Classic Mac workbench: emulate, bridge real hardware, move files, debug.
Platinum is a desktop app for people who love the Macs of 1984–2001. One window gives you an emulator for every System release, a disk tool that speaks HFS, and everything you need to build a small ESP32 bridge for your real Mac: an interactive schematic, a solder guide, ready-made firmware and a status screen with a little Mac that tells you how things are.
Why "Platinum"? It's the name of the classic Mac's look: Platinum was Apple's light grey for the cases of the SE, Mac II and Classic, and later the official name of the grey, bevelled appearance of Mac OS 8 and 9. It covers the whole era this app is about.
| 🖥 Emulate System 1.0 to Mac OS 9.2.2 in the app, or launch Mini vMac, Basilisk II, SheepShaver and QEMU. |
💾 Move files Open, create and edit HFS disk images; drag files in and boot them straight away. |
🔌 Bridge real hardware An ESP32 becomes your Mac's keyboard, mouse and wireless serial port. |
- Features
- Download
- Quick start
- The ESP32 bridge
- Platinum Agent for the Mac
- Status
- Building from source
- Contributing
- Credits and licence
Boot anything from System 1.0 to Mac OS 9.2.2, plus Mac OS X 10.1, inside the app, powered by Infinite Mac. Pick the machine, the screen size and the scale, and drop in your own disk images while it runs. If you'd rather use a native emulator, Platinum builds the command line for Mini vMac, Basilisk II, SheepShaver and QEMU, ROM and disks included.
Open, create and edit HFS disk images: DiskCopy 4.2 floppies, raw .dsk/.img and partitioned hard-disk images for BlueSCSI, ZuluSCSI or emulators. Drag files in from your computer: MacBinary and BinHex are decoded, text is converted to MacRoman, and type/creator codes and resource forks are kept. One click boots the disk in the emulator or sends files to a real Mac.
Choose your Mac and your ESP32 board and Platinum draws the build:
- Schematic: proper part symbols with real pin numbers, wires routed so they never overlap, and power as GND / 3V3 / +5V symbols. Hover over a wire or pin to trace it.
- Solder guide: every part as it looks on the bench (the BSS138 module, the MAX3488 and 74AHCT125 from above with pin 1 marked, the 2N7000's legs), and every connector from the solder side, each pad labelled with where it goes. A numbered checklist keeps track of the joints you've done.
- Firmware: detects ESP32 boards as you plug them in, identifies the chip, and flashes the right image in one click.
- Mac network: puts the Mac itself on your WiFi network. The bridge answers like a modem and routes the Mac's PPP connection with NAT, so MacTCP or Open Transport get an IP address with no drivers to install. Browse FrogFind, fetch files over FTP, or mount a Netatalk share. A step-by-step guide covers System 7 with MacTCP and Mac OS 7.6–9 with Open Transport.
- Remote screen and debugger for a real Mac running Platinum Agent: live
PDLog()console, memory peek/poke, and build → send → run with Retro68. - Keyboard & mouse: type on the Mac from your computer, or pair Bluetooth keyboards and mice with the bridge.
- In 8 languages: English, Català, Español, Français, Deutsch, Italiano, Português (Brasil) and 日本語. Light and dark themes.
Get the latest version from Releases:
| System | File | First run |
|---|---|---|
| Windows 10/11 (x64) | Platinum-…-win-x64.exe |
Not code-signed yet: if SmartScreen warns you, choose More info → Run anyway. |
| macOS 12+ (Apple silicon and Intel) | Platinum-…-mac-universal.dmg |
Not notarised yet: right-click the app → Open, or run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Platinum.app. |
| Linux (x64) | Platinum-….AppImage |
chmod +x it and run it. For USB serial, join the dialout group (uucp on Arch) and log in again. On Ubuntu 24.04+, if it won't start, add --no-sandbox. |
Each release also includes the bridge firmware for every board and PlatinumAgent.dsk for your Mac. The embedded emulator needs an Internet connection the first time it loads a system.
- Emulate. Open Emulator, pick a system and press Boot. Drag a disk image onto the screen, or use Insert disk.
- Make a disk. In Disk Studio, create a floppy, drag your files in, and press Try in the emulator.
- Build the bridge. In Hardware & link, choose your Mac and board, follow the solder guide, plug the board in and press Flash.
- Connect. Click the connection pill at the top right and choose USB, WiFi or Bluetooth.
The bridge sits between your Mac and your computer. It can be the Mac's ADB or M0110 keyboard and mouse, carry the Mac's RS-422 serial port over USB, WiFi or Bluetooth (that's how Platinum Agent talks), put the Mac on your network over PPP, and power the Mac on from the app on ADB machines with a soft-power key.
A typical ADB build is an ESP32-S3 board, a BSS138 level shifter, a MAX3488 RS-422 transceiver, a 2N7000 MOSFET and two cables (S-Video for ADB, a Mac printer cable for serial). The full guide is in docs/hardware.md: board choice, pin maps, wiring for each Mac family, connector pinouts, parts lists and a first-power-on checklist.
