SSL / TLS & SDL Ported to MacOS 9

One of the biggest issues holding back usage of retro computing platforms -- including Classic MacOS - is the lack of modern SSL/ TLS. That is getting fixed. Oh, and we're getting SDL too.

More from The Lunduke Journal:

[TheBasedSociety]

Mac OS 9 is one of the most endearingly simple operating systems I have ever had the pleasure to use. I wish something like it still existed.

[MudkipWithShades]

Somehow I’m thinking in the future, there will be an increase in use of retro operating systems aside from Linux distros and this is one of the reasons why.

[soulextracter]

This is great indeed. I just wonder why a bunch of enthusiasts hasn't done this like 15 years ago. Is it really only one dude who went: "Fine! I'll do it myself.." lol.

[harambeexpress]

I'm not wowed that SSL/TLS has been ported. I've used mbed-TLS on microcontrollers... It's just C. But it's a clever solution.

Haiku has had ports for these things for *ages*. But in Haikus case it's open source and a lot of the dependencies are modern/semi-modern so it's a bit easier to do.

[nomadhgnis]

This reminds me of the movie "the beekeeper" where jason went into some hidden place and turned on an old ibm pc xt and turned it on and connected to the internet. That was rather cool. There is also the protoweb project where you can browse old websites on the wayback machine.

[atschram]

Man! I can’t wait until this gets ported to Mac OS Mavericks. The best version of Mac OS X in my opinion! I’d still be on it if I could use modern a modern web browser. My needs haven’t changed since.

[slaapliedje]

Both the Amiga and Atari ST platforms have had SDL2 and SSL ports. Nice that old macs are finally catching up.

[JaceyPrignano]

i loved classic MacOS. i used it up till the very end and a wee bit longer.

[gblargg]

I ran MacOS 9 until around 2009 for development. I've never been as productive as I was there. Surfing the web was painful (with Classilla) due to extreme page bloat and not having a modern JavaScript JIT. I don't miss the lack of a proper Unix shell, though (MPW was nice, and things like cc65 did compile fine on it). I've still got the machine under my desk and it still boots (PowerMac 8500 with 400MHz Sonnet CPU card).

[AbAb-thqe]

This is very cool. Making this work on System 7.5.3 would be nice as that version was released for free by Apple back in the day.

[liaminwales]

I still miss OS9, parts of the UI still feel so clean.
Also lots of bad parts, still when such an old OS has parts that feel missing of new OS's it stands out.

[blakecasimir]

Outstanding work. This is some next level coding wizardry.

[toasTrn]

FYI, I posted a link to this video in the (very quiet) Facebook group "Mac OS 9 - It's still alive!" and it's getting some people excited. 🙂

[jmdennis]

When I bought my first computer I bought a Mac and I believe it was OS 6. The last one I used was Mac OS X when they bought Steve Jobs company and and he came back to Apple.

[NdxtremePro]

Also, would this be compilable on Tiger/Leopard? One of the biggest obstacles to browsers on them is the SSL libraries.

[horusfalcon]

I'm not actually an Apple fan, but this is kinda cool.

[SenileOtaku]

I guess I need to go back to looking for a classic iBook again (not the translcent clamshell though).

Was there a very early version of Firefox that ran on MacOS 9? If so, could use that as a base for a modern browser. Or might have to dig out some Mozilla source code from the era.

[serkandevel]

Reminder that Rust-proponents don't care about older hardware if it doesn't support Rust

[nomadhgnis]

I wonder if they ported sdl and opengl to assembly language. That would be cool. The programmer that does that got me respect. Hope he makes it opensource.

[kneekoo]

Once these get done, the next hurdle will be to work on the browsers and other software requiring certain CPU instructions to run. Yet another headache. 😅