38
votes
Accepted
Why did MacOS Classic choose the colon as a path separator?
Colon was inherited from SOS for the Apple III
Unlike one may assume, MacOS (1984/01) did not inherited the colon (:) from Lisa OS (1983/01), which used a hyphen (-) as path separator, but from Apple ...
- 199k
26
votes
Why did MacOS Classic choose the colon as a path separator?
I think the colon deserves to be considered the original, the one true separator character. All others are mere imitators ;-)
My rationale for this is the seminal paper A General-Purpose File System ...
- 31.9k
25
votes
Why did MacOS Classic choose the colon as a path separator?
The original Macintosh File System did not support directories. But the Mac did support multiple floppy drives from the start, and colon : was used in fairly standard fashion as a drive prefix ...
- 12.9k
20
votes
Accepted
What was the significance of the cursive 'ƒ' in an application name?
It wasn’t typically in the application’s name, it was in the name of the folder containing the application, and used to mean “folder.”
For example, the folder containing SurfWriter, its Apple Guide ...
- 682
20
votes
Early implementations of the `system()` call in a consumer OS
MS-DOS allows an application to invoke a nested application. Processing of the former application will be suspended until the latter application returns, whereupon the former application will ...
- 32.9k
18
votes
Accepted
Why did Mac OS 7 perform poorly with virtual memory enabled?
There are several reasons for the low performance of virtual memory. The implementation had a significant effect.
It keeps ALL of the contents of memory in the VM Storage file, plus however much ...
- 18.1k
17
votes
Accepted
How are File Timestamps recorded in classic Mac OS?
The HFS filesystem stores file metadata in a single large file called the "catalog file", with one record for each file or directory. Creation and modification times are stored as 32-bit unsigned ...
- 8,492
16
votes
Accepted
A good method for formatting a modern device in HFS (Not HFS+)
If you have a system running on your IIci you could presumably use that to format your drive, but I'm guessing that's not the case.
To build a working image on the SD card, there are two things to ...
- 114k
16
votes
Accepted
How do I allocate more memory to an app on Sheepshaver running Mac OS 9?
Click on the application icon, select "Get info" from the "File" menu, and adjust the memory allocation in the window that pops up.
- 8,492
14
votes
Why did Mac OS 7 perform poorly with virtual memory enabled?
I would say poor performance was due to System 7's implementation, and the constraints needed to support existing applications/drivers/extensions. Looking through the documentation, it's not hard to ...
- 241
14
votes
Why did MacOS Classic choose the colon as a path separator?
It's not completely accurate to focus on slashes as the established solution — . was also in the mix, being DEC's choice for both TOPS and VMS.
That said, I'm going to speculate wildly that it comes ...
- 34.4k
13
votes
Building hello world on a Macintosh IIfx with mpw
Classic MacOS uses : as a directory separator. / doesn't have a special meaning and is a legal filename character. Additionally, a leading : is a relative path, not an absolute path.
MacOS ...
- 2,131
13
votes
Accepted
Did the Macintosh Classic series use DMA to display video?
Access to the memory is toggled between the CPU and the video controller every four CPU cycles (the length of a word access[2#p32]) during display of the frame buffer.[1§2] The processor is a Motorola ...
- 18.1k
13
votes
Early implementations of the `system()` call in a consumer OS
All versions of Atari's GEMDOS (first released in 1985) supported Pexec(). Flags permitted launching the child process and waiting for it to finish, or merely loading the child into memory (for ...
- 3,593
12
votes
Do any 'remote control' solutions exist for Mac OS 9.x?
One option would be mac-minivnc a recently published open source project on Github. It claims to be a VNC server for classic Macs (including the 68000 models!) but I haven't used it.
When classic Mac ...
- 12.9k
11
votes
Early implementations of the `system()` call in a consumer OS
Since you mentioned CP/M: At least in its original 8080 incarnation, CP/M does not have any system call that allows a program to launch another and regain control when the program it launched ...
- 6,572
10
votes
Accepted
Why does my Macintosh SE FDHD only see 2 of the 4 megabytes of RAM?
AH! I found out what it was. I'm stupid.
Apparently, I'm supposed to remove the jumper for the 4 MB config.
http://www.ccadams.org/se/ram.html
I hope this question helps someone else out.
- 8,371
10
votes
Accepted
Classilla on SheepShaver for Windows
Usually when you see that message is because the metadata for the file isn't set correctly; this is typical if you're looking at MacOS Classic files that are not on a HFS filesystem.
Brief ...
- 15.3k
10
votes
Accepted
Creating an System Extension (INIT) for classic Mac OS
Turns out the solution was to open ResEdit and lock the INIT resource within my compiled extension. Everything worked as expected after doing this.
- 1,163
9
votes
Dual-booting Windows 98 on an iMac G3
Windows 95 and 98 require an x86-type CPU (and more generally, a PC, with BIOS, etc.), so they can't run on PowerPC G3-based computers without an emulation layer of some sort.
- 114k
8
votes
A good method for formatting a modern device in HFS (Not HFS+)
The HFS Utilities package looks like it will let you format the disk from a Linux system; modern Windows may also be supported (it says "95/NT", which means you may run into permissions errors on ...
- 8,492
8
votes
Accepted
How can I debug a Mac OS Classic application?
Back in the day, MacNosy was the go to disassembler tool to attack things like that. He also wrote a debugger. I can't speak to its status today. Apparently the web site still exists: https://www....
- 11.8k
8
votes
Accepted
ResEdit Decompilers
You might be thinking of Resorcerer (apparently still available for purchase), which was like a beefed up version of ResEdit and included CODE disassembly functionality.
Macintosh Garden has some ...
- 2,131
8
votes
Accepted
Layout of pre-APM Apple partition map
The first Macintosh that supported partitions was the first to support hard disks: the Macintosh Plus, through its SCSI port. This is documented in chapter 31 "The SCSI Manager" of Inside ...
- 15.5k
7
votes
A good method for formatting a modern device in HFS (Not HFS+)
If you are making a share on Windows 2000 Server, make sure you are install the Services for Macintosh component (it's not installed by default). Also you need to be running MacOS 8.5 or later to be ...
- 11.3k
7
votes
Accepted
Trying to build First Mozilla Release (Netscape 5)
Obviously the above links are long expired...
The original links may have expired, but the Internet Archive made a copy of CWASTEEdit.
The Internet Archive does not archive ftp sites, so the file ...
- 18.1k
7
votes
Accepted
Searching for Swedish Mac game from the early 1990's where you try to sneak out of the house
It seems to be "Dubbelmoral" (Swedish wikipedia).
- 2,012
7
votes
Send serial data to Macintosh SE?
The OS itself has no terminal application by default. There have been multiple terminal programs available in earlier times, though. The most prominent and easy to use might have been zTerm. Double-...
- 993
7
votes
Accepted
Open an RSRC "sound file" from a Mac OS 6/9 application
So the answer was to use Resorcerer on the InfiniteMac emulator as explained by Glen Yates in a comment, and using this answer from Kelvin Sherlock to install it we get :
You can listen to the sound ...
- 241
6
votes
Dual-booting Windows 98 on an iMac G3
Not dual-boot, but you could track down an old copy of Virtual PC for the Mac by Microsoft. VPC was an x86 emulator for the Mac OS X PowerPC line of computers and supported Windows 98 out of the box. ...
- 15.3k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible