I’m the author. This is an experiment of mine in figuring out how to let Mac OS 9 connect to modern network services and environments.
Since Mac OS 9 doesn’t have out-of-the-box support for modern secure networking protocols, you often have to go through a proxy, which is pretty painful. I wanted to make it possible for an old Mac to connect to modern web services on its own.
There are also two related projects for connecting to Bluesky and Mastodon:
Those also add emoji text rendering, since emoji have become such an important part of modern internet culture. Mac OS 9 does support some early Unicode, but it is, after all, nearly 30-year-old software, so that support is naturally incomplete.
The main reason I chose Mac OS 9 is that these modern services are actually fairly demanding for old machines: parsing JSON instead of a more compact binary format, handling generally large images, doing cryptographic computations, and so on. I think 68k machines would probably struggle too much. If the goal is to run independently without relying on a proxy, you really need something with relatively modern specs.
BTW, I haven’t actually run this on real hardware either. I used QEMU during development. I do have an iBook G4 signed by Woz, but it stopped booting a few years ago.
For the time when OS 9 was relevant that would have been a RAM hog. My iBook (first generation) had 32 MB RAM on board (plus an upgrade slot, how refreshing).
Sure, that wasn't top of the line, but it would definitely restrict your ability to multi task with other programs at the same time. My memory is that many programs used far less than that, allowing you to easily have 5-7 programs open (I had a RAM upgrade for a total of 64 MB).
Maybe because those programs were not doing anything as graphically intensive as this. Or perhaps this programs caches more. When OS 9 was relevant were there any programs with comparable capabilities? Such statements are meaningless unless you have insight into how much memory this task should take (and even that is highly variable depending on how one wants to trade-off CPU vs memory usage). Only then can you determine the difference between a “RAM hog” and your computer being too small.
Wow. As a comparison, I just opened a new Google Maps tab in Chrome.
According to the Chrome Task Manager, the tab alone uses 433mb RAM and 34mb GPU memory footprint after first load.
Florb (an FLTK based map viewer similar to Dillo in specs) would use almost the same RAM as native Mac OS 9 software. And yet people say "JS software it's far better". Even a TCL/TK based viewer with TCCLib/TKLib it's far lighter.
JS is easier to develop, easier to deploy cross-platform, and, more importantly from a business perspective, easier to hire for. So it makes complete sense to use JS in the commercial world.
This is really cool, time to dust off an old PowerPC. I've been thinking about building apps for old Mac OS versions for a while with the advent of LLMs, glad to see someone is doing it.
This got me wondering if vibecoding might bring with it a newfound interest in developing apps for vintage computers. Are the LLMs that most people use trained as well on these older coding languages / platforms as they are on modern ones?
LLMs are surprisingly good at dealing with ancient APIs, even terrifying things like VBScript and ActiveX in IE5 (usually with a condescending disclaimer at the end of the response). With a manual on hand to double check it can be helpful sometimes. Gemini (only one I really tried) is very knowledgeable about DirectX 5.
I don't like the idea of vibecoding esoteric stuff though. I feel it kind of ruins the magic of these things when you have Claude bang it out in an afternoon, especially if your project idea is more art than anything. There have been a few vibecoded weird doom ports posted on here before, obviously its just how i feel but it seems like a wasted opportunity.
I have a hobby business doing something very similar, except I focus on a specific model—pretty much the most power efficient PowerPC desktop Mac you can get that can still run Mac OS 9, the Mac mini G4. It's at https://os9.shop
Yes, I have one too. Mine has an external HDD and between the 3 of them it triple-booted OS X, the last PowerPC Ubuntu, and MorphOS.
TBH neither Ubuntu nor MorphOS was a patch on OS X, IMHO. Never re-set the machine up after emigrating in 2014.
But now, I badly want to get MacOS 9 running on it.... Sadly the machine is in my basement in another country, 1000 miles away, though.
