Do you own a Talos II?

[Jubadub]

I believe the PowerPC community needs no introduction regarding the brilliant Talos II, Talos II Lite, Blackbird and the upcoming Condor product lines by Raptor. Knowing these computers being insanely high-performant, cost-competitive, privacy-respecting and completely blob-free (unless we count HDD/SSD firmware, but those are next to be freed), it makes sense, for anyone, to at least want to own one of these.

Even as a non-PPC fan, but as an overall computer and technology enthusiast, and/or as an investor in the future of freedom and ethics in society as a whole (on top of having INSANE processing power at your disposal), it is desirable to invest in those machines, as opposed to current x86, AMD and even ARM alternatives.

With that said, because it's not as mainstream, and is server-grade, the costs are high considering modest buyers. Though, fortunately, that does not apply to anyone already buying Apple's latest Macs.
But since not everyone buys the latest Macs and beyond, many of us are left longing for one of these epic, wonderful Raptor beasts.

So, if anyone owns one of these, or doesn't but would like to, feel free to share your thoughts and experiences with it. Perhaps sharing whether or not QEMU is used to run Mac OS X or even Mac OS 9.2.2 in these machines would be interesting to hear about, as well, or the plans to do so.

Also, if anyone owns any other non-Mac PowerPC machine (PS3, Pegasos, AmigaOne X5000, IBM workstations), feel free to share your experiences and thoughts about them here, as well.

=========================================================

Starting with myself: yes, I'd love one, and if Raptor (and other possible future competitors) are still making modern PPC machines, I'm saving up in such a manner I may own one in 3 years from now, even if I have to import it from the US. I plan to use Debian, because it's the only PPC system to have a blob-free Linux kernel, but I'd like to have some other distro separately, as well, that is Big Endian, to use Mac OS 9 & X with, without the endianness overhead (POWER9 works both in Big Endian and Little Endian), via QEMU+KVM, hopefully in virtualization mode (as opposed to emulation mode). I pray that GPU acceleration will reach QEMU by then for these two target platforms.

Every software & knowledge gathered for those two Mac systems, I intend to bring with the new technology, even if in a virtualization environment. Of course, that doesn't mean my PowerMacs will be going anywhere: they will also stay right with me.


So, your thoughts?

 

[sawpits]

Not interested in all that Terminal stuff. Long past time that the Linux community developed an OS that doesn't need people to use Terminal. But they are just never capable of working together for any period of time and we keep getting different Linux distros instead.

 

[wicknix]

Perhaps sharing whether or not QEMU is used to run Mac OS X or even Mac OS 9.2.2 in these machines would be interesting to hear about

@xeno74 's X1000 runs Leopard via qemu, and that machine is very similar to a DP and DC G5 in specs, so i'd assume it can be done on a G5 as well. No need for a gazillion dollar Talos II. I'll stick with the G5's i have until they die.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/de/85/b9/de85b9ae5740744f3ef966fff786ec36.png

Cheers

 

[Jubadub]

Not interested in all that Terminal stuff. Long past time that the Linux community developed an OS that doesn't need people to use Terminal. But they are just never capable of working together for any period of time and we keep getting different Linux distros instead.

Oh, Terminal? Not really a necessity like that if using a simple GUI. Ubuntu and its variants (i.e. Lubuntu) are particularly famous for that sort of user friendliness. I don't think I ever needed to use the Terminal on my Raspberry Pi, either.

Many PPC distros come with nice GUI flavors you can choose from.

@xeno74 's X1000 runs Leopard via qemu, and that machine is very similar to a DP and DC G5 in specs, so i'd assume it can be done on a G5 as well. No need for a gazillion dollar Talos II. I'll stick with the G5's i have until they die.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/de/85/b9/de85b9ae5740744f3ef966fff786ec36.png

Cheers

Oh yeah, G5s are in fact even better than the AmigaOne line because of AltiVec and whatnot. The highest-end of those didn't even reach the Quad level in clock, either, so yes, QEMU (and HQEMU) are completely fine on G5s, naturally. Perhaps it can run on G4s, too?

I mentioned QEMU in the context of non-Mac PPCs because, unlike our Macs, those machines sadly can't boot into Mac systems (unless work is done towards that end, which I'm not very convinced will happen). While I'm on a Mac, I normally boot into a Mac system, but on a Talos and the like, I'd be forced to use QEMU if I wanted to reach that goal.

