68kMLA Classic Interface

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MacMesh - A native Meshtastic client for classic Mac OS 68K
Posted by: xporadio on 2026-08-01 00:20:03 Hey all. Long-time lurker, finally have something worth posting. I know a lot of fellow vintage computer and electronics enthusiasts are also into Ham Radio and other neat RF stuff. LORA and Meshtastic are certainly interesting hobbies to get in to. I've been building a native Meshtastic client for classic Mac OS, targeting System 6 on real 68000 hardware. It talks to a Heltec LoRa node over the serial/modem port (RS-422, level-shifted to the Heltec's UART) and gives you a proper native UI: node list, channel list, and a scrolling chat window, all built with the standard Toolbox — Window Manager, TextEdit, the works. It will work on system 7+ but you will lose out on the coolest feature (Macintalk) until I build version 2, which will use Macintalk 2/3 for the speech synthesis. The stack: Cross-compiled with Retro68 (m68k-apple-macos target) Written in C, built and debugged from VS Code on the PC side Runs on real hardware — I've had it going for hours at a stretch on a Mac Plus, 512K and LC II It talks to a Heltec V3 board running standard Meshtastic firmware over serial, parsing the protobuf packet stream directly There's also now a genuine 512K edition — boots straight into the app with no Finder loaded (same trick a lot of 128K/512K-era games used to squeeze out every available byte), so it actually runs on a real, unexpanded 512K Mac. My Favorite feature is the Speech output. Messages can be read aloud through MacinTalk, so incoming mesh traffic gets announced audibly. I made a Youtube video demonstrating the app All the files, diagrams, instructions are on my website https://salvagegeek.com/macmesh Still actively developing this. I’d love to hear your feedback if you want to test it out. I’m sure there will be lots of bugs to report. I’d love to hear any ideas for new features or changes. I'm sure most of you will probably be wondering what LORA and Meshtastic actually is too. One of the next bug fixes will be working on the page buffering as sometimes it can look like a bit of a disco party when updating node lists. I’d also like to be able to add channels directly from the app.
Posted by: Phipli on 2026-08-01 01:14:04 Fun, thank you. Unfortunately I've never seen anyone else in range when I've tried Meshtastic in the past 😆 The downside to not living in a City.
Posted by: aladds on 2026-08-01 12:52:45 I do live (on the edge of) a city, and I also can’t see anyone in range. I’ve tried both Meshtastic and MeshCore. Maybe I need longer pieces of wire? Software looks cool though. Maybe I should go out with a PowerBook and see if I can pick and signals up further afield!
Posted by: Phipli on 2026-08-01 12:55:26 I do live (on the edge of) a city, and I also can’t see anyone in range. I’ve tried both Meshtastic and MeshCore. Maybe I need longer pieces of wire? Software looks cool though. Maybe I should go out with a PowerBook and see if I can pick and signals up further afield! I have this. I've tried it in a couple of places but haven't seen anyone yet.
Posted by: aladds on 2026-08-01 13:06:21 Oh that's fancy. I have a couple of basic ESP32 + OLED + LoRa module boards. One has a tiny little antenna and one has an antenna which looks like what you've got there. I've received a grand total of one ping from somewhere near Gerrards Cross, which is further outside London than I am. 🤷‍♂️
Posted by: Phipli on 2026-08-01 13:15:25 Oh that's fancy. I have a couple of basic ESP32 + OLED + LoRa module boards. One has a tiny little antenna and one has an antenna which looks like what you've got there. I've received a grand total of one ping from somewhere near Gerrards Cross, which is further outside London than I am. 🤷‍♂️ I haven't looked into it, but you can link nodes by tunneling over the internet, but when you're the only one on a node that kind of feels like just using the internet 😆
Posted by: Joebenz39 on 2026-09-28 18:08:13 Hey all. Long-time lurker, finally have something worth posting. I know a lot of fellow vintage computer and electronics enthusiasts are also into Ham Radio and other neat RF stuff. LORA and Meshtastic are certainly interesting hobbies to get in to. I've been building a native Meshtastic client for classic Mac OS, targeting System 6 on real 68000 hardware. It talks to a Heltec LoRa node over the serial/modem port (RS-422, level-shifted to the Heltec's UART) and gives you a proper native UI: node list, channel list, and a scrolling chat window, all built with the standard Toolbox — Window Manager, TextEdit, the works. It will work on system 7+ but you will lose out on the coolest feature (Macintalk) until I build version 2, which will use Macintalk 2/3 for the speech synthesis. The stack: Cross-compiled with Retro68 (m68k-apple-macos target) Written in C, built and debugged from VS Code on the PC side Runs on real hardware — I've had it going for hours at a stretch on a Mac Plus, 512K and LC II It talks to a Heltec V3 board running standard Meshtastic firmware over serial, parsing the protobuf packet stream directly There's also now a genuine 512K edition — boots straight into the app with no Finder loaded (same trick a lot of 128K/512K-era games used to squeeze out every available byte), so it actually runs on a real, unexpanded 512K Mac. My Favorite feature is the Speech output. Messages can be read aloud through MacinTalk, so incoming mesh traffic gets announced audibly. I made a Youtube video demonstrating the app All the files, diagrams, instructions are on my website https://salvagegeek.com/macmesh Still actively developing this. I’d love to hear your feedback if you want to test it out. I’m sure there will be lots of bugs to report. I’d love to hear any ideas for new features or changes. I'm sure most of you will probably be wondering what LORA and Meshtastic actually is too. One of the next bug fixes will be working on the page buffering as sometimes it can look like a bit of a disco party when updating node lists. I’d also like to be able to add channels directly from the app. So I have a Macintosh Classic II (68030), machine and if I were to use your system would I legally be able to talk on ham radio?
Posted by: adespoton on 2026-09-28 22:42:31 So I have a Macintosh Classic II (68030), machine and if I were to use your system would I legally be able to talk on ham radio? LoRA isn’t ham; it’s unregulated spectrum. Although in order to transmit on it at higher powers you do need a ham license. Unlike shortwave, LoRA has a range of just over 10 miles, give or take. However, with Meshtastic, it can mesh route between a source and destination, and if someone in mesh range has an Internet adapter, you can reach all of the Internet and any part of the mesh connected to it, globally. It’s low bandwidth, but that works well with 68k Macs. I think DDP over Meshtastic would be really neat, as a globaltalk gateway, but I haven’t heard of anyone doing that yet.
Posted by: dragorn on 2026-09-30 08:11:34 I made a thematic case for Heltec boards to go along with this; it clips into the side of a SE or SE/30 (maybe others?) like the reset button does. Like others, there's zero around me for actual mesh, but it'll be fun to bring to a few cons. https://www.printables.com/model/1860567-heltec-mount-for-mac-se30
Posted by: iantm on 2026-09-30 11:37:22 10 miles! That's crazy. I love the idea of have a tight-knit but radio based network between a couple of Macs. Putting a pin in this for someday.
Posted by: adespoton on 2026-10-01 15:40:13 I keep putting off getting some Heltec kit set up (general plan is an Internet-connected mesh hub with booster board set up at home, then a couple "walkie talkies" to pair with phones when outside cell signal range. I still need to figure out how to ensure the meshtastic router doesn't connect to my intranet or even see my smart devices though (they use the guest network). The problem right now is that I don't really have a sustained use case that can explain putting down ~$350 on all the gear needed for my wife. Most of my wilderness forays still go outside the range of LoRa unless I convince someone to set up a node further into the wilderness. Currently, there's just trail cams. It'd be neat to fit every trail cam box with a Meshtastic node, but then I've got to convince the parks service to support the initiative too 😀
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