The site recreates a browser-based Windows 98 environment that boots, dials up, and browses the archived 1990s web with restored functionality (Flash, Java, VRML, MIDI, guestbooks, etc.).
It also runs a Gopher server serving early internet directories, accessible via native Gopher clients or a proxy.
The operator, Khalid Alshaikh, uses the site to document his work in archiving recent Saudi history, amateur radio (7Z1FP), and digital preservation.
The domain has been repurposed multiple times (General Election 97, Growth & Earnings 97) and now serves as a living archive.
GE-OS 98 is a work in progress, built in the open, with a suggestion box for broken features.
Discovered a 27-year-old easter egg in Power Mac G3 ROM: a hidden JPEG image of the development team called 'The Team'.
The egg is triggered by naming a RAM disk 'secret ROM image' and then erasing it in the Finder, which extracts the image automatically.
The mechanism was found by reverse-engineering the SCSI Manager code in the ROM using Ghidra, revealing Pascal strings like 'secret ROM image' and 'The Team'.
The trick works on Mac OS 8.1 through 9.0.4 but stops working in 9.1.
The egg was created by the G3 team (led by Bill, who commented) as a secret tribute after Apple banned easter eggs in 1997; the team was a small skunkworks group that developed the G3 line.
The post credits ^alex for discovering the erase-disk trick and includes instructions to reproduce the egg in Infinite Mac emulator.
A second Performa 550 hard drive with an intact recovery partition was discovered, confirming the partition was not a fluke and providing more data for analysis.
The recovery partition's files were identical across two drives, except for different creation/modification dates, suggesting it was factory-created rather than user-generated.
Evidence points to the partition being added by Apple at the factory, not by Apple Backup, as a script likely ran during testing to create it.
The Dinosaur Safari CD bug causing recovery mode was traced to an unauthorized InitResources() call, which re-initializes system resources and triggers the partition.
Patching the Dinosaur Safari CD to skip InitResources() prevented the recovery mode error, supporting the explanation.
Apple Lisa was the precursor to the Macintosh, but was expensive and a commercial failure, with few surviving units.
A new FPGA-based replica by [AlexElectronics] supports both original Lisa peripherals (keyboard, mouse) and modern interfaces (USB, HDMI, SD card).
The project includes a 40-pin DIP UART chip due to lack of a pre-built UART for the FPGA, and will be open-sourced on GitHub.
Comments note that the Lisa's serial number DRM protected software, but the FPGA can be programmed to bypass it, preserving old I/O like CRT monitors.
The Lisa was essential for early Mac development as it ran the Mac SDK, and later could run Mac software via MacWorks; the Macintosh XL was a modified Lisa 2.
Copy protection often harms legitimate users, and the Lisa's DRM is seen as a minor issue since the machine was a commercial flop.