Last time I was there, I managed with great effort to find my iBook G4. It runs fine. But it needs a new reed switch and the replacement process looks horrendous...
Would love to see the source code for this and the underlying details like Classic or Carbon, and the libraries mentioned on Tinker Different for TLS, HTTP/2, and Unicode
I have a 2003 iBook sitting in one of my boxes, but I still haven’t had time to reinstall Mac OS 9. I tried with some CDs, but so far I haven’t been able to reset the volume, and Tiger loads automatically. I want to go back and keep using one of the most beautiful OSes Apple ever made.
Great work developing for OS9 still. I had taken started developing in Think C for a few months as a fun side project to work , and it still has some interesting ideas for development. Plenty of communities for this nowadays still.
Shameless plug : I'm working on https://cartes.app, a Web OpenStreetMap app.
Far less difficult as coding for an old OS obviously, but still a challenge !
The Web has plenty of potential, but constraints too, mostly because of dominant actors, such as Apple that hid the PWA install button... Or Firefox not having any install banner, whereas chrome does.
Can't post it yet as a proper subject, it can't handle top page load.
Currently my "big" native 9.2.2 system is a MDD G4 with a Sonnet 1.8GHz dual 7447A upgrade, 2GB RAM (1.5GB useable in OS 9) and an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro. I'm sure there's a config more extreme than that out there. It is a pleasure to use even though it's one of the windtunnel systems.
And, unofficially, MacOS9Lives can boot directly to OS 9 on FW800 PowerMacs, which have 1.42GHz processors with 2x the L3 cache. Officially, those machines only supported OS 9 via Classic.
I used it to install OS 9 on my G4 Mac mini, and, aside from an annoying bug where the USB mouse is completely unresponsive after booting 50% of the time, it works great.
My OS 9 battlestation is a G4 tower (Digital Audio) with a Sonnet dual 1.6GHz upgrade, 1.5GB RAM and a nvidia GeForce4 Ti which is one of the best OS 9 graphics cards available.
You can get a 1.67Ghz G4 Mac Mini on eBay with OS 9 preinstalled. It's wicked fast (especially with an IDE SSD adapter)
There's faster single thread accelerator cards that were made for a while by a guy on the 68kMLA forums, but that was many years ago. I think Action Retro on YouTube has one that broke 2Ghz
> You can get a 1.67Ghz G4 Mac Mini on eBay with OS 9 preinstalled. It's wicked fast (especially with an IDE SSD adapter)
The fastest Mac mini G4 topped out at 1.5 GHz, not 1.67. I'm the guy selling many of those Mac mini G4s upgraded with SSDs on eBay... just a hobby business. Also sell on my website at https://os9.shop where there's a FAQ where you can read more about it and why it's a good model/upgrade to buy or build yourself.
Probably an SE/30; vastly different internally than the original 68000 SE, more like a MacⅡx wearing a classic Mac shell. Great machine <3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_SE/30
The cool thing isn't so much os9map (yes it's cool) , but the fact that the data wasn't locked behind some wall and they were able to do whatever they wanted with it. There are a lot of cool ideas out there that are thwarted because the data is just locked away behind something only a very limited web gui can access, and you are at the mercy of people who's greatest ideas are ways to make the most horrible money extracting experience they can.
Wait but why isn’t it an Electron app? I thought visual apps like this required at least 1-2GB of RAM to run. How can it possibly only need 16MB?! Must be vaporware.
All of my OS-9 development was done on the 68k port. Years before that (mid 1980's), I did a lot of bare metal MC6809 embedded development, but I never did any OS-9 stuff on 6809.
I’m the author. This is an experiment of mine in figuring out how to let Mac OS 9 connect to modern network services and environments.
Since Mac OS 9 doesn’t have out-of-the-box support for modern secure networking protocols, you often have to go through a proxy, which is pretty painful. I wanted to make it possible for an old Mac to connect to modern web services on its own.
