Ideas For Interesting Uses/Projects?

[tensixturtle]

Hello,
Very sorry to take up your time. Recently I have been really busy and have not had so much time to work with my PowerPC Macs. The early Intels get more attention and I have mostly been using them. I don't like having the PowerPC Macs just sitting around, and I was wondering if anyone might be willing to give me some ideas for some fairly doable things I can start work on, hardware or software please? I feel stuck figuring out what to do next. I have the following:
PM G4 QS 2002 (OS 9.2.2/OS X 10.2)
iBook G4 Late 2004 (Lubuntu/OS X 10.4)
iMac G5 ALS (OS X 10.4/Sorbet/OS X 10.6)

Sorry for not being resourceful, but I just do not know where to look. Thanks in advance.

 

[eyoungren]

Generally, I use my PowerMacs as servers. I have a G3 B&W running 10.4.11 Server with a 2TB RAID and a G4 500mhz with two 3TB SATA drives (PCI-SATA card) that is filesharing.

In the past I've used spare iBooks as Time Machine backup locations. Attach an external USB or FW drive and fileshare it.

Don't know if that helps or not.

 

[Amethyst1]

• Distraction-free writing environment
• Music jukebox
• PPC Linux distro testbed
• Retro gaming machine

 

[AYates]

Right now I use my PPC Mac Mini for QT 7 Pro, iTunes Server, iPod manager, infrequent DLNA/UPnP server, and retro gaming machine.

To that end I've got a Quicksilver that will soon be the OS 9 version of the same thing.

But if you are looking for interesting software projects there's a lot of games that should work in PPC OS X - OpenLara and DevilutionX off the top of my head work in PPC Linux but have no OS X ports. ZGloom should also work as it's available for MorphOS but no OS X PPC port exists.

 

[Doq]

Here comes that guy with the Lain avatar again to shill using Power Macs as remote thin clients.


But, no, really. You're in the right spot for finding uses for those mighty machines. Beyond what's already written above, depending on if you're in to it or not, music production is quite popular for the PPCs, as good audio tends to stay good. Even just poking around in GarageBand is an absolute treat.

That iBook might be good as a side display for things like notetaking and a dedicated Google view.

It's unfortunate that Target Display Mode was not a thing until 2009-- the G5 might have been a good candidate for that.

 

[mectojic]

Someone just bought one of my spare Sawtooth G4s today. The guy is apparently using it for Adobe PageMaker 6 in OS 9 (precursor to Adobe Indesign). I thought that was pretty cool, honestly. Not sure whether he's using it professionally or not.

 

[eyoungren]

…(precursor to Adobe Indesign)…

That's always an interesting discussion.

Adobe bought Aldus not because of Pagemaker. They wanted K2 (originally "Shuksan"), which was the successor that Aldus was working on for Pagemaker. K2 became InDesign. So, yeah the precursor, just that Aldus wasn't the one that marketed and sold the successor.

Then Adobe flooded the graphic design schools market with $99 copies of InDesign and that's how they made inroads to Quark. Of course Ebrahami's (Quark CEO) disgust for QuarkXPress customers didn't help either and by the time Quark finally got off their butts and did something, InDesign had captured the market with designers that'd been trained in the schools on InDesign (and not XPress).

The whole QuarkXPress 5 debacle is a story in itself. I was there when Quark took down the online forums for over a year.

Then the whole Adobe buying Macromedia just so they could get rid of Freehand thing happened. Freehand was a far better product than Illustrator, but it's Illustrator that we use now not Freehand.

My first eye-opening experiences about companies in the industry of my profession.

So glad I decided in 2011 to force myself to learn InDesign (I was trained on Pagemaker/QuarkXPress).

The person that bought your Mac might be using it to open old files, but who knows. I once had a pro tell me that they would never move on from QuarkXPress 4.

 

[barracuda156]

I don't like having the PowerPC Macs just sitting around, and I was wondering if anyone might be willing to give me some ideas for some fairly doable things I can start work on, hardware or software please

If you consider software development, then we do need testers and developers for PPC in Macports. Too few people have hardware, and time and other resources are limited.
Many ports are broken for PPC, often fixes are feasible and sometimes trivial (just someone has to do it).

If you have expertise in writing compilers, some parts of GCC need work for PPC, Go has to be fixed for PPC, GHC, Rust, SBCL, Ruby needs some minor extra fixes.
Some other hardcore stuff to fix are qt5, rstudio, v8, nodejs, julia, llvm/clang

If you like to work on MacOS, we need testing and fixes for 10.6 PPC (see the dedicated thread for it).

 

[barracuda156]

Then the whole Adobe buying Macromedia just so they could get rid of Freehand thing happened. Freehand was a far better product than Illustrator, but it's Illustrator that we use now not Freehand.

