Mac Emulation / Daydream for NeXT

[Pentad]

Please forgive me if this has been posted elsewhere but I have been following the recovery of the Mac emulator for the Next computer called Daydream. I did not even know there was such an emulator for the NeXT computer and to be honest I was surprised given the bad blood between Apple and the founding members of Next. (Though this was a 3rd party product)

DayDream was very much like Amax on the Amiga as you had a box with Mac roms attached to the computer (in this case the DSP port) so the emulator could be legal.

What I found most interesting was that it took over the entire computer. I would have thought they could run a Mac emulator concurrently with NextStep given the power of the NeXT computer and the multitasking ability of the Unix based OS.

You can read more here (and download the manual!):

http://www.osnews.com/comments/29661

I believe the article (or someone) claims this is the first Mac emulator which I believe is wrong.  I think the first is MagicSac for the ST. However, given the power of Amax, Emplant and ShapShifter (through some dubious code) the Amiga's emulation ability really puts Daydream to shame.

I loved Emplant and used it all time when I was in college. People were shocked that I could run a Macintosh right alongside my Amiga at speeds better than the Mac!

There are videos of it booting and running.  Also, you can grab a copy that does not require the external rom box so you can use it on the Next emulator Previous.  

Pretty interesting,
-P

[Pentad]

http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=340

AMax has 1989 Copyright stamped on its PCB which is way earlier. Amiga and ST weren't real computers though, didn't you know?

I could not find a release date for MagicSac/Spectrum on the Atari ST but I know they did create a Macintosh emulator for the ST first. Amiga folks may not know this but it is one of the reasons we got A-Max.

The programmers who did MagicSac/Spectrum on the Atari tried to port it to the Amiga and failed.  They basically got a very slow, limited memory (64k?) emulator that on ran in Chip Memory.  They announced (via Usenet I think) that they had given up and said the Amiga was not capable of having an emulator given its OS, custom chips,  and memory configuration.

Simon Douglas thought this was crap and decided to write one himself.  Over a weekend, he had the Macintosh boot screen up and running. It took longer for the other drivers and polish but he ended up creating A-max.

You purchased A-max, a set of Mac roms, installed them in the external box, and plugged it in.  Poof!  A working Mac emulator (you could even allocate the 256k Kickstart memory!)

It was also incredibly easy to dump the roms to a file, load them into the correct memory location, and then patch A-max.  A full Mac emulator on one floppy disk. :-)

I was able to talk with Simon Douglas at an Amiga show -a long time ago- and he spoke in great detail about the development of A-max.

Emplant took up the mantle from A-max and did a multitasking Mac emulator.

Not to be outdone, Amax IV was released with very similar features.

Both great products and great designs.  Though I bought and used Emplant for college so I do not know very much about Amax IV.  However, I wish I knew what happened to Simon Douglas...seems like he fell off the planet.

Jim Drew has written much about Emplant, UU, and showing his product off to Apple. It was pretty cool to show people your Mac emulator running right along side your Amiga back in the day.  Good times!

[Pentad]

I wonder if an 040 powered Amiga could make a good go at emulating a similar flavor of NeXT machine.

I had wondered that too.  The 040 Macs where emulated pretty well. Previous works pretty well on the PC/Mac, I wonder if it would be hard to port to the Amiga?  I think it is based off of Hatari which is using SDL.

-P

[Pentad]

NeXT very interesting in terms of computing history.  

When I was at Purdue, the university purchase gobs of NeXT Cubes. We had computer rooms full of them and many of the Mac departments (think DTP stuff) were ready to move over to them.  However, the software never came and it ended up being a joke on campus.

I remember my advanced physics professor ranting about how Jobs said the price would be around $3k for each workstation since that was the feedback NeXT had received about price points from scholars. It shipped at over twice that for a basic unit which my professor said would doom the machine.  True to his word, the physics department never bought a single machine and the machines failed in the marketplace.

For me, this video is a perfect example of not only why NeXT failed but the insanity of Jobs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNeXlJW70KQ

I remember seeing this as a kid (I was 14 in ’85) and thinking how great this company was and how amazing Jobs was as a leader.

