"Full screen" Classic on Tiger

[AphoticD]

After spending a little time poking around inside the "Classic Startup.app" bundle, the TruBlueEnvironment and ClassicStartup binaries, I was becoming hopeful that I might find a secret "full screen" trigger, which could bring a virtual OS9 desktop to Tiger in the same way that Classic works on the early OS X Developer Previews (and Server 1.2v3 ?).

Unfortunately I've come up blank on this. Does anyone know if this is possible?

In the meantime, I was just playing with Classic on my PBG4 12" and tried an old trick to get the OS9 Finder up and going as a standalone app. It's a little crash happy during file copies, so I can see why it was disabled. Also, the Classic Desktop is invisible (it is being obscured by the OS X Desktop), but you can open your invisible hard drive and other desktop items by typing the start of the item's name and then hitting cmd-<down arrow> to open a window.

1. Duplicate "Finder" from "System Folder" and drag the copy to the "Applications (Mac OS 9)" folder, renaming it to "Finder (Classic)" or something similar
2. Use ResEdit, FileType or similar to change the File type to APPL and Creator to anything else (e.g. "aplt").
3. Save changes.
4. Double click "Finder (Classic") to launch.
5. (Put an alias in your Startup Items if desired).

Combine this with my Backdrop app for something which almost resembles a real OS 9 system on Tiger.

Here are a few screenshots of Classic in this simulated "Full screen" mode.

Backdrop is providing the solid color background for blocking out OS X.

Panic's Audion 3.0.2 is here playing back my favourite Rhythmbox (Ubuntu) Ogg Vorbis stream "HBR1 Dream Factory" ( http://ubuntu.hbr1.com:19800/ambient.ogg ). Ogg is a format iTunes doesn't natively support. There is also an OS X version of Audion 3.0.2 available from Panic's archive.

For anyone interested, The Audion Story is an interesting one as they came very close to banding together with Apple and becoming the foundation of iTunes (which was ultimately built upon Casady and Greene's SoundJam MP).

Anyway, the nostalgia is fun, but I should really get back to work...

EDIT: Panic released a free serial for Audion 3 here.

2nd EDIT: Audion looks like it is compatible with every release of OS X for PowerPC, going back to 10.0. This could make for an even lighter alternative to iTunes on some low-end hardware. (+ it is feature packed)

 

[LightBulbFun]

thats pretty Awesome how you managed to launch the Mac OS 9 finder in classic like that

indeed Mac OS X Server 1.2v3 has a Full screen Mac OS 8.6 BlueBox environment

 

[galgot]

Thanks for that Backdrop app
If I remember well it is in OSX 10 DP2 , there are in fact two apps for using the classic environment, one that works full screen like in Server 1.2v3, and another that integrates classic in the OSX gui (which makes it a bit difficult for the user to know what gui he uses as DP2 still used a platinum style gui...). Can't remember the exact names, but think one was named "Classic.app" and the other "Mac OS.app"... Then in DP3, they dropped the full screen Mac OS app, and introduced Aqua.
But yes, would have been nice to have the choice between fullscreen or not.
Yes Audion I like But like SoundjamMP better , cause you can change skin without opening the prefs Funny now the only way (that i know) to get a skinable music player on El Capitan/Sierra/HiSierra is to install Audacious via Brew or Macport. I've done myself some hires SoundjamMP icons for it.
Will post it if interested.

 

[parrotgeek1]

Thanks for that Backdrop app
If I remember well it is in OSX 10 DP2 , there are in fact two apps for using the classic environment, one that works full screen like in Server 1.2v3, and another that integrates classic in the OSX gui (which makes it a bit difficult for the user to know what gui he uses as DP2 still used a platinum style gui...). Can't remember the exact names, but think one was named "Classic.app" and the other "Mac OS.app"... Then in DP3, they dropped the full screen Mac OS app, and introduced Aqua.
But yes, would have been nice to have the choice between fullscreen or not.
Yes Audion I like But like SoundjamMP better , cause you can change skin without opening the prefs Funny now the only way (that i know) to get a skinable music player on El Capitan/Sierra/HiSierra is to install Audacious via Brew or Macport. I've done myself some hires SoundjamMP icons for it.
Will post it if interested.

Can someone upload the DP2 MacOS.app so i can try to port it?

