Installing Mac OS on the Nintendo Wii [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdXQ8rcmF48

by gslin • 3 years ago

123 37 3 years ago

youtube.com

mdaniel• 3 years ago

the non-video links:

https://gbatemp.net/threads/mac-on-wiilinux.617142/

https://www.maconlinux.net/

kergonath2• 3 years ago

It seems someone else showed that last year: https://www.journaldulapin.com/2022/11/21/wii-mac-linux/ (in French, but well worth a read; Google translate might help).

Also, the MOL website is a thing of beauty. I never thought I’d be nostalgic for early 2000s websites.

userbinator• 3 years ago

Classic Mac OS, running in an emulator, on Linux running on the Wii.

...but that wouldn't be as clickbaity of a title.

yjftsjthsd-h• 3 years ago

I think it's virtualized but not emulated?

jwells89• 3 years ago

Yes, the GameCube, Wii, and Wii U use PowerPC CPUs so this would technically be virtualization.

redbonsai• 3 years ago

Or readable

IntelMiner• 3 years ago

Virtualized Mac OS, running on Linux, running on the Wii

...But if you're going to be pedantic, at least be correct :)

Wowfunhappy4• 3 years ago

It's not a particularly pedantic correction, as there is a major performance difference. This looks like it would actually be usable on the Wii, if not for the unfortunate text-rendering bug.

whalesalad• 3 years ago

This dudes videos are some of my favorites. I might be insane but I actually enjoy watching someone unbox a pristine copy of Windows ME and install it on an ancient Gateway PC.

xattt• 3 years ago

I can smell the mix of polyethylene and polycarbonate of the box already.

lathiat• 3 years ago

You may enjoy this guy: Cathode Ray Dude [CRD] https://youtube.com/@CathodeRayDude?si=xSx8uUsUoMSraz-H

These two are better known: LGR Technology Connections

dpkirchner• 3 years ago

This isn't exactly the same thing but if you like them you'll probably also like The 8-bit Guy: https://youtube.com/@The8BitGuy

grecy2• 3 years ago

Seems like he might have better luck getting an older MacOS X to boot directly?

bastawhiz• 3 years ago

I'm curious why you think a newer version would be easier. The Wii, after all, is from 2006. It used an IBM processor that used what's essentially PowerPC G3, which Apple started using in 1997.

idinnoaname• 3 years ago

Chances are the commenter you’re responding to threw the “x” after Mac OS as that is the common verbiage for the operating system, not realizing that X represents a version number. I know I’ve made this mistake countless times as well.

grecy2• 3 years ago

I was thinking The X public Beta or 10.0 might be easier because it's BSD, and you can drop into verbose mode and see what's happening.

I had to do some work to get IIRC 10.2 (or maybe 10.3 or 10.4) to boot on my PowerMac G3, but it was doable booting into single user mode and going from there.

epcoa3• 3 years ago

That is not workable. Unlike a G3, The Wii is not a Mac in any meaningful way and shares virtually no hardware other than the processor (tons of embedded shit used Power PCs, that doesn’t make them a Mac any more than a Google Pixel is an iPhone because it uses Arm arch). This method is leveraging the (ancient) driver support already developed for Linux to run on the Wii. No version of OS X has drivers for the Wii and I don’t know of any prior effort to do so.

Mac OS X does have some FreeBSD parts, but Darwin is not FreeBSD, especially at the hardware interface.

duskwuff2• 3 years ago

No version of OS X has drivers for the Wii

But the XNU kernel is open-source, so -- in theory -- one could write those drivers.

Classic Mac OS is much less open, and less well-documented. As far as I'm aware, there's never been any successful third-party attempt to "port" it to new hardware.

kergonath2• 3 years ago

Apparently OS X cannot boot because of the small amount of RAM (around 50 MB). So, maybe an early alpha, but then this adds a whole lot of things that can go wrong. I think even the public beta required 128 MB.

Also, MOL officially supports only Puma and Jaguar.

fouc• 3 years ago

Interestingly the Wikipedia pages for both Mac OS X 10.0 & 10.1 mention

unofficially 64 MB minimum

Wowfunhappy4• 3 years ago

Anyone want to speculate on the cause of that text rendering bug? I hate it when everything seems to work so well, except for one absolute show-stopper.

gymbeaux3• 3 years ago

OS 9 ran on PowerPC CPUs (like the one in the Wii) and more or less supported ATI and NVIDIA GPUs of the era (90s), but the GPU in the Wii, which can be traced back to the GPU in the GameCube, was created in 2000, so I would guess it’s a small change between the ATI GPUs of the 90s and whatever they changed for the GameCube GPU, which then was passed down to the Wii GPU.

Graphics drivers are always a fickle thing with modern hackintoshes, so I would guess it has to do with the GPU “driver”. It could also be related to VRAM as the GameCube and Wii GPUs were likely both significantly weaker than the average desktop GPU of their respective eras. I know for sure the Wii GPU was already antique when the Wii was released because the Wii only output up to 480p, a joke in 2006 when 1080p TV were starting to become mainstream… so from that perspective we can’t be surprised that this thing is struggling with text rendering, if the GPU is indeed the culprit.

Wowfunhappy4• 3 years ago

I would have assumed Mac OS 9 used CPU rendering for the UI, though. On the Windows side accelerated rendering didn't become a thing until Vista AIUI.

Also if it was GPU rendering I'm surprised any of this works at all.

gymbeaux3• 3 years ago

It wouldn’t have been hard for the author to title the video “installing Mac OS 9 on the Nintendo Wii”, but then people like me wouldn’t have watched the video expecting “macOS”. Obviously getting OS 9 on it is much less difficult and much less impressive.

Wowfunhappy4• 3 years ago

It looks like this channel focuses on vintage technology, so I don't find the title unreasonable in that context. It's more confusing on Hacker News where that context is removed, but that's not the creator's fault.

Would you feel differently about the title if he'd gotten early OS X working? He actually wasn't so far off from that. MacOnLinux supports up to 10.2, it didn't boot in this case but it theoretically should have worked given the same setup.

Installing Mac OS on the Nintendo Wii [video]

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