> Are there plans to either port to the LCIII, or just adjust so that it is 
> generic and works on all macs? Do you have a vague guess if so, as to how 
> long it will be?

The eventual plan is to get it to work on as many Macs as possible.  It's
hard to tell how long it will be for any particular machine because Apple
changed a lot of hardware for the different models.

You can get a list of estimates by fingering
grantham@cray-ymp.acm.stuorg.vt.edu.

> Did you write processor specific kernals for speed, or is there really no 
> way to generalize it to any mac.  This is the first Mac program that I 
> have seen that doesn't simply work on most macs that have the required 
> hardware.

Most programs you've seen on the Mac ran on top of MacOS.  MacOS handles
the hardware differences so that the programs don't have to worry.  MacBSD,
being an operating system, clears the memory and is on its own.  We
thus have to address the hardware directly, which is difficult since
hardware documentation from Apple is sketchy at best.  (Some of it
is not available at all.)

We could be more portable by running on top of MacOS, but we would then
run into other problems, like having get interrupt information from MacOS,
etc.  We estimate it would probably be more work than simply hacking the
hardware.  It would also be slower.

> I've never tried to install A/UX, but I was under the 
> impression that it ran on every mac since the SE.

No, they also go to the hardware and have to port to every machine they
want it to work on.  They have an advantage, though, because they have
full documentation on the hardware.

Lawrence

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