Macintosh Plus OS

Hello, not sure where this thread is supposed to go.

I picked up an old broken Mac Plus for 20$ and fixed it. It doesn't have a keyboard or mouse.

Here's what I want to do. Can someone tell me how I could make a, sort of, operating system that will boot straight to an image or something like that.

Here's an example: How to make a Mac Plus clock | Macworld

This person made a program that brings up a clock. No going into the Mac OS and starting a full screen program. No need of a keyboard or mouse either!

What I REALLY want to do is have my Mac boot up to this: Chris McKenzie

It's a face that follows the mouse and when it goes off-screen the face looks around trying to find the pointer.

I want it to be a black and white face that is happy and looks around so that I can give my Mac a bit of a personality. Just a cool little thing to have on a shelf in my shop that'll make people laugh while it's looking around trying to find something.

Can someone tell me how I could attempt to do this? Any info will be appreciated.

Thanks

Low level programming like that is going to be tricky especially for someone who has never coded before. It might be better to see if someone has created an app to do this for you.

I found this: Mac-O-Lanterns

At the end, he says that he used JPEGView to display the face but then he says that you could also make animations for it.

"Here's your chance to show off your old-school programming skills." -- he quotes.

I have none. What language is the OS coded in or which language can the Mac Plus be coded in? I'm familiar with loading a kernel to a "boot strap" or "boot loader" to the first section of a floppy disk but that's about it.

I followed a YouTube tutorial on how to make an operating system for Win/Linux in Assembler language but not for Mac.

Zero Cool said:

I have none. What language is the OS coded in or which language can the Mac Plus be coded in?

Click to expand...

I'm not sure how much you know about Mac's...but the original Mac's (before PPC Mac's and before Intel Mac's) used different versions of the Motorola 68000 cpu.

The programming language that these original Mac's used was the "68000 Assembly Language". Here's more info if you are interested:

Folklore.org: Macintosh Stories: Hungarian

HTH,

- Nick

Great!

Thanks Nick. I knew that they were called 68K macs because of the 68000 processors, but I never knew that there was a 68000 Assembly Language!!!

So once I write the program, then all I need is a 800K floppy and a program to write the file to the floppy? I know that for PC OS's there is something called a kernel.bin and it needs to be written to the bootstrap (outermost ring of the floppy) and the rest which can be written in the inside of the floppy.

Are macs special? Do I need to use Disk Copy to mount an image or something or is it the same as PC?

And, on a side note, I have a Mac LC575 but this one is really old and only has a floppy drive. the newer ones had a CD-ROM as well and it also has a 68000 processor.

Thanks

P.S. my name is Nick as well

Zero Cool said:

So once I write the program, then all I need is a 800K floppy and a program to write the file to the floppy?

Click to expand...

You probably know the details of this project more than me. Do you know if this program you will be writing will be able to boot the computer?

If not...you will need OS disk/disks to to boot the computer into the OS. As you know...the Mac Plus only has a floppy drive (there were external hard drives...and external floppy drives).

"Back in the Day"...a user would have to do a lot of "floppy disk swapping". For example...if someone wanted to run MS Excel or MS Word...you would have three floppies:

- OS floppy to boot the computer with.
- Program floppy with Excel installed on it.
- Data floppy to store Excel saved files on.

In your case...you will probably need:

- OS floppy to boot the computer.
- Program floppy (for the program you write).

HTH,

- Nick

I want my program to boot the computer, yes.

I don't want to boot to an OS and then go into the Finder and start the program from there. That would be too easy.

And yes, I have worked on some Compaq Portable II and other computers without hard drives. In fact I still do. I'm pretty old school.