During Apple’s late-90s struggles with profitability, it made a few overtures toward licensing its software to other computer manufacturers, while at the same time trying to modernize its operating system, which was threatening to slip behind Windows. While Apple eventually scrapped their licensing plans, an interesting product of the situation was Rhapsody OS. Although Apple was still building PowerPC computers, Rhapsody also had compatibility with Intel processors, which [Omores] put to good use by running it on a relatively modern i7-3770 CPU.
[Omores] selected a Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3-B3 motherboard because it supports IDE emulation for SATA drives, a protocol which Rhapsody requires. The operating system installer needs to run from two floppy disks, one for boot and one for drivers. The Gigabyte motherboard doesn’t support a floppy disk drive, so [Omores] used an older Asus P5E motherboard with a floppy drive to install Rhapsody onto an SSD, then transferred the SSD to the Gigabyte board. The installation initially had a kernel panic during installation caused by finding too much memory available. Limiting the physical RAM available to the OS by setting the maxmem value solved this issue.
After this, the graphical installation went fairly smoothly. A serial mouse was essential here, since Rhapsody doesn’t support USB. It detected the video card immediately, and eventually worked with one of [Omores]’s ethernet cards. [Omores] also took a brief look at Rhapsody’s interface. By default, there were no graphical programs for web browsing, decompressing files, or installing programs, so some command line work was necessary to install applications. Of course, the highlight of the video was the installation of a Doom port (RhapsoDoom).
This isn’t the first obscure Apple operating system we’ve seen; some of them have even involved updates to Apple’s original releases. We’ve also seen people build Apple hardware.
Thanks to [Stephen Walters] for the tip!
“an interesting product of the situation was Rhapsody OS”
Not really. Rhapsody is NeXTSTEP with a thin veneer of MacOS style UI. NeXT had already ported their OS to Intel, PA RISC, and SPARC. These were all shipped products in use in places like investment banks.
A PowerPC port existed for a risc workstation that was canceled when NeXT stopped making hardware. Before PowerPC they had ported the OS to the Motorola 88100 risc processor. That was going to be a dual processor box but I don’t recall if the PPC workstation was going to be.
Rhapsody existed because of the Apple-NeXT merger, not the pre-merger OS licensing or Apple’s pre-merger OS development efforts.
Thanks for this. When the comments actually do the job of the article author.
This OS existed because the Apple CEO Gil Amelio urgently needed new markets. This was just before the NeXT-Apple merger. This is just NeXTStep ported to the i386. The kernel was a Mach kernel that was open sourced as Darwin. After the merger, Jobs immediately killed Rhapsody. And NeXTStep and Darwin became the heart of the new MacOS. The major change for MacOS was the display driver. It was changed from Display Postscript and a client-server architecture into a client-only architecture because Jobs wanted to have games for his MacOS, and the latency of the client-server architecture was too high.
The 88100 Risc system was called ¨The Brick”, because it was half the size of a NeXT Cube.
Also interesting is that NeXTStep was also available as an add-on to Windows NT. This was mostly the Enterprise Framework because Amelio noted that the financial market was moving to Windows NT.
I have the same CD as on the picture, and for me it boots from a CD-ROM. No floppies needed. But I am curious what video and ethernet cards you are using. Most video cards only run in a standard VGA mode.
As a last note: Jobs wanted to have me into jail, because I hacked his NeXT network, but a few years later, he wanted me as an employee because I gave a great demo to some bankers who showed up unannounced at a Mathematica conference. Panic in the NeXT boot.
“This OS existed because the Apple CEO Gil Amelio urgently needed new markets. This was just before the NeXT-Apple merger. ”
No, dude. This was entirely after the merger. Maaybe a little work was done at NeXT prior to the merger to freshen up the PPC code.
NeXTStep was ported to x86 years before this.
Jobs hated games and torpedoed any attempts of bringing games into apple ecosystem.
And to make it worse, then some computer freaks had used a NeXT system to develop Doom. 🤢
To an artist, this have hurt twice as much.
https://doomwiki.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP
The 88k processor. Data General had built their next-gen workstations around it, with a VME bus. I designed a (very) low-cost Token Ring card for that workstation, so they could compete for a Forest Service (?) contract.
And then Motorola killed the 88k, and that was the end of that.
My next job (in 94) was in an office building where NeXT was also a tenant.
“made a few overtures toward licensing its software to other computer manufacturers,” the author’s correctly made point is that desire to license made the OS available. Not that the OS was developed specifically to license. It could already exist.