A ready-made Platinum Bridge is on the way: one board in a little Mac-shaped case, with an OLED screen, USB-C and a single connector plus an adapter cable for your Mac.
| Board | Firmware image | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1 | platinum-bridge-esp32s3.bin |
Recommended: two cores, native USB. Optional 0.96" OLED. |
| ESP32-DevKitC (WROOM-32) | platinum-bridge-esp32.bin |
The most common. Optional 0.96" OLED. |
| ESP32-C3 with 0.42" OLED | platinum-bridge-esp32c3-oled.bin |
Tiny, with a built-in screen. Single core. |
| ESP32-C3 SuperMini | platinum-bridge-esp32c3.bin |
The smallest. Optional 0.96" OLED. Single core. |
| Family | Keyboard & mouse | Serial port |
|---|---|---|
| Macintosh 128K, 512K | M0110 + quadrature mouse | DE-9 |
| Macintosh Plus | M0110 + quadrature mouse | mini-DIN-8 |
| SE, SE/30, Classic, Classic II, II family, LC, Quadra, Power Macintosh, G3 (beige) | ADB | mini-DIN-8 |
In Hardware & link → Firmware, Platinum lists the serial ports, highlights the ESP32 boards, reads the chip type with esptool and writes the matching image. It won't write an image meant for a different chip. Without the Arduino toolchain, flash the image from the release at offset 0x0 with ESP Tool in Chrome or Edge.
Boards with an SSD1306 OLED (built into the ESP32-C3 OLED board, or a 0.96" module on the others) show the bridge's state. A little Mac in the spirit of the classic start-up icons sets the mood: a blinking question-mark disk until a Mac appears, a happy Mac when it's talking, a sleeping one when it goes quiet, a sad one with an error code when something fails, and the system-error bomb after a crash. BOOT cycles through the network, Bluetooth and traffic pages.
Warning
Vintage Macs are irreplaceable. Check every wire with a multimeter before plugging anything in, and never connect +12 V.
Platinum Agent is a small 68k app for System 6.0.8 to Mac OS 9. Over the serial port it receives files into a “Platinum Inbox” folder, streams the screen, peeks and pokes memory, launches apps, and relays PDLog() messages from your own programs. Platinum puts it on a 1.44 MB floppy image in one click (Debugger → Platinum Agent). See mac-agent/README.md for details and the pdebug logging library.
Platinum is young (v0.1). Here's where each part stands:
| Part | Status |
|---|---|
| Embedded emulator (Infinite Mac) | ✅ Works |
| Native emulator launcher | ✅ Works (bring your own emulator and ROM) |
| Disk Studio: HFS read/write, MacBinary, BinHex, DiskCopy 4.2, partitioned images | ✅ Works, cross-tested against machfs. MFS (System 1–2) and HFS+ aren't supported yet. |
| Schematic, solder guide, board detection and chip identification | ✅ Works |
| One-click flashing from the app | ✅ Works (flashed an ESP32-C3 from the app) |
| Bridge firmware: ADB / M0110, BLE HID, serial over USB/WiFi/BLE, OLED screen | 🧪 Builds for all four boards; not yet tested with a real Mac, so reports are very welcome |
| Mac network (PPP over the serial port, NAT to WiFi) | 🧪 Builds for all four boards; not yet tested with a real Mac |
| Platinum Agent | 🧪 Runs on System 7.5.3 in the emulator, protocol cross-tested with the app; the serial link still needs testing on a real Mac |
You need Node.js 22 or newer. The HFS tests also need Python 3 with pip install machfs.
git clone https://github.com/Marcm2003/platinum.git
cd platinum
npm ci
npm run dev # the app with hot reload
npm test # HFS, translation and agent-protocol checks
npm run dist # an installer for your OS in release/| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
npm run firmware [board] |
Builds the bridge firmware images into firmware/dist/ (needs arduino-cli with the ESP32 core and the NimBLE-Arduino, WebSockets, ArduinoJson and U8g2 libraries). |
npm run oled-preview |
Renders the OLED screens on your computer into docs/images/oled/, using the firmware's own drawing code. |
npm run docs:hardware |
Regenerates docs/hardware.md from the wiring data. |
npm run screenshots |
Retakes the README screenshots from the built app. |
Platinum Agent builds with Retro68; Docker is enough, see mac-agent/README.md.
| Path | What's there |
|---|---|
src/ |
The app (React + TypeScript). src/lib/hfs is a standalone HFS implementation, src/lib/hardware the boards and wiring data, src/lib/link the bridge and agent protocols. |
electron/ |
Main process: windows, dialogs, the disk server for the emulator, serial ports and esptool. |
firmware/platinum-bridge/ |
The ESP32 Arduino sketch. firmware/tools/ has the OLED preview renderer. |
mac-agent/ |
Platinum Agent and the pdebug library, in C for Retro68. |
docs/ |
Hardware guide, protocol specification and images. |
scripts/ |
Build, test, docs, firmware, icon and preview scripts. |
Strings live in the code in English inside t("…"), and src/i18n/<lang>.ts holds each translation. npm test fails if any language is missing a string. To add a language, copy ca.ts, translate it and register it in src/i18n/index.ts. Corrections from native speakers are very welcome.
Bug reports, photos of your bridge, reports from real Macs, translations and pull requests are all welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md.
The Platinum app, the bridge firmware and Platinum Agent are free software under the GNU GPL v3.0 or later: use them, study them, change them and share your changes. The ready-made Platinum Bridge's hardware design (schematic, PCB layout and manufacturing files) is not published: selling the assembled bridge is what funds the project. The do-it-yourself bridge in docs/hardware.md does the same job with off-the-shelf modules.
The embedded emulator is Infinite Mac by Mihai Parparita (Apache-2.0), loaded from infinitemac.org. Thank you, Mihai. The HFS catalog collation table comes from Robert Leslie's hfsutils. Platinum Agent is built with Retro68. See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for everything else.
Platinum doesn't include any Apple ROM or system software. Apple, Macintosh, Mac and Mac OS are trademarks of Apple Inc. Platinum isn't affiliated with or endorsed by Apple.