Aclock needs your help

Â (note this is a guest post from Tenox)

Lately I’ve been very busy with several projects and noticed Aclock was lacking love for quite a while. For those who don’t know Aclock is a tiny C application that a small number of trusted volunteers and myself have been compiling to run on as many computer platforms as possible. The number of unique binaries is approaching 200 but is still short by few. As summer time sets in, some more fortunate of you will get extra free time, so I’m calling for volunteers to help to bring the gap and possibly go beyond.

Additionally I see more people looking for some particular operating system or piece of software and unfortunately nothing new for me to trade for and the gap is ever growing. Here is a chance to trade your time for some otherwise unavailable pieces from my collection. 😉

Here is a list of most wanted builds:

HP-UX <= v8 on 300 series, possibly via emulator
HP mkLinux
VXworks builds for non-x86 CPUs
Sprite on GXemul
8086 ELKS
VenturCom VENIX/86
Research Unix, v6 and v7 and others on SIMH
UZIX
OS-9 on Xroar
Power MachTen on PPC Mac
VXworks != i386 [port available]
NCR Tower Unix
PowerMAX UNIX
AT&T 3B1 / Unix PC
286 Microport
286 Coherent
HeliOS most specifically interested in this
HelenOS
O3ONE
Idris
Microware OS-9 [code port required, documentation available]
CP/M
Micronix [binaries]
LynxOS != i386
Amdahl UTS
Convex/OS
DC/OSx
OpenSolaris new CPUs eg ARM, PPC
CX/UX Harris/Concurent Unix
RISC iX – Acorn SysV Port on m68k
iOS (as in iPhone iPad) needs updating, I can pay dev license
Windows RT on ARM
More IA-64 platforms
More x64 platforms
Any other platform you may think of…

Operating system are mostly available. For some I will supply the OS. For others you will know what to look for. Whats required is your time and determination.

Some house keeping rules. I’m looking for a large amount of platforms (CPU+OS combination) and not multiple versions of the same OS. Generally if you can compile for OS version 1 and this binary works through v2 and v3 I would prefer version 1. Only if the OS has changed dramatically between versions I would want to get a separate binary. Secondly I’m currently NOT looking to get aclock ported to language other than C. So if a particular operating system doesn’t have C comparator, I’m not interested.

If you decide to work on any of this please let me know ahead of time.

I’m always interested in more screenshots and pictures of aclock running on various terminals and windowing systems.

11 thoughts on “Aclock needs your help”

I didn’t see GEOS or Contiki for the C64 on the list. If there’s interest in either of those I’m willing to take a stab at it.

Yes most definitely! These slipped away from the list because my first priorities are Unix-ish sytems. 8 bit platforms are a whole other story. I’m actually poking around z88dk to get it ported to many z80 based computers. So yes yes and yes. And there also is 16bit GEOS, PC, Nokia Communicator…

Well I have a working C64 binary (which is useless as there’s no clock on the machine) and an almost perfect C64/C128 GEOS binary (http://i.imgur.com/8a4pd7v.png). Once done I’ll make sure it works on Apple II GEOS and email you the code and binaries.

I’ve also pulled down the PC/GEOS SDK which includes the the Nokia communicator tools. I’ll see what I can do there.

Finally, if I can ‘find’ a copy of MachTen for PPC Mac I’ll take a stab at that one.

Anonymous on July 5, 2013 at 8:15 pm said:

WOW thanks a lot! Can you also send a screenshot of it on Apple II GEOS?

I remember there was a separate Nokia 9000 SDK but I can’t find it my archives.

I do have and will supply PPC MachTen.

Log in to Reply
- Peter Godwin on July 7, 2013 at 9:13 am said:
  
  Apple II version screenshot: http://imgur.com/3ufCQle
  
  Log in to Reply
  - tenox on July 7, 2013 at 9:35 am said:
    
    Cool!! Would it be a big deal to change the FontHW variable from 2 to 1 and recompile and take a new screenshot?
    
    Thanks a mil!
    
    Log in to Reply
  - Peter Godwin on July 7, 2013 at 3:07 pm said:
    
    Done! Updated Apple II Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/wXngrV2.png
    Bonus: C64 Version on real hardware: http://i.imgur.com/MDOvNc5h.jpg
    
    I’ve also just sent you the PPC MachTen binary and screenshot. http://i.imgur.com/cJOngEYh.png
    
    Log in to Reply
  - Chris M. on July 16, 2013 at 12:32 am said:
    
    It shouldn’t be too hard to get this working on an Apple IIgs running GS/OS (Apple’s 16bit GUI for the machine), but alas I don’t have any dev tools for the platform. Unlike the 8-bit Apples, it came with a RTC.
    
    Log in to Reply
    - Peter Godwin on July 16, 2013 at 1:36 am said:
      
      I forgot all about GS/OS. Orca/C seems to support GS/OS output too. Looks like its still commercially available though, so might have to look for some other options.