Speaking of which, has anyone ever tested using QEMU while on PS3 GNU/Linux? I never tried it personally, but it seems like an interesting GNU/Linux box, as long as one doesn't require GPU acceleration.

 

[0248294]

Speaking of which, has anyone ever tested using QEMU while on PS3 GNU/Linux? I never tried it personally, but it seems like an interesting GNU/Linux box, as long as one doesn't require GPU acceleration.

I've wanted to mess with this, but one massive downside of the PS3 is the RAM, I think you only have like 512MB, or even 256MB, available, meaning you'll run out quick when running OSX in QEMU-KVM on top of the Linux OS.

 

[Jubadub]

I've wanted to mess with this, but one massive downside of the PS3 is the RAM, I think you only have like 512MB, or even 256MB, available, meaning you'll run out quick when running OSX in QEMU-KVM on top of the Linux OS.

Oof, RAM, totally forgot to check that. It's stated to be 256MB on Wikipedia. Definitely a deal breaker for the likes of Tiger & Leopard, although still reasonable for something like Mac OS 9.2.2 (which is good to know!).

This reminded me, If I happened to have more money than I knew what to do with, I'd get 2TB of RAM (!) into a Talos II, make a 1.5TB RAM Disk, and put an entire Virtual Machine in there. I drool at the thought. Haha

 

[philgxxd]

There are rare Sony PS3 developer models that have more (double) the ram, I don't know the exact amount now but there is an interesting channel in YouTube I'm following.

 

[z970]

This reminded me, If I happened to have more money than I knew what to do with, I'd get 2TB of RAM (!) into a Talos II, make a 1.5TB RAM Disk, and put an entire Virtual Machine in there. I drool at the thought. Haha

Could you imagine an entire OS running purely off of DDR4 RAM, with two 22-core POWER9 processors to boot...

Such blisteringly unthinkable speeds have never set remote foot into the world before...

:drool:

 

[reukiodo]

IBM was working on persistent storage technology which would have been faster than RAM. It would be interesting to think of a computer designed without RAM, but running directly from persistent storage instead.

 

[Jubadub]

Could you imagine an entire OS running purely off of DDR4 RAM, with two 22-core POWER9 processors to boot...

Such blisteringly unthinkable speeds have never set remote foot into the world before...

IBM was working on persistent storage technology which would have been faster than RAM. It would be interesting to think of a computer designed without RAM, but running directly from persistent storage instead.

Reminds me of magnetic RAM & similar efforts.

 

[DearthnVader]

Could you imagine an entire OS running purely off of DDR4 RAM, with two 22-core POWER9 processors to boot...

Such blisteringly unthinkable speeds have never set remote foot into the world before...

:drool:

I booted Mac OS 9.2.2 in Qemu off a DDR2 800Mhz Ram disk, and I benchmarked it, it was slower than a raw or qcow2 virtual disk image.

However, that was some time ago, and Qemu-system-ppc has gotten a lot faster disk IO, so it maybe worth trying again.

I miss the Old World with EDO Ram, you could reboot from a ram disk.

 

[Amethyst1]

Could you imagine an entire OS running purely off of DDR4 RAM, with two 22-core POWER9 processors to boot...

Such blisteringly unthinkable speeds have never set remote foot into the world before...

:drool:

Back in 2002 when RAM was ridiculously cheap, I upgraded my PC to 1 GB and ran Windows 95 and Office etc. off of a 768 MB RAM disk. Booting up took several minutes as the installation had to be copied from the hard drive but once it got past that, it was... creepily fast.

 

[JoSch]

Could you imagine an entire OS running purely off of DDR4 RAM, with two 22-core POWER9 processors to boot...

Such blisteringly unthinkable speeds have never set remote foot into the world before...

:drool:

Here you go: https://volumio.org/volumio-overview/
From the feature list: The system is loaded entirely on RAM and optimized for lightweight operations.

 

[cdoublejj]

from what i've seen at least on x86 VMs siffer form lack of GPU power but, was interesting that screen shot from the amiga x1000 showed the VM identifying a QEMU VGA adapter, idk if that means it has 2D acceleration or not but, that would be a start but, as far as i know unless you pass a physical card through via PCI passthrough you won't get any GPU acceleration due the GPU Drive APIs inside OSX being locked down.

However if you were able to find a compatible GPU from the PPC days but, on PCI you may be able to use a PCIe to PCI adapter and pass-through an older PCI GPU you just might need a dummy plug that fakes a monitor being plugged in.

