Wallops - A modern IRC client for classic MacOS

Wallops is a modern IRC client that I wrote on and for my Macintosh Plus. It is written for System 6 and should run on newer classic MacOS versions.

It requires MacTCP and does not support TLS connections. It supports MultiFinder and will run in the background, using Notification Manager to flash the Apple icon when one's nick is mentioned in the channel while the window is hidden.

Wallops is open source software. I also have some videos about its development and C programming on System 6 in general.

Latest Update: Wallops 1.1 Released (2022-02-10)

A large update to my Wallops IRC client is available:

  • wallops-1.1.sit (StuffIt 3 archive, includes source code and THINK C 5 project file)
    SHA256: 13159d1a73d6ca4a881a49f22b20a2624b897b2f707553fa4b083e838d11cfc1
    SHA1: f96e4e28a9f550c24673e8a16da6346e35be00b6

This update includes a number of new features and bugfixes:

  • Fixes sending PONG responses to avoid server timeouts
  • Fixes a possible crash when resuming a previously backgrounded window
  • Properly (and efficiently!) avoids overflow in the main TextEdit control of activity by shifting out old lines; this happens when the number of lines, the number of characters, or the size of the drawn text is approaching its limits
  • Rewrote nick list handling making it possible to join channels with many hundreds of nicks, in addition to processing individual JOINs, PARTs, QUITs, NICK changes, MODE changes, etc. without having to re-sort and redraw the list each time
  • Adds support for IRC server passwords allowing automatic NickServ registration
  • Adds support for the /whois command and parsing most response lines seen on a few servers
  • Adds support for the /me CTCP ACTION command as well as parsing them from other users, and supports sending responses to private CTCP VERSION requests which some servers require
  • Sleeps longer between updates when the chat window is hidden in the background

Previous Updates