: linux
i use linux every day. and when i want to configure something? i don't know where to look, don't know which one of the many configuration utilities to use, have to go on a big forum thread research session to find out what the best practice is for my situation, don't know which config file to alter, don't know if the file will be overridden in the near or far future, don't know why the changes i'm making aren't working, etc. everything is the Principle of Most Surprise, and it sucks
scourge of the fediverse, retired computer fairies founder (2017-2021), drone #6502, official amiga mascot, begrudgingly making a return to the fediverse to upset those who told us to leave. i've been here longer than you.
https://pronoun.gdn/byte?or=it, robot, check system link above, meat shell is 30yo, no minors thanks
HRT: 15/11/2015
⚠️ do not like or favourite my negative posts: https://computerfairi.es/@mavica_again/110573733959251340 you will be blocked for not following protocol