Since Mac OS 9 doesn’t have out-of-the-box support for modern secure networking protocols, you often have to go through a proxy, which is pretty painful. I wanted to make it possible for an old Mac to connect to modern web services on its own.
There are also two related projects for connecting to Bluesky and Mastodon:
https://yllan.org/software/PlatinumSky/ https://yllan.org/software/Palaeomastodon/
Those also add emoji text rendering, since emoji have become such an important part of modern internet culture. Mac OS 9 does support some early Unicode, but it is, after all, nearly 30-year-old software, so that support is naturally incomplete.
The main reason I chose Mac OS 9 is that these modern services are actually fairly demanding for old machines: parsing JSON instead of a more compact binary format, handling generally large images, doing cryptographic computations, and so on. I think 68k machines would probably struggle too much. If the goal is to run independently without relying on a proxy, you really need something with relatively modern specs.
BTW, I haven’t actually run this on real hardware either. I used QEMU during development. I do have an iBook G4 signed by Woz, but it stopped booting a few years ago.
I’d also like to thank bbenchoff’s MacSSL:
https://bbenchoff.com/pages/MacSSL.html
and cy384’s opentransport-mbedtls:
https://github.com/cy384/opentransport-mbedtls
Both were a big help.
Any hunches on why the iBook might not be working? I've been having hell with PRAM watch batteries recently.
I need to get a GPU for my MDD G4 and then I'd love to try them out on real metal
Sure, that wasn't top of the line, but it would definitely restrict your ability to multi task with other programs at the same time. My memory is that many programs used far less than that, allowing you to easily have 5-7 programs open (I had a RAM upgrade for a total of 64 MB).
Maybe because those programs were not doing anything as graphically intensive as this. Or perhaps this programs caches more. When OS 9 was relevant were there any programs with comparable capabilities? Such statements are meaningless unless you have insight into how much memory this task should take (and even that is highly variable depending on how one wants to trade-off CPU vs memory usage). Only then can you determine the difference between a “RAM hog” and your computer being too small.
This is one of those hobby businesses that got out of hand and had to go full time.
But they seem to be selling old Macs, in 2026.
They were a great source for parts etc to keep my old Macs running.
I have a hobby business doing something very similar, except I focus on a specific model—pretty much the most power efficient PowerPC desktop Mac you can get that can still run Mac OS 9, the Mac mini G4. It's at https://os9.shop
This made me remember that I've still got a G4 Mac Mini! I was bringing up a current Linux on it, last time I had it running. 2019, perhaps.
I need to fire it up...
I don't like the idea of vibecoding esoteric stuff though. I feel it kind of ruins the magic of these things when you have Claude bang it out in an afternoon, especially if your project idea is more art than anything. There have been a few vibecoded weird doom ports posted on here before, obviously its just how i feel but it seems like a wasted opportunity.
Far less difficult as coding for an old OS obviously, but still a challenge !
The Web has plenty of potential, but constraints too, mostly because of dominant actors, such as Apple that hid the PWA install button... Or Firefox not having any install banner, whereas chrome does.
Can't post it yet as a proper subject, it can't handle top page load.
The mobile sheet maybe ? This one is hard : there is no good Web mobile sheet available yet...
I used it to install OS 9 on my G4 Mac mini, and, aside from an annoying bug where the USB mouse is completely unresponsive after booting 50% of the time, it works great.
Looks like the most truly-OP upgrade you could do is a dual-1.8ghz G4 upgrade card which is kind of crazy to consider: https://www.sonnettech.com/publicfiles/pdfs/pdf_datasheets/d...
There's faster single thread accelerator cards that were made for a while by a guy on the 68kMLA forums, but that was many years ago. I think Action Retro on YouTube has one that broke 2Ghz
The fastest Mac mini G4 topped out at 1.5 GHz, not 1.67. I'm the guy selling many of those Mac mini G4s upgraded with SSDs on eBay... just a hobby business. Also sell on my website at https://os9.shop where there's a FAQ where you can read more about it and why it's a good model/upgrade to buy or build yourself.
I actually bought one a year or so ago from your eBay store though, looking at my records! Have recommended to retro friends in the Seattle area, too
Probably an SE/30; vastly different internally than the original 68000 SE, more like a MacⅡx wearing a classic Mac shell. Great machine <3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_SE/30
> The cool thing isn't so much os9map (yes it's cool)
OS9Map is absolutely the cool thing here, especially if you consider the platform lacks basics such as TLS and JSON parsing.
(The Hitachi clone is also quite nice.)