NeXTSTEP

NeXTSTEP was the Operating System popularized by NeXT, and is commonly thought of with the NeXT hardware.

Architecture

NeXTSTEP uses the Mach microkernel 2.5 as a library into a custom BSD kernel that is based on 4.3 BSD. Sourcecode to the descendant of NeXTSTEP can be found on Apple's site in the XNU project sources.

Ports

While NeXTSTEP is based on portable software (Mach/BSD) it was ported to the following machines:

• m68k
• hppa
• i386
• sparc
• m88k -unreleased
• PowerPC -unreleased

Versions

• 1.0 m68k only
• 2.0 m68k only
• 3.0 m68k then i386
• 3.1 m68k, i386
• 3.2 m68k, i386, sparc
• 3.3 m68k, i386, sparc, hppa

Emulation

Emulating NeXTSTEP can be tricky. It should generally run on actual stock PC hardware from the late 90s which is not in short supply yet, so that may be a preferable option. Otherwise you could try [[an attempt to patch Qemu to run NeXTSTEP