MacSurf 1.68.1 — Stability Patch

A native web browser for Classic Mac OS (PowerPC, Mac OS 9.1–9.2.2). This is a critical stability release patching low-memory vulnerabilities and heap fragmentation on real hardware.

Verified on: Power Macintosh G3 iMac and G4, Mac OS 9.2.2.

Critical Fixes in 1.68.1

This patch release addresses a critical issue where the browser would crash and freeze the entire OS when running low on contiguous memory.

• Low-Memory Crash Protection (Heap Fragmentation Mitigation — #207):
  On machines with limited RAM (e.g., 256MB G3/G4s), thousands of tiny allocations from NetSurf and QuickJS fragment the heap, causing allocations to fail even when total free memory is high. Instead of returning NULL and letting the browser write to $0000 (which halts the Classic Mac OS instantly due to lacking memory protection), a new bulletproof allocator intercepts all allocations:

  • Safe Allocator Wrappers: macsurf_safe_alloc, macsurf_safe_calloc, and macsurf_safe_realloc are guaranteed to never return NULL to the engines.
  • Clean Panic & Diagnostics: On allocation failure, they capture the exact MaxBlock() and FreeMem() readings, write a fatal log entry to MacSurf Debug.log (flushed immediately), post a native Carbon StandardAlert explaining the heap fragmentation state, and terminate cleanly via ExitToShell() to avoid system corruption.
  • QuickJS Allocator Hook: QuickJS runtime initialization is updated to route allocations through these safe wrappers, preventing internal QuickJS OOM writes to $0000.
  • Disk Cache Recovery: The cached body lookup gracefully falls back to a network fetch under memory starvation rather than panicking.
  • Standard Library Parsing Order Safeguard: Allocator macro overrides in the prefix header are ordered to avoid compiler errors with Metrowerks Standard Library.

• Version Visibility & Reporting:

  • About Box: Updated the Apple menu's "About MacSurf..." dialog to display MacSurf 1.68.1.
  • User-Agent Reporting: Synchronized request headers to send MacSurf/1.68.1.
  • JavaScript Environment: Updated the engine's navigator.userAgent to report MacSurf/1.68.1 to on-page scripts.

Community Credits

Special thanks to @glossolallia, @CaptainPanic29, and @Azryael for their detailed bug reports, crash logs, and hardware verification work on G3 and G4 systems that made isolating this issue possible.

Downloading & Support

Grab the latest build from the plain-HTTP macsurf.org directly from your vintage Mac.

If MacSurf put your old Mac back online, please consider supporting the project:

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/MacSurf
• Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/macsurf