That's the hacker spirit.
https://github.com/Wack0/entii-for-workcubes
See also: https://gbatemp.net/threads/windows-nt-ported-to-wii.667959/
Not to distract too much from the main topic, but what do you think about the Hopper disassembler? I have only used Radare2, IDA Pro, and Ghidra. Though, I haven't used the latter two on MacOS. What do you prefer about Hopper? I have been hesitant to purchase a license because I was never sure if it was worth the money compared to the alternatives.
I've tried Ghidra, and while extremely impressive and capable, it might be the most Java-feeling app I've ever used. I'd love for someone to whip up an AppKit + SwiftUI shell for it.
You are correct about the UI/UX. I do think Hopper is ahead of others in that regard. Though, Radare2 being a CLI tool is nice as well. Though, I haven't attempted to use Radare2 for MacOS/iOS disassembly. Though I must ask, why are you disassembling UIKit? Looking for private API behavior or working around bugs? I've been learning more about iOS in my spare time, because despite my love for Swift, I have never used it for iOS. I only have used Swift for MacOS automation, i.e., AppleScript replacement via the Accessibility, Core Foundation, AppKit, etc..
> Ghidra, and while extremely impressive and capable, it might be the most Java-feeling app
I chuckled while reading this because I had the exact same thought when I first used Ghidra. I haven't tried Ghidra on MacOS because I will not taint my machines with the impurities of Java. I also do not want to enable Rosetta, so that was another obstacle in trying Ghidra on MacOS. In Ghidra's defense, using Java was a pragmatic choice. The "write once, run anywhere" promise of Java is likely a near-necessity for a disassembler for government operations.
Exactly this!
But man, this is way ahead of what I could do. What this dude accomplished blew my mind. Not only the output (running MacOS on a Wii), but the detailed post itself. A-MA-ZING.
This is exceptional work. Unlike the low-effort slop posts I see here on "Show HN".
The build-in-public era of hacking has really turned this field into an influencer economy.
If you like this story, you might also like the story of how Mac OS X was ported to Intel as well.
I remember reading this back then. Amazing story. All the secrecy, and needing to be a very small team.
There are definitely no buses that wide.
Can’t wait for his sequel “I received a Cease and Desist Letter from Apple; Feeling encouraged, I registered the trademark ‘Wii subsystem for macOS’”.
EDIT: Oh interesting, the final paragraph says NT has been ported, didn't know that. Sadly, no pun is mentioned in that project.
Maybe it was a legal worry.
A side note: you embedded .mov videos inside <img> tags. This is not compatible with all browsers (notably Chrome and Firefox), which won't load the videos.
[ ](image_url.png)
(Of course, I can also right-click and do "Open image in new tab", but that's one click extra...)
Congrats on the awesome project, BTW! You were lucky that I wasn't sitting next to you on the plane. I would have wasted so much of your time asking dumb questions.
Before figuring out how to tackle this project, I needed to know whether it would even be possible. According to a 2021 Reddit comment:
There is a zero percent chance of this ever happening.
Feeling encouraged, I started with the basics: what hardware is in the Wii, and how does it compare to the hardware used in real Macs from the era.
>Go ahead and downvote me. I am correct on every single thing I said
Always great when your debugging feedback is via a led xD
> At this point, the system was trying to find a framebuffer driver so that the Mac OS X GUI could be shown. As indicated in the logs, WindowServer was not happy - to fix this, I’d need to write my own framebuffer driver.
I'm surprised by how well abstracted MacOS is (was). The I/O Kit abstraction layers seemed to actually do what they said. A little kudos to the NeXT developers for that.
That said, indeed, the abstraction layer here is delightful! I know that some NetBSD devs managed to get PPC Darwin running under a Mach/IOKit compatibility layer back in the day, up to running Xquartz on NetBSD! With NetBSD translating IOKit calls. :-)
But that's a hazy, 20 year old memory.
With that said, I haven't developed drivers for any other platforms, so I really can't say if the abstraction is good compared to what's used by modern systems.
EDIT: also, I just noticed on a second pass the system is addressing 78mb of ram, potentially meaning the ram spans the gddr3 and sram, I'm amazed this works as well as it does with seemingly heterogeneous memory
monkpit•1h ago
Honestly, I would have said the same. Great work!