There are also two related projects for connecting to Bluesky and Mastodon:
https://yllan.org/software/PlatinumSky/ https://yllan.org/software/Palaeomastodon/
Those also add emoji text rendering, since emoji have become such an important part of modern internet culture. Mac OS 9 does support some early Unicode, but it is, after all, nearly 30-year-old software, so that support is naturally incomplete.
The main reason I chose Mac OS 9 is that these modern services are actually fairly demanding for old machines: parsing JSON instead of a more compact binary format, handling generally large images, doing cryptographic computations, and so on. I think 68k machines would probably struggle too much. If the goal is to run independently without relying on a proxy, you really need something with relatively modern specs.
BTW, I haven’t actually run this on real hardware either. I used QEMU during development. I do have an iBook G4 signed by Woz, but it stopped booting a few years ago.
I’d also like to thank bbenchoff’s MacSSL:
https://bbenchoff.com/pages/MacSSL.html
and cy384’s opentransport-mbedtls:
https://github.com/cy384/opentransport-mbedtls
Both were a big help.
Missed opportunity to call it OpenStreetMac or OpenStreetMac9.
Very nitpick, but you might need to ask for exemption by the OpenStreetMap foundation for using such a name: https://osmfoundation.org/wiki/Trademark_Policy#4._Special_u...
Nice one.
I absolutely applaud you. I'll try running it on a PowerBook G3. About the emoji support: is it something that could work system-wide?
No. It's very difficult to support Emoji system-wide. The native text system is not even unicode.
I can't wait for the development postmortem ;)
Any hunches on why the iBook might not be working? I've been having hell with PRAM watch batteries recently.
As a retro enthusiast, these projects are all absolutely delightful!
I need to get a GPU for my MDD G4 and then I'd love to try them out on real metal
Reminds me of this guy's solid work that includes an LLM integration that works on classic macs 68k and PPC https://www.macintoshrepository.org/68191-legacyai. Use it on my OS 9 PPC.
16 MB RAM required, 32 MB RAM recommended... how refreshing! Great work.
For the time when OS 9 was relevant that would have been a RAM hog. My iBook (first generation) had 32 MB RAM on board (plus an upgrade slot, how refreshing).
Sure, that wasn't top of the line, but it would definitely restrict your ability to multi task with other programs at the same time. My memory is that many programs used far less than that, allowing you to easily have 5-7 programs open (I had a RAM upgrade for a total of 64 MB).
> ...many programs used far less than that...
Maybe because those programs were not doing anything as graphically intensive as this. Or perhaps this programs caches more. When OS 9 was relevant were there any programs with comparable capabilities? Such statements are meaningless unless you have insight into how much memory this task should take (and even that is highly variable depending on how one wants to trade-off CPU vs memory usage). Only then can you determine the difference between a “RAM hog” and your computer being too small.
Wow. As a comparison, I just opened a new Google Maps tab in Chrome. According to the Chrome Task Manager, the tab alone uses 433mb RAM and 34mb GPU memory footprint after first load.
Florb (an FLTK based map viewer similar to Dillo in specs) would use almost the same RAM as native Mac OS 9 software. And yet people say "JS software it's far better". Even a TCL/TK based viewer with TCCLib/TKLib it's far lighter.
JS is easier to develop, easier to deploy cross-platform, and, more importantly from a business perspective, easier to hire for. So it makes complete sense to use JS in the commercial world.
This is really cool, time to dust off an old PowerPC. I've been thinking about building apps for old Mac OS versions for a while with the advent of LLMs, glad to see someone is doing it.
This got me wondering if vibecoding might bring with it a newfound interest in developing apps for vintage computers. Are the LLMs that most people use trained as well on these older coding languages / platforms as they are on modern ones?
LLMs are surprisingly good at dealing with ancient APIs, even terrifying things like VBScript and ActiveX in IE5 (usually with a condescending disclaimer at the end of the response). With a manual on hand to double check it can be helpful sometimes. Gemini (only one I really tried) is very knowledgeable about DirectX 5.
