An Apple Watch tinkerer has managed to get his wristslab running an operating system that hasn't been updated in nearly two decades.

New Yorker Nick Lee said he used an emulator to get his Apple watch running a disk image of the MacOS 7.5.5 operating system.

Lee, who when not sending Watches back in time works as a software architect for Tendigi, said the install process mostly consisted on porting the open source Mini vMac emulator to the Apple WatchOS platform.

"To get this proof-of-concept running, it took me about 4 hours," he told El Reg "Most of that time was spent getting Mini vMac to compile on the watch's architecture."

From there, Mini vMac could be equipped with a boot image and the Watch was able to load up the emulator and boot MacOS 7.5.5, a build of the old MacOS introduced in 1996 for the PowerMac/Performa lines that you may remember disabling the enemy mothership in Independence Day.