That'd be pretty cool, because since the Talos are IBM POWER9 and all those systems and the POWER9 are open source i'd think before long you could get a build of something like Proxmox or XCP-ng or Xen and if all the above worked correctly you could run HTML 5 remote control on any web browser and have a some what low latency GPU accelerated remote control on tap where there is internet. ...well that's making some assumptions that likely requires GUEST VM tools that tie in to the OS with custom drivers, maybe not??? but, the idea of GPU accelerated PPC OSX cloud computer sure is cool.

Could work in theory work with x86 Snow Leo and with Rosetta installed!

EDIT: some unrelated links

 

[Jubadub]

GPU acceleration on QEMU for OS 9/X is something I have been patiently waiting for, for some years now. From what I hear, people are apparently getting closer to that goal as of late. If that goal is attained, perhaps finally we could use those systems on virtualized/emulated environments with all the performance and accuracy of the original computers (except for those that have equipment that still require native booting, of course, which is actually many people).

Also, we talk a bit more about Raptor, POWER9 and the Talos II here, if you'd like.

 

[cdoublejj]

sounds like some people might be poking around in places, a little backwards engineering if you will? i'm still curious if one cam emulate on a power/risc system has anyone tried to passthrough a legacy pci gpu?

 

[DearthnVader]

sounds like some people might be poking around in places, a little backwards engineering if you will? i'm still curious if one cam emulate on a power/risc system has anyone tried to passthrough a legacy pci gpu?

I've tried PCI Passthrough on Qemy-system-ppc/64.

I had success passing a PCI Firewire card to both Tiger and 9.2.2, works 100%.

I also was able to pass a Geforce 6600 PCI-E card from a G5 using the pseries machine and SOLF.

Sadly, Openbios doesn't support some of the words in the FCode ROM for nVidia cards, so I can't test that with the Mac OS/X.

Tho we did get the ATI Rage 128 Pro FCode ROM to work on an emulated R128, so we should be able to use a PCI-E to PCI bridge, like I did for the Firewire card, and get a R128 to work.

I just don't have a R128 card to test.

 

[cdoublejj]

I've tried PCI Passthrough on Qemy-system-ppc/64.

I had success passing a PCI Firewire card to both Tiger and 9.2.2, works 100%.

I also was able to pass a Geforce 6600 PCI-E card from a G5 using the pseries machine and SOLF.

Sadly, Openbios doesn't support some of the words in the FCode ROM for nVidia cards, so I can't test that with the Mac OS/X.

Tho we did get the ATI Rage 128 Pro FCode ROM to work on an emulated R128, so we should be able to use a PCI-E to PCI bridge, like I did for the Firewire card, and get a R128 to work.

I just don't have a R128 card to test.

I may have an R128 or 3 that i'm not using. does it need to be a specific version? Google images is not helping see what it looks like and shows me every old agp card known to man.

IF there was an apple version of such cards i wonder if flashing the apple ROM or flat out desoldering and swapping the flash chips would help?

 

[DearthnVader]

I may have an R128 or 3 that i'm not using. does it need to be a specific version? Google images is not helping see what it looks like and shows me every old agp card known to man.

IF there was an apple version of such cards i wonder if flashing the apple ROM or flat out desoldering and swapping the flash chips would help?

Needs to be PCI, nobody ever made a PCI-E to AGP bridge card, tho one company did try, they gave up on the idea.

I did try and PCI Passthrough with a Radeon 9200 PCI in a PCI-E to PCI bridge, however my PC wold not boot at all with that card installed, wouldn't even power on.

So there maybe something about 3.3V vs. 5V that doesn't work with my bridge card, even tho the Radeon was keyed universal.

So there is no telling if a Mac Rage 128 PCI will work with any given bridge card.

 

[DearthnVader]

Needs to be PCI, nobody ever made a PCI-E to AGP bridge card, tho one company did try, they gave up on the idea.

I did try and PCI Passthrough with a Radeon 9200 PCI in a PCI-E to PCI bridge, however my PC wold not boot at all with that card installed, wouldn't even power on.

So there maybe something about 3.3V vs. 5V that doesn't work with my bridge card, even tho the Radeon was keyed universal.

So there is no telling if a Mac Rage 128 PCI will work with any given bridge card.

My bridge card has a 4 PIN Molex for power, and that only provides 12V and 5V, so maybe only 5V cards will work in it, but the FW card I had success with was keyed universal.

The slot on the bridge card itself is keyed 5V 32bit PCI.

 

[mikeylam]

Hi I am very interested in what you said below. This is something I have meant to try for a while but haven't got to it.

1. So you say you can passthrough a PCI FireWire card to OS 9 and OSX under qemu-system-ppc (so a mac99 machine I assume), so you mean using ppc system emulation on a x86 system while passing through a PCI device?

2. You also passed through a PCIE video card under the same qemu system ppc emulation but while emulating a pseries machine? Running Linux in the guest vm I suppose?

Appreciate your further inputs on this.

Thanks

Michael

I've tried PCI Passthrough on Qemy-system-ppc/64.

I had success passing a PCI Firewire card to both Tiger and 9.2.2, works 100%.

I also was able to pass a Geforce 6600 PCI-E card from a G5 using the pseries machine and SOLF.

Sadly, Openbios doesn't support some of the words in the FCode ROM for nVidia cards, so I can't test that with the Mac OS/X.

Tho we did get the ATI Rage 128 Pro FCode ROM to work on an emulated R128, so we should be able to use a PCI-E to PCI bridge, like I did for the Firewire card, and get a R128 to work.

I just don't have a R128 card to test.

 

[DearthnVader]

The Mac Rage128 PCI is keyed Universal, so it may or may not work in my bridge.

I suspect that the Radeon 9200 I tried was 3.3v only, and they just keyed it universal, I've seen this in the past.

 

[DearthnVader]

1. So you say you can passthrough a PCI FireWire card to OS 9 and OSX under qemu-system-ppc (so a mac99 machine I assume), so you mean using ppc system emulation on a x86 system while passing through a PCI device?

Yes, it worked 100% under both OS 9/X.

I tested a Firewire iSight under OS X as well as an iBook in Target Disk Mode.

Under OS 9 I only tested the iBook in target disk mode. I don't have any other FW devices with OS 9 driver.

You also passed through a PCIE video card under the same qemu system ppc emulation but while emulating a pseries machine? Running Linux in the guest vm I suppose?

Yes qemu-system-ppc64 with the pseries machine type, because SLOF has support for the GF6600 as SLOF was the firmware on the YDL Workstation.

We could give it a try on the Mac99 Machine if only some bright programmer would add the needed words to Openbios. Zoltan patched Openbios for the words needed for the Rage128, but the nVidia FCode has some more words that the Rage doesn't.

On the pseries machine I was able to get a text console, but graphics mode in Xorg was corrupt. Maybe a improperly configured X server, I just didn't care to debug it, as I only care about the Mac OS/X.

 

[mikeylam]

Thanks for this. I will give the following a try. I wonder if a better ATI card like a 1950XT will also work like the Rage 128? That way you don't need a PCI bridge because the 1950XT is PCIE.

Yes, it worked 100% under both OS 9/X.

I tested a Firewire iSight under OS X as well as an iBook in Target Disk Mode.

Under OS 9 I only tested the iBook in target disk mode. I don't have any other FW devices with OS 9 driver.



Yes qemu-system-ppc64 with the pseries machine type, because SLOF has support for the GF6600 as SLOF was the firmware on the YDL Workstation.

We could give it a try on the Mac99 Machine if only some bright programmer would add the needed words to Openbios. Zoltan patched Openbios for the words needed for the Rage128, but the nVidia FCode has some more words that the Rage doesn't.

On the pseries machine I was able to get a text console, but graphics mode in Xorg was corrupt. Maybe a improperly configured X server, I just didn't care to debug it, as I only care about the Mac OS/X.

 

[DearthnVader]

Thanks for this. I will give the following a try. I wonder if a better ATI card like a 1950XT will also work like the Rage 128? That way you don't need a PCI bridge because the 1950XT is PCIE.

I assume the 1950XT would work, assuming Openbios has all the words used in the FCode ROM.

First you have to setup vfio.pci so it's working with qemu-system-ppc, then you need to load the FCode ROM from a disk and execute it on the propert device node in Openbios.

Something like:

dev /pci/@f <---assumes your 1950 is the device @f
load hd:,\ppc\1950XT.fcode <<--- assumes you have the fcode ROM on the first qemu hd in the foler /ppc
" /pci/@f" open-dev to my-self
4000040 1 byte-load <--assumes you haven't monkeyed with the load-base address.

If you don't get an error, you should be golden, then just boot hd:,\\:tbxi.

If you do get an error you'll need to turn on ?Fcode debug and Fcode Verbose, and detok the FCode ROM and find the words that Openbios is hanging on, likely because they are unimplemented.

If you find unimplemented words, you'll have to implement them, and rebuild Openbios.