I don't like the idea of vibecoding esoteric stuff though. I feel it kind of ruins the magic of these things when you have Claude bang it out in an afternoon, especially if your project idea is more art than anything. There have been a few vibecoded weird doom ports posted on here before, obviously its just how i feel but it seems like a wasted opportunity.
If anyone wants to buy a refurbished PowerPC Mac, I've had good luck in the past with Operator Headgap.
http://www.headgapstore.com
This is one of those hobby businesses that got out of hand and had to go full time.
But they seem to be selling old Macs, in 2026.
They were a great source for parts etc to keep my old Macs running.
Self promotion but relevant:
I have a hobby business doing something very similar, except I focus on a specific model—pretty much the most power efficient PowerPC desktop Mac you can get that can still run Mac OS 9, the Mac mini G4. It's at https://os9.shop
Excellent!
This made me remember that I've still got a G4 Mac Mini! I was bringing up a current Linux on it, last time I had it running. 2019, perhaps.
I need to fire it up...
Yes, I have one too. Mine has an external HDD and between the 3 of them it triple-booted OS X, the last PowerPC Ubuntu, and MorphOS.
TBH neither Ubuntu nor MorphOS was a patch on OS X, IMHO. Never re-set the machine up after emigrating in 2014.
But now, I badly want to get MacOS 9 running on it.... Sadly the machine is in my basement in another country, 1000 miles away, though.
Last time I was there, I managed with great effort to find my iBook G4. It runs fine. But it needs a new reed switch and the replacement process looks horrendous...
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iBook+G4+14-Inch+1.42+GHz+Reed+...
Would love to see the source code for this and the underlying details like Classic or Carbon, and the libraries mentioned on Tinker Different for TLS, HTTP/2, and Unicode
I have a 2003 iBook sitting in one of my boxes, but I still haven’t had time to reinstall Mac OS 9. I tried with some CDs, but so far I haven’t been able to reset the volume, and Tiger loads automatically. I want to go back and keep using one of the most beautiful OSes Apple ever made.
I love stuff like this. Even though I don’t have a machine capable with running OS 9 natively, I’m glad this exists. Looks awesome!
Great work developing for OS9 still. I had taken started developing in Think C for a few months as a fun side project to work , and it still has some interesting ideas for development. Plenty of communities for this nowadays still.
Man, I miss pre-OSX Macintosh operating systems. They just had more personality than most modern operating systems.
So software with an UI comparable to a modern GTK3/4 uses 50X less RAM. Take notes.
Increasingly seeing retro/throwback projects even within AI systems. Love to see it
16MB requirement! I wish all stuff was lightweight, like this! We’ve lost our way…
That screenshot would look so much better with the correct dimensions.
Shameless plug : I'm working on https://cartes.app, a Web OpenStreetMap app.
Far less difficult as coding for an old OS obviously, but still a challenge !
The Web has plenty of potential, but constraints too, mostly because of dominant actors, such as Apple that hid the PWA install button... Or Firefox not having any install banner, whereas chrome does.
Can't post it yet as a proper subject, it can't handle top page load.
God damn that sticks to your finger. Lovely touch latency.
Did you try it on an old device ? The experience on a less than 5 years old device should be quite fluid.
The mobile sheet maybe ? This one is hard : there is no good Web mobile sheet available yet...
I'll be trying this out on my 500Mhz Powerbook Pismo running 9.2 tonight!
Hmmm. I wonder what the most beefed up OS 9 computer would be... I loved that OS so much.
Currently my "big" native 9.2.2 system is a MDD G4 with a Sonnet 1.8GHz dual 7447A upgrade, 2GB RAM (1.5GB useable in OS 9) and an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro. I'm sure there's a config more extreme than that out there. It is a pleasure to use even though it's one of the windtunnel systems.
I believe from Apple officially it would be the dual 1.25ghz MDD G4. I had one new, and still have it running today!
