Snow Leopard on Unsupported PowerPC Macs

[vddrnnr]

Hi Tobias @internetzel,

Thanks for all the help and taking the time to look at our "adventure"
I'll wait for your help off course. We all deserve some vacation time ;-)
Meanwhile I'll look into the current builds to see if replacing the frameworks inside the
frameworks folder get us past the NSURLRequest error about the missing method in
Foundation.

Let us know when you have more news.

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[vddrnnr]

Hi all,

While trying to configure screensavers in SL PPC most are not working right now
when we have machines without QE/CI.
They either just don't work or are very CPU demanding.
This was also the case for some savers in Leopard for that reason
I always resorted to have a "blank" saver with just the clock for almost
no CPU usage when the saver is running.
I don't really like the one that comes with OSX where you have the machine name with
the gray apple symbol so I started looking for an alternative.
The one I found and used in Leopard came from the possibility of having quartz filters
running as savers. In SL this does not work so I found someone that had made
a "blank" saver that works both in Leopard and SL.
This saver is made by Dr. Lex and it works as intended just a blank screen where
we can activate the clock.

I hope this may be of interest to some of you so I'm posting it here.

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[nxstudiomc]

Got my Gigabit Ethernet G4 up and running. But the QE/CI is not working in Rage 128 pro.
So,yeah it is laggy.
and also sorry about the potato quality of the photo.
BTW,here are the specs:
dual 450mhz ppc g4
768 mb of ram
ati rage 128 pro

 

[arkieboy72472]

I got it to "work" on my iMac G5 1.8ghz, but the graphics looked Blocky. Wifi was a no-go so I tried an edimax dongle which promptly made a KP and restart upon each time I loaded this. It is cool you all managed to get this far.

This is for anyone new to this thread who may read this:

This is basically a buggy and unusable beta. Unless you really know what you are doing, this is way over your head. Unless a ton of time and effort is put into this version more than already has, all it will ever be is a bug filled mess that might work on a few select machines. Save your time and stick to 10.4.11 and 10.5.8. The same crap runs on both, just about.

Again, unless you can read these guys directions and know how to do all this stuff, stay away from this beta OS. You MAY have a machine that this magically works on without much effort, but that is highly unlikely.

If in the event that someone adds some software, fixes some graphics and wifi issues, and has a list of what models will and will not work....and then makes an image of that we can restore to, now we are talking. I say this as a fairly savvy person who can barely keep up with this thread. More than likely someone will see the action replay video, think they can run 10.6, actually install it but then see what all it can't do, and erase it for tiger or leopard. Not taking away all of you alls hard work. Maybe someday this will be ready for primetime for a few select machines.

 

[vddrnnr]

Hi all,

I've been doing some tests with VPC6 and VPC7 and can report that both work
in SL PPC without problems.
The only one where network is working properly is VPC7 using the VirtualSwitch option,
I could not get "Shared Network" running but it might be my network because inside
the VM the network seems to get configured ok but I'm unable to connect outside.
To get Virtual Switch running after installing you need to replace the VirtualSwitch binary
VirtualPCNetworking1040 with the one attached
inside the kext ( /Library/Extensions/VirtualPCNetworking1040.kext/Contents/Macos ).

Before loading VPC7 you have to load the Virtual Switch kext manually doing from the
command line.

sudo kextutil /Library/Extensions/VirtualPCNetworking1040.kext

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[ChrisCharman]

Hi all,

I've been doing some tests with VPC6 and VPC7 and can report that both work
in SL PPC without problems.
The only one where network is working properly is VPC7 using the VirtualSwitch option,
I could not get "Shared Network" running but it might be my network because inside
the VM the network seems to get configured ok but I'm unable to connect outside.
To get Virtual Switch running after installing you need to replace the VirtualSwitch binary
VirtualPCNetworking1040 with the one attached
inside the kext ( /Library/Extensions/VirtualPCNetworking1040.kext/Contents/Macos ).

Before loading VPC7 you have to load the Virtual Switch kext manually doing from the
command line.

sudo kextutil /Library/Extensions/VirtualPCNetworking1040.kext

Best regards,
voidRunner

Hi @vddrnnr,

Have you tested and been able to use the built-in sharing preferences in the OS for screen or file sharing at all? Trying to work out if it’s just my systems or a 10A190 bug that needs to be addressed.

 

[vddrnnr]

Hi @ChrisCharman,

In my case using 096 in "Server Mode" I had to user the "Server Admin" app
to setup sharing.
After I removed the file that makes OSX behave like a Server and not Client
I'm now able to setup sharing from System Preferences without problems.

What happens when you try to access the preference pane?

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[ChrisCharman]

Hi @ChrisCharman,

In my case using 096 in "Server Mode" I had to user the "Server Admin" app
to setup sharing.
After I removed the file that makes OSX behave like a Server and not Client
I'm now able to setup sharing from System Preferences without problems.

What happens when you try to access the preference pane?

Best regards,
voidRunner

Hi again @vddrnnr,

I can access the system preferences pane but setting the checkboxes doesn’t seem to activate the services, as the system isn’t discoverable. I’ll try copying over the files you mentioned from 10A096 server and see if that fixes things.

 

[diggledude]

Just installed the 10A190 dmg on my machine and thought I'd add to the list. It's a 17" iMac G5 isight (powermac 12,1). I also use yaboot to boot Lubuntu but