NeXTSTEP / OPENSTEP was also ported to a particular set of RS/6000 IBM workstations which used the PowerPC/POWER1 architecture, so some of the basics were there already, but there was certainly no small amount of work involved in getting Rhapsody going on the Apple hardware of the day. It was also where the ‘colored box’ paradigm was introduced with macOS stuff being ‘blue box’ and ‘OPENSTEP’ being the ‘yellow box’, and as someone else mentioned the x86 port was YB only, and just YB itself was also available under WinNT, primarily to support WebObjects.
The RS/6000 work was VERY early in the 68030 Cube days, possibly before the Cube even shipped.
The x86 port was NOT just the Yellow Box. I used NeXTSTEP on a Pentium Pro and also YB on Windows NT at First National Bank of Chicago / Bank One. I had two different computers on my desk for that. I also had NeXTSTEP running at home on an AMD K6-2 PC I built.
The x86 port of NeXTSTEP was exactly the same as the 68k, SPARC, and HP PA-RISC ports, apart from the architecture specific bits.
Very well presented. Every quote was awesome and thanks for sharing the content. Keep sharing and keep motivating others.
“The installation initially had a kernel panic during installation caused by finding too much memory available.”
I can almost see the kernel panicking: “SO MUCH MEMORY 😱”
(I refuse the logical explanation of a variable overflow)
‘threatening to slip behind Windows’
Nonsense.
It was way behind windows, had been for years at that point.
MacOS7 was a steaming pile.
No protected memory.
No preemptive multitasking.
Was on a par with DOS 4 plus Norton Commander.
DOS 5 was better, Win 3.0 was as better, 3.1 was better, 95 was better, 98 was much better, NT3.51 was in another league.
Before buying Next, Apples attempts to build a decent OS were 3 stooges comic.
A coding they did go.
What do you expect from a sugar water salesman.
Great marketing without any understanding is what I expected.
Not disappointed.
A friend subsequently worked for the frog that had run apples OS efforts into the ground.
He hadn’t learned a damn thing.
That friend was the only person who made money on ‘Health Hero’ stock.
Took my advice and sold it for whatever he could get.
Didn’t make much, but more than anybody else.
Windows 2.x or Windows/386 was comparable to System 5, maybe.
Both had some rudimentary multitasking features.
But it’s a far stretch really. Windows/386 was more advanced, maybe.
Because it added support for multitasking DOS applications and providing EMS.
Windows 3.0 was comparable to System 6, I think.
Both had plain GUI, for example. 32-Bit support was rudimentary, still.
Mac users had to use Connectix Mode32,
Windows users had to use Watcom Win386 extender to write 32-Bit applications.
Windows 3.1x was comparable to System 7, I think.
Both had True Type fonts, 32-Bit optimizations, QuickTime, sound support etc.
Windows 3.1 got Win32s and other additions (WinG, Video for Windows).
Both were the first web browser platforms, running Mosaic, Netscape etc.
Windows fir Workgroups added peer-to-peer networking, similar to how System 7 had introduced a fileserving feature.
Windows 95 was comparable to Mac OS 8, maybe.
Both had a grey 3D GUI and some preemptive multitasking, USB support.
Windows 95 did have it for Win32/DOS applications only, not Win16 applications.
Mac OS 8.6 added limited preemptive multitasking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_8#Mac_OS_8.6
Windows 98/98SE was comparable to Mac OS 9.x, I think.
Both supported things like FAT32, better USB support, had a revamped 3D GUI with lots of extras.
Where Windows 98 had Active Desktop, Mac OS 9.x had Sherlock 2.
Mac OS 9.x also had voice passwort and better networking.
Of course, these are just rough comparisons. Very rough, maybe.
But both platforms did compete at the time, so a certain level of comparison is legit, I think.
There also was A/UX, the Apple Unix for M68k Macs.
It looked like System 7 in its final release and could run well-behaved System 7 applications, as well.
The downside was the memory consumption, though, maybe.
Unix systems are naturally very demanding here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/UX
The positive side about Mac OS or System was that it used 68000code without segmentation.
Certain types of applications, such as emulators could be implemented easier on, say, System 7 than Windows 3.1x.
Windows 3.1x normally ran Win16 applications,
which were using 64KB segments (converted to 4K blocks in 386 Enhanced mode).
In order to circumvent this, Windows developers had to
a) use Watcom’s Win386 extender, which provided a 32-Bit Windows API on top of Win16 API
b) use WinMem32 API (obscure)
c) use Win32s extension and write NT 3.x API level applications.
So while System 7 really was dated, it didn’t have same limitations as 16-Bit Windows in some cases.
Larger applications could be implemented better on System, maybe.