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Re: Mac OS X on non-Mac G4/G5 hardware

On Monday, February 23, 2004, at 07:08 PM, Dave Hersey wrote:

Hi,

[Apologies if this is in the archives, but I just subscribed to this mailing
list, and I can't find anything with the list search engine at Apple or with
Google. I know there are 3rd party archives of the Cocoa mailing list, so if
there's a better way to search these list archives, please let me know.]

Anyway, my question is, "What is required to bring Mac OS X up on non-Mac
hardware?" Apple first told me it was not possible, but then I noticed that
there are apparently companies selling "multi-headed" servers that can run
Mac OS X. For example, see:

http://www.alternativelan.com/products/n1000.html

If these guys are running all those OS's in a box, it's because the box holds the vendor's hardware needed to run them. I don't think this box represents "running Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware".

When I asked Apple about that, they told me that it might be technically
possible to do, but they couldn't help, and I should ask on this list. Fair
enough.

Suppose that the hardware in question had a G4 or G5 on-board. What is
required (in a Darwin port and hardware) to get Mac OS X to successfully
install and run?

It is technically feasible, but I don't know that it is legally feasible. AFAIK, there are licensing issues you will have to wrestle with. Apple would prefer, I'll bet, to keep control of its products, in its own way.

On the subject of technical feasibility, you would need to replace all the low-level OS code that deals with specific devices, handle the low-level booting process, and worry about all sorts of nit-picking at the edges, where things go wrong in quiet ways.

The Darwin OS itself does run on non-mac hardware (check the darwin-x86 list, and opendarwin.org), but that is by no means Mac OS X. In short, the problem is less the processor in use, and more the device support (which can include a lot more headaches than just trying to figure out register layouts; the semantics is important as well).

Don't know if that helps, but there you have it.

Regards,

Justin

--
Justin C. Walker, Curmudgeon-At-Large *
Institute for General Semantics | Men are from Earth.
| Women are from Earth.
| Deal with it.
*--------------------------------------*-------------------------------*
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 >Mac OS X on non-Mac G4/G5 hardware (From: Dave Hersey <email@hidden>)



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