Recent posts

#81

Software / Re: I have a couple of updates...

Last post by onionmixer - Sep 29, 2026, 01:22 AM

Speaking of qemu, a particularly useful thing for some enterprising soul would be to fix the SCSI bug in qemu-SPARC that makes installing OPENSTEP nearly impossible. (It happily boots, but freezes during disk preparation.)

If it's okay if it takes some time, I'll take a look at it once I finish developing the Radeon 9250 PCI driver I'm currently working on. I think it might actually be possible. After all, QEMU lets you attach GDB directly (which is why I love QEMU )

#82

Software / Re: I have a couple of updates...

Last post by onionmixer - Sep 29, 2026, 01:18 AM

I'm here! If you did send an email it seems to not have to gone through (it's just my (GitHub) username@gmail). I have PRs open now, so feel free to fire away. All of my 2026 work is AI too, so it's no problem haha (it fixed the two sticking issues that had prevented full NeXTstep boot since 2011...in one night). NeXTDimension is on the table, but will require heterogeneous TCG backends, which I am working on right now for a different hw target.

I sent an email on September 26, 2026. I'm guessing it might have been caught in a spam filter or something..... would it be alright if I tried submitting the PR again?

#83

Software / Re: I'm currently analyzing th...

Last post by onionmixer - Sep 29, 2026, 01:15 AM

When I was trying to find the VESA VBE code in the OS4.2 patched kernel the Darwin 0.3 kernel sources helped me a lot.

I'm asking because I'm not entirely sure... are XNU and Darwin very different?

#84

Software / Re: I'm currently analyzing th...

Last post by onionmixer - Sep 29, 2026, 01:11 AM

The GhidraMCP is a hoot also.

I'm using Ghidra and IDA with MCP for my work (I'm using these for driver development and game engine development too). And since IDA has limitations with m68k and sparc, I'm using Ghidra as an IDA plugin (which is another separate project by itself).

Where there's a will, there's a way, right? I still have a long way to go, though, haha.

#85

Software / Re: I'm currently analyzing th...

Last post by itomato - Sep 28, 2026, 06:24 PM

When I was trying to find the VESA VBE code in the OS4.2 patched kernel the Darwin 0.3 kernel sources helped me a lot.

The GhidraMCP is a hoot also.

#86

Software / Re: I have a couple of updates...

Last post by jade_nekotenshi - Sep 28, 2026, 04:40 PM

Speaking of qemu, a particularly useful thing for some enterprising soul would be to fix the SCSI bug in qemu-SPARC that makes installing OPENSTEP nearly impossible. (It happily boots, but freezes during disk preparation.)

#87

Software / Re: I have a couple of updates...

Last post by ChickeNES - Sep 28, 2026, 04:26 PM

PS. If anyone happens to know or can get in touch with the creator of the qemu-NeXT project, could you please let them know about this?

There is a gmail address listed on his main github page: https://github.com/blanham

Thanks a lot! I'll shoot him an email. I honestly didn't even think to check his main page for an email address!

I'm here! If you did send an email it seems to not have to gone through (it's just my (GitHub) username@gmail). I have PRs open now, so feel free to fire away. All of my 2026 work is AI too, so it's no problem haha (it fixed the two sticking issues that had prevented full NeXTstep boot since 2011...in one night). NeXTDimension is on the table, but will require heterogeneous TCG backends, which I am working on right now for a different hw target.

#88

Software / Re: Resurrecting NeXTmail and/...

Last post by jade_nekotenshi - Sep 28, 2026, 05:40 AM

Well, I've used Claude to build an engine for SSH and TLS, but the throughput using the chacha20-poly1305 cipher (the fastest modern cipher without hardware assistance) is only about 256kbps IIRC. That's probably fast enough for it to work, but it'll be slow if you have attachments or a lot of mail. Another option for that might be a proxy that lives elsewhere on the LAN, converting IMAPS into IMAP.

I might be able to optimize it further. Right now it's got some bugs that make it not work correctly on 68040 but those are probably surmountable.

#89

Software / Re: Resurrecting NeXTmail and/...

Last post by ZombiePhysicist - Sep 28, 2026, 05:26 AM

I do wonder if ai couldn't solve for making a good enough TLS engine that would work on at least the 040. Harder for a modern high bandwidth web stream, but for email seems in the realm of plausible.

#90

Software / Re: Resurrecting NeXTmail and/...

Last post by jade_nekotenshi - Sep 28, 2026, 04:26 AM

I wonder if it'd be possible to port GNUMail.app back to OPENSTEP? I think it's modern enough to play nice with modern SMTP and IMAPS.

The requirement for TLS kinda shuts out black hardware, mostly, but it might be doable. I have a few other projects in the pipeline, but maybe Claude could figure it out. I'm not actually sure.