MicroPython on M68k Mac

(social.afront.org)

46 points | by zdw 10 hours ago ago

5 comments

  • fredoralive 7 hours ago

    Although you could get Python 1.x for 68k Macs already: https://homepages.cwi.nl/~jack/macpython/macpython-older.htm... (the "Even older" bit mentions that 1.5.2 is the last 68k version).

    Admittedly, I think this Micropython port is seemingly more targeting a Mac Plus, whilst I suspect the original Mac Python would probably prefer a Quadra (or a PowerMac).

    • fzzzy 4 hours ago

      It seems like it might not be that hard to port all the classic mac os code from python 1.5.2 to this.

  • nxobject 6 hours ago

    One detail that I'd be interested to see are startup times for the MicroPython environment. Having compiled both Lua and Duktape (an embedded friendly ES7 runtime) for a Macintosh Classic, morally a Plus, I regularly got startup times of up to a minute - I think most of it due to the sheer size of the resulting binaries and standard libraries.

  • bb88 3 hours ago

    Reminds me of AREXX on the amiga.

    REXX was an okay enough language for the time, but the real benefit was not needing to install a compiler -- which required more memory typically than my Amiga had, IIRC.

    Meanwhile in college everyone had the 486 chip that could fit in a 386 socket. And I would have bought one, but I was broke. I ended up getting a pentium system with 64MB of ram that ran Linux after my first job.