A maverick hacker bought Mac OS X working on a Wii

You might already know that emulators can run Wii games on a Mac. However one developer has flipped the script. Bryan Keller now has an historic model of the Mac’s working system running on Nintendo’s 2006 recreation console (by way of Kottke). Why? As a result of they mentioned it could not be accomplished.

The developer first had the thought in 2013 whereas a sophomore in school. Nonetheless, they discovered renewed motivation 5 years in the past when Redditor u/CussdomTidder posted, “There’s a zero p.c probability of this ever taking place.”

Keller used that as gas to start plugging away, “feeling inspired” by the nameless contrarian. Thus started the method of porting Mac OS X 10.0 (Cheetah) onto a tool designed to play Wii Sports activities and Tremendous Mario Galaxy.

“Final yr, once I noticed that Home windows NT had been ported to the Wii, I felt a renewed sense of motivation,” Keller wrote. “Even when my lack of low-level expertise resulted in failure, trying this venture would nonetheless be a possibility to study one thing new.”

Keller famous that the Wii is a phenomenally hackable console, with different enterprising hackers porting Windows 95 and NT, Linux and NetBSD onto it. Nintendo’s system additionally runs a PowerPC chip much like these present in older Macs. “Given this shut lineage, I felt assured that the CPU would not be a blocker,” they wrote. From there, Keller wrote a customized boot loader, patched the kernel and wrote new drivers. They even bought the Wii’s USB ports working for mouse and keyboard enter.

Tthe developer discovered the method “deeply satisfying,” particularly given the preliminary doubt. (I am speaking to you, disparaging Redditor.) “Ultimately, I discovered (and completed) way over I ever anticipated,” Keller wrote. “And maybe extra importantly, I used to be reminded that the tasks that appear simply out of attain are precisely those price pursuing.”

For the technically minded, the developer’s blog goes into in depth element concerning the course of. And full-on madlads can go to Keller’s GitHub to attempt it for themselves.