EDIT: will not be done

 

[AphoticD]

Can someone upload the DP2 MacOS.app so i can try to port it?

Pacifist might be able to extract from the DP2 packages (without having to install). I did a clean install of Server 1.2v3 on my Sawtooth last night to examine the MacOS.app on that system. I’ll post that version when I get a chance.

 

[parrotgeek1]

Pacifist might be able to extract from the DP2 packages (without having to install). I did a clean install of Server 1.2v3 on my Sawtooth last night to examine the MacOS.app on that system. I’ll post that version when I get a chance.

someone already sent it to me but now i need these from dp2


/System/Library/Frameworks/Zip.framework
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DesktopDB.framework
/System/Library/Frameworks/AppleEvents.framework/
/system/library/classic

 

[galgot]

Coming... Stored back the DP2 running Wallstreet before seeing your message yesterday evening

 

[galgot]

Btw, here a screenshot showing these two apps in DP2:


@ AphoticD, do you want these files too when I've finished uploading them ?

 

[AphoticD]

Btw, here a screenshot showing these two apps in DP2:
View attachment 752021

@ AphoticD, do you want these files too when I've finished uploading them ?

Sure, it would be great to get the MacOS app going on Tiger.

Also, the version which shipped with Server 1.2v3 booted Mac OS 8.6, which might be useful as a lighter alternative to OS9 Classic.

 

[LightBulbFun]

Just wanted to mention that DP3 also has the full screen blue box "MacOS.app" environment as well although in DP3 its Mac OS 9 and not 8.6 like in OS X Server 1.2v3

 

[galgot]

Just wanted to mention that DP3 also has the full screen blue box "MacOS.app" environment as well although in DP3 its Mac OS 9 and not 8.6 like in OS X Server 1.2v3

View attachment 752022

maybe better working from that one then, should be more "recent" Don't have a installed DP3.
It runs a OS9 in the DP2 version too btw.

 

[AphoticD]

As a bump to this old thread (which went off topic on the first post), Panic Software went full nostalgic earlier in the year and re-released their classic Audion app in an unsupported version 4.0.1 as a 64 bit app for macOS 10.12+, in order to preserve an archive of over 800 user contributed faces (skins).

This modernized version is super limited (no playlists, just file and URL stream playback) and and I couldn't get it to run properly on Catalina (didn't try Big Sur), but it works fine on Mojave. It's pretty cool to see the classic Audion skin from Mac OS 9 days slip almost seamlessly into modern macOS dark mode.

So here is a music player which theoretically runs on Mac OS 8.6 PowerPC (v3.0.2 with CarbonLib), Mac OS X 10.0 - 10.5 PowerPC, Intel 10.4+, right through to M1 powered macOS.

Audion 4.x source code officially released here.

 

[Jubadub]

This exploit, I believe, is likely a lot snappier in Jaguar, compared to Tiger. Worth a try. Poking at Classic menus alone already were indicative of that, so it must be more obvious when expanded to this level.

 

[AphoticD]

I found there's an undocumented flag called "UseRealFinder" (found in both TruBlueEnvironment and Classic Startup binaries), which can be set with:

defaults -currentHost write com.apple.Classic UseRealFinder -bool YES

(revert with a `-bool NO` option)

I tested this on Tiger and Panther and I get a "Sorry, a system error has occurred. Classic Startup Error type 41" loop after Classic Startup completes. I got the same with Extensions Off. Jaguar and Puma didn't throw the error but did lock up at the Classic Startup progress around the 75% mark.

I am just sharing this (potentially pointless) finding in case there are any MacsBug wizards here who can dig in to determine what is actually going on; Is it trying to load the Classic Finder?

I also found a secret memory adjustment slider after digging around in the Classic Prefspane .nib file. This setting can be adjusted via System Preferences > Classic > (hold option key) > Memory/Versions > Adjust Memory. This could also be completely pointless, but an undocumented discovery nonetheless.

I have a feeling this "UseRealFinder" setting might have applied earlier-on during development, perhaps during the DPs and/or Mac OS X Server. I'll have to fire up a Sawtooth to have a play...



EDIT: The Classic Startup binary also has a `-f /path/to/debug_log.txt` command line argument which would be mighty helpful, but I could only get an empty log using this method. There are also `strings` related to a debug mode within this binary which someone might want to attempt to trigger - I tried a few defaults and command line arguments to no avail.