I barely recall I needed once to edit layouts from Freehand for prepress, and it was a horribly inconvenient app. Not as bad as Corel, but less intuitively understandable than Adobe. IMO.

 

[eyoungren]

I barely recall I needed once to edit layouts from Freehand for prepress, and it was a horribly inconvenient app. Not as bad as Corel, but less intuitively understandable than Adobe. IMO.

Freehand had the ability to do color templates before Illustrator. Ie, you used a layer as a template the layer was black and white in Illustrator even if the artwork was color.

Later on Freehand became my Swiss army knife. It would open anything. Eventually it was so old and newer apps were out there though so I stopped using it.

Freehand did have things in more than a few places though which made it confusing.

 

[tensixturtle]

Thank you to everyone for your suggestions! They are all very good ideas that will help me to get these computers back into circulation. It has been a few months. I will probably try to switch out some of the newer Macs with PPC ones for now as well.

Here comes that guy with the Lain avatar again to shill using Power Macs as remote thin clients.

@Doq I'm curious how you achieve this? The remote thin client part.

If you like to work on MacOS, we need testing and fixes for 10.6 PPC (see the dedicated thread for it).

@barracuda156 yes, I should get back to it. Although I probably should try testing something else as Bluetooth amounted to nothing... I didn't see much of any activity for a while so I was worried that the project was not really going on.

If you consider software development, then we do need testers and developers for PPC in Macports. Too few people have hardware, and time and other resources are limited.
Many ports are broken for PPC, often fixes are feasible and sometimes trivial (just someone has to do it).

Do you think you could point me towards some more information? Although, as it was with SL PPC, as much as I would love to learn more I do not want to be a big bother and cause more work for the people who already know about it for purely my own benefit and little to no return.

 

[barracuda156]

yes, I should get back to it. Although I probably should try testing something else as Bluetooth amounted to nothing... I didn't see much of any activity for a while so I was worried that the project was not really going on.

Cannot say for others, myself I am using 10A190 as my default OS on both PowerMacs and one PowerBook.
But I did not get to testing components across builds of 10.6.

(Bluetooth might have failed, but Wifi worked, right?)

There are two parts to this, one rather mechanical and simple:
0. Backup.
1. Pull over newer components with PPC slices present, reboot, see if things get broken or not.
2. If there is a way to test a component, test it.
3. Make a record of success/failure.

Another one far more demanding – rebuild system components from sources.

 

[barracuda156]

Do you think you could point me towards some more information? Although, as it was with SL PPC, as much as I would love to learn more I do not want to be a big bother and cause more work for the people who already know about it for purely my own benefit and little to no return.

Re Macports, one useful thing is to discover and report ports failing to build for PPC (to report on Trac, this must be done on release versions of MacOS, tickets against 10.6 PPC are not accepted, please do not file such there).
Then, of course, if you can fix some broken port, that will be a valuable contribution.

Generally speaking, ppc64 is the most problematic area (more broken than 10.6 PPC and even Rosetta).

Some info is here (not about ppc64, but Macports): https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-6-powerpc-10a190-and-10-6-8-rosetta.2332711/

 

[Doq]

@Doq I'm curious how you achieve this? The remote thin client part.

To connect to most machines, you'll want a blend of TSclientX, Chicken, and the OpenSSH that comes with your Mac (for the most part; some older installs may need a newer OpenSSH).

TSclientX is what I've found to be the best Terminal Services/Remote Desktop client for PPC Macs to connect to MS Windows machines (even modern ones!). It's a GUI wrapper for rdesktop, and I used it quite liberally when the Companion (A1046) was my everyday carry.

Chicken may not even be necessary if any of your machines run Leopard-- the inbuilt Screen Sharing app will do the trick.

And SSH is SSH. It even works with RSA public/private keys for keyauth!

You'll want to make sure the machine you're connecting to supports remote access. There are many guides for this.

 

[DearthnVader]

Hello,
Very sorry to take up your time. Recently I have been really busy and have not had so much time to work with my PowerPC Macs. The early Intels get more attention and I have mostly been using them. I don't like having the PowerPC Macs just sitting around, and I was wondering if anyone might be willing to give me some ideas for some fairly doable things I can start work on, hardware or software please? I feel stuck figuring out what to do next. I have the following:
PM G4 QS 2002 (OS 9.2.2/OS X 10.2)
iBook G4 Late 2004 (Lubuntu/OS X 10.4)
iMac G5 ALS (OS X 10.4/Sorbet/OS X 10.6)

Sorry for not being resourceful, but I just do not know where to look. Thanks in advance.

What's you skill level?

We need USB2 drivers for Mac OS 9 on the iBook G4s. A good generic driver should work with all PCI Mac's too. That's about the easiest on the list, if you know how to program for the Classic Mac OS, I'd take it on myself but I can't make heads or tails of the documentation and build tools. I can port drivers from Linux to Mac OS X, but not OS 9. Anyway I already did the drivers for the Radeon 9200 variations for the OS X only G4's, so it's time someone else did some work too other than me and Elliot Nunn.

