MicroEMACS on Apple's Open Firmware?

[nicolascolla]

I have an iBook G3 (Open Firmware BootROM 4.5.2f2) and I was wondering if there is any way to run the copy of MicroEMACS included in this repository as a client on it, just like it can be done on the OLPC.

I have tried to compile it under NetBSD, running "make emacs" from both the clients/emacs/arm and clients/emacs/x86 folders. During the x86 build, the assembler complains about invalid instructions, which makes sense since I'm using a PowerPC processor. During the arm build, both NetBSD make and GNU make complain about missing dependency operators. Running "make" from the clients/emacs parent folder also fails.

Is it possible to build it under PowerPC? And, if it is, how would one go about running it inside Apple's Open Firmware version?

Thank you!

[MitchBradley]

In principle, it ought to be possible, but I could imagine it taking a lot of fiddling to get it to work. It has been many years since I tried to compile anything for PowerPC. C compilers tend to get pickier and pickier over time so it seems like there is always something new you have to do to make them compile old code without complaining.

Apple took a few liberties with their Open Firmware implementation - or maybe you could say they made some mistakes. However you want to characterize it, I was accustomed to having to tweak some things around the edges to get stuff working on Apple platforms. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple and pulled the plug on Apple's open systems, my incentive to support their stuff just evaporated - so it has been over 20 years since I paid any attention to their Open Firmware.

Good luck.