Flash forward today and this is an insane timetable. I mean they are talking about building and shipping a new computer in 18 months!  If one of my staff gave a timetable like this I would fire them on the spot.

I understand that Jobs is in his own reality but you have people like George Crow, Dan’l Lewin and Bud Tribble in this room and the fact they went along with this is stunning.  You do see some pushback from Joanna Hoffman (very sharp) and years later she said the film crew edited out a lot of her pushback to make Jobs seem more glorious as a leader.  It was one of the reasons she left NeXT (the insane timetables not the film editing).

We know of course they weren’t even close on their schedule or price. It must of been hell working with Jobs and trying to put together real forecasts and realistic schedules.  I can’t begin to imagine the stress.

Many years later I worked at Navistar in their advanced technology group (bringing cutting edge technology into the company) and the CIO decided to bet against Windows (Navistar was pretty dumb when I was there). We began rolling out OpenStep on new workstations. It was still pretty new and Next released a new video driver which ended up wiping the workstations.  The CIO lost everything he had been working on and that was the end of our pilot program with OpenStep.

-P

[Pentad]

I just wanted to post a quick thanks to Pentad for posting the original thread. Got a chance to check out the work that's been done and it is really neat. Can't wait to try it out on some of my NeXT hardware.

I'm really glad you enjoyed it!  When I stumble across stuff like this I like to share it because I find it interesting but I'm always worried that nobody else will.  :-)

That video really hit me hard because I had seen it as a kid but I had no idea about how anything of this worked.  I mean I knew who Susan Kare, Joanna Hoffman, George Crow, and Bud Tribble were (and of course Jobs) so it seems pretty amazing they could create something like this so fast.

Flash forward 25 years, I stumble across it again and it is shocking that people would agree to 18 months to build a brand new computer (hardware), create a new OS, write all the software and ship it in 18 months.  Like, it's just insane. I have often wished I could talk with Bud Tribble and George Crow and ask them what they were thinking?

If it sounded like I was completely bashing NeXT that was not my intent.  In fact, in the "Steve Jobs History" I find NeXT to be probably the most interesting part.  I still think NeXT was a failure in the marketplace (as a hardware product and then as a software product).  However, I do agree that some great technology came out of it. Jobs was lucky that Apple didn't go with BeOS and that Gassée was a terrible negotiator.

I think one of the best technologies to come out of NeXT was making GUI applications easier to program.  Here is a great video of NeXT vs SUN  back in 1991 with Jobs talking about the future of programming:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGhfB-NICzg

Cheers!
-P

[Pentad]

I would say Apple is very lucky they went with NeXT and not with BeOS and that's coming from a guy who loved BeOS (I've got a BeBox to prove it!).

In many ways it was Apple being bought by NeXT not the other way around. I wasn't really an Apple person until Mac OS X (basically because I was such a fan of NeXT). I've been willing to pay the ridiculous apple tax just to use the OS. Fortunately my job has provided many of the machines I use so I've not had to pay that tax often.

I thought BeOS was pretty amazing for the time.  I had it on Intel and compared to Windows at the time, it was simply mind blowing.  Really, it was very much like the Amiga in 1985.

I too enjoy macOS and Apple hardware. I really like the MBP and have purchased a new one every year since the MBP introduction. I make my money from my MBP so I just can't be down.  Apple hardware is step above the rest and something I can depend on.

However, the last two years I have been disappointed.  I felt the 2015 MBP was over priced for the hardware it had.  I spent $4500 on a 2016 MBP and ended up returning it.  I just thought it was too much for the hardware it offered.  I like Tim Cook but I don't think their computer line is something he cares about.

I get it.  I know they make their money on iOS but sometimes I miss Apple Computer, Inc. They had cutting edge computers and really pushed the industry.  With Apple, Inc., their computer line seems more like an afterthought.

For a company with the kind of money they have, you would their computer line wouldn't fall stagnant.

I apologize for the rant.  :-)

-P