Brainstorm Query - Has anyone tried?

So I know there was some attempt to replace the Intel kernel with Rhapsody/Darwin, but has anyone tried to port/replace the 68k kernel with NetBSD or some kind of MkBSD [like MkLinux but bsd].  I was thinking long term to contribute to their ability to run OPENSTEP/NEXTSTEP binaries and we'd need a driver shim to allow adaptation slowly of the UNIX bits to new NetBSD bits.  Long term goal is to have the basic gui and userland boot on a modern kernel but to have all the modern bits in the system as well so TLS and openSSL can be built.  Then put a borderless overlay X server on with DGS hooks and that GNUstep environs and finally an xCode translator for building new projects/porting from OS. X back into this system.  The other query would be how would the hardware behave without Mach underneath.

There was an unfinished project to run PPC Mach-O binaries on NetBSD (http://hcpnet.free.fr/applebsd (http://hcpnet.free.fr/applebsd)) that might be a good starting point.

In other news, Jason Stevens on the TUHS mailing list is currently trying to get Mach 2.5 kernel sources to compile and run on x86 (compilation already works in a virtualized MachTen environment):  https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2019-June/017951.html (https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2019-June/017951.html)

However, the legal status of the Mach 2.5 source code seems to be still quite unclear and the bits of source available do not include most of the NeXT-specific things.

-- Michael

Yeah looking specifically for bootstrapping the actual black hardware into the 21st century.  So PPC and Intel are only side mentions as project-alikes.  I was speaking of the NetBSD Next68K kernel.  Either on bare metal or on Mach.  I have a feeling on Mach would make things work more easily, but bare metal might work as well you'd just have to emulate a bunch of things before the existing code can sit on top nonethewiser.  Perhaps a custom hypervisor would do it.

Quote from: cuby on June 28, 2019, 03:02:08 AMIn other news, Jason Stevens on the TUHS mailing list is currently trying to get Mach 2.5 kernel sources to compile and run on x86 (compilation already works in a virtualized MachTen environment):  https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2019-June/017951.html (https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2019-June/017951.html)

Oh I got it to RUN!.... to thunderous silence.  The world at large really didn't care. 

https://sourceforge.net/projects/bsd42/files/4BSD%20under%20Windows/v0.4/Mach25-MK35.vmdk.7z/download

This is a VMDK of Mt Xinu's filesystem with the source code I found on those CSRG CD-ROM's

Any decent version of Qemu or VMware player (or other things probably) can run this.

qemu-system-i386 -M isapc -m 16 -hda Mach25-MK35.vmdk
You get the idea... simple ISA machine, 16MB of RAM and a single IDE disk.  There is also a getty running on COM1 as well.

/usr/src/mach25-X147 is the later Mach kernel source I have found, with a much older i386 port base.  Run the 'build.sh' in the directory and it'll build a kernel. Yes, it's self hosting!  Problems with the rest of the system is that the source to many of the Mach specific utils are missing, and the patches/changes to 4.3 BSD Tahoe aren't anywhere I've seen, and there is some weird things missing in libc.  I was hoping that when I got it running, and it was inevitably posted on various places others might chime in, instead it was pretty silent out there...

https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2019/07/05/mach-2-5-independence-day/ (https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2019/07/05/mach-2-5-independence-day/)

You can find some bits and bobs about my experience with the whole thing.  I haven't tried to run anything from Rhapsody on it, nor any Xinu on Rhapsody.  Maybe it'll run, maybe it wont.

There is also the Darwin 0.1/0.3 source find, and bootstrapping on i386 as well (https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2017/04/22/darwin-0-1-rhapsody-dr-2-booted/), if that grabs your interest!

It just turns out that driver kit stuff is so nested and confusing to me I couldn't get anything better as far as disks going.  But I do try to keep notes and materials available, so don't hesitate to ask!