Operating systems › Other notable systems › NeXTSTEP
NeXTSTEP
1989
NeXT's Unix-based, Objective-C operating system from 1989, whose object-oriented foundations became the basis of Mac OS X.
Reference & documentation
External technical references for programming NeXTSTEP and for writing emulators.
| Resource | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| NeXTSTEP Mach-O File Format Specification ↗ | Format | Canonical Mach-O header, load commands, segments, symbol table |
| M68000 Addressing Modes and Assembler Instructions ↗ | Instruction set | 68030/68040 registers, addressing modes, MIT-syntax mnemonics |
| Mach Concepts: Tasks, Threads, Ports, Virtual Memory ↗ | Memory map | 4GB task address space, VM inheritance, copy-on-write |
| NeXT Mach Kernel Functions Reference ↗ | Programming | Mach syscalls: ports, vm_allocate, msg_send, cthreads |
| NeXT Hardware ROMs (Macintosh Repository) ↗ | ROMs | Boot ROM dumps: 68030, 68040, Turbo, NeXTdimension |
| Using Mach Messages and MiG ↗ | Reference | Message header format, IPC, MiG RPC generation |
| NeXTSTEP 3.3 Developer Documentation Index ↗ | Reference | Full dev docs: Assembler, Mach OS, DriverKit, DevTools |
| Previous NeXT Emulator Source (GitHub) ↗ | Source | NeXT hardware emulator source, m68k and i860 cores |
| The Previous Emulator (official site) ↗ | Tool | Boots NeXTStep 0.x-4.0, downloads and build docs |