And, unofficially, MacOS9Lives can boot directly to OS 9 on FW800 PowerMacs, which have 1.42GHz processors with 2x the L3 cache. Officially, those machines only supported OS 9 via Classic.
I used it to install OS 9 on my G4 Mac mini, and, aside from an annoying bug where the USB mouse is completely unresponsive after booting 50% of the time, it works great.
My OS 9 battlestation is a G4 tower (Digital Audio) with a Sonnet dual 1.6GHz upgrade, 1.5GB RAM and a nvidia GeForce4 Ti which is one of the best OS 9 graphics cards available.
The fastest I could find is the G4 "MDD" tower: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g4/specs/powerma... ... Though the 800mhz iMac G4 is a nice alternative (which I happen to have): https://everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac_800_17_fp... Makes for a great Mac gaming machine since it is pretty fast, looks great, is a fully self-contained computer with display, and can run both OS 9 and OS X.
Looks like the most truly-OP upgrade you could do is a dual-1.8ghz G4 upgrade card which is kind of crazy to consider: https://www.sonnettech.com/publicfiles/pdfs/pdf_datasheets/d...
You can get a 1.67Ghz G4 Mac Mini on eBay with OS 9 preinstalled. It's wicked fast (especially with an IDE SSD adapter)
There's faster single thread accelerator cards that were made for a while by a guy on the 68kMLA forums, but that was many years ago. I think Action Retro on YouTube has one that broke 2Ghz
> You can get a 1.67Ghz G4 Mac Mini on eBay with OS 9 preinstalled. It's wicked fast (especially with an IDE SSD adapter)
The fastest Mac mini G4 topped out at 1.5 GHz, not 1.67. I'm the guy selling many of those Mac mini G4s upgraded with SSDs on eBay... just a hobby business. Also sell on my website at https://os9.shop where there's a FAQ where you can read more about it and why it's a good model/upgrade to buy or build yourself.
Huh. I thought it was 1.67 for some reason. My mistake!
I actually bought one a year or so ago from your eBay store though, looking at my records! Have recommended to retro friends in the Seattle area, too
Thanks, much appreciated.
Laptop wise: it's a PowerBook G4 1Ghz 15', Titanium model. Desktop: PowerMac G4 Tower, MDD version.
Officially? A single cpu G4 tower. Beyond that, I'm not sure.
Quite a lot. I remember my dad's SE(?) could be upgraded to 128mb ram or some ludicrous figure, compared to my 8mb 486.
>SE(?) could be upgraded to 128mb ram
Probably an SE/30; vastly different internally than the original 68000 SE, more like a MacⅡx wearing a classic Mac shell. Great machine <3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_SE/30
It's a shame so many of them killed themselves with leaking batteries, hard to find even a non-working SE/30 now for a reasonable price.
The cool thing isn't so much os9map (yes it's cool) , but the fact that the data wasn't locked behind some wall and they were able to do whatever they wanted with it. There are a lot of cool ideas out there that are thwarted because the data is just locked away behind something only a very limited web gui can access, and you are at the mercy of people who's greatest ideas are ways to make the most horrible money extracting experience they can.
I agree that OSM is amazing, but
> The cool thing isn't so much os9map (yes it's cool)
OS9Map is absolutely the cool thing here, especially if you consider the platform lacks basics such as TLS and JSON parsing.
Wait but why isn’t it an Electron app? I thought visual apps like this required at least 1-2GB of RAM to run. How can it possibly only need 16MB?! Must be vaporware.
I was hoping this article had something to do with Microware OS-9, but it doesn't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS-9
If you want something modern connected with OS-9, then I have good news!
https://www.theregister.com/personal-tech/2026/06/25/foss-de...
MC6809 forever!
(The Hitachi clone is also quite nice.)
All of my OS-9 development was done on the 68k port. Years before that (mid 1980's), I did a lot of bare metal MC6809 embedded development, but I never did any OS-9 stuff on 6809.