We also need Airport Extreme Drivers and an airport utility for Mac OS 9. Pretty hard.

Also the USB trackpads used in some iBooks and Powerbooks needs an OS 9 driver too. Shouldn't be too hard, some versions of OS X that will run unsupported on these Mac's could also use a USB track pad driver!

 

[tensixturtle]

What's you skill level?

We need USB2 drivers for Mac OS 9 on the iBook G4s. A good generic driver should work with all PCI Mac's too. That's about the easiest on the list, if you know how to program for the Classic Mac OS, I'd take it on myself but I can't make heads or tails of the documentation and build tools. I can port drivers from Linux to Mac OS X, but not OS 9. Anyway I already did the drivers for the Radeon 9200 variations for the OS X only G4's, so it's time someone else did some work too other than me and Elliot Nunn.

We also need Airport Extreme Drivers and an airport utility for Mac OS 9. Pretty hard.

Also the USB trackpads used in some iBooks and Powerbooks needs an OS 9 driver too. Shouldn't be too hard, some versions of OS X that will run unsupported on these Mac's could also use a USB track pad driver!

Unfortunately that is not in my skill set. I would love to learn to help but I seem to be no match for documentation so I do not know how.

 

[richardallan]

Generally, I use my PowerMacs as servers. I have a G3 B&W running 10.4.11 Server with a 2TB RAID and a G4 500mhz with two 3TB SATA drives (PCI-SATA card) that is filesharing.

That's one thing I'd like to do but finding it impossible to get a PCI SATA card! Any suggestions...

 

[eyoungren]

That's one thing I'd like to do but finding it impossible to get a PCI SATA card! Any suggestions...

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This is for a new 4 port SATA card for a PowerMac G4. It adds 4 SATA ports to most PowerMac G4 models. Supported models include all versions of the "Mirror Drive Doors", "Gigabit", "AGP", and "PCI" models.It should also work in a blue & white G3, and the first generation G5 with PCI.

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MODS, THESE ARE NOT MY AUCTIONS AND I AM NOT SELLING ANYTHING!

@richardallan An alternative is to get a cheap SIL-3112 PC card and flash it. There's a thread in this subforum for that. My first PCI-SATA card was one of those. Cost me $10.

 

[richardallan]

Thanks. I'll have look...

 

[tensixturtle]

Re Macports, one useful thing is to discover and report ports failing to build for PPC (to report on Trac, this must be done on release versions of MacOS, tickets against 10.6 PPC are not accepted, please do not file such there).
Then, of course, if you can fix some broken port, that will be a valuable contribution.

Generally speaking, ppc64 is the most problematic area (more broken than 10.6 PPC and even Rosetta).

Some info is here (not about ppc64, but Macports): https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-6-powerpc-10a190-and-10-6-8-rosetta.2332711/

@barracuda156 I did some reading about Macports. So basically what I would aim to do (theoretically if I can actually piece it together for ppc64 somehow) is to arbitrarily try building different ports and see which one fails? Thanks

 

[maître]

If you can leave one of your machines running 10.4, you can try compiling some recent versions of useful terminal utilities using MacPorts and share the binaries.
So many times I had to pull up TenFourFox just to download something, because none of the wget binaries available online that run on Tiger support TLS-secured HTTPS.
I tried compiling it on a Powerbook and I left it running for 2 days on 100% CPU and it wasn't even done with GCC, so until I get a desktop PowerPC Mac I would greatly appreciate if you do that

 

[tensixturtle]

If you can leave one of your machines running 10.4, you can try compiling some recent versions of useful terminal utilities using MacPorts and share the binaries.
So many times I had to pull up TenFourFox just to download something, because none of the wget binaries available online that run on Tiger support TLS-secured HTTPS.
I tried compiling it on a Powerbook and I left it running for 2 days on 100% CPU and it wasn't even done with GCC, so until I get a desktop PowerPC Mac I would greatly appreciate if you do that

I will look into this. Once I have Macports installed, would I search for something labeled as wget with the pod search command?
Edit: One more question. I understand correctly that I am trying to make a binary package, like a metapackage?

 

[Créativité]

hello,


CodeWarrior, C language and asm.

 

[maître]

One more question. I understand correctly that I am trying to make a binary package, like a metapackage?

Depends on how much fun it is for you 😆 Compiling and seeing if it runs on a Tiger machine is enough I think.

 

[tensixturtle]

Depends on how much fun it is for you 😆 Compiling and seeing if it runs on a Tiger machine is enough I think.

Yes, well first I am installing on my iMac G5 to try it out. There was first a hiccup with gcc42, then with libgcc7. Now it’s building gcc7 so we’ll see wget is one of the most useful Terminal commands so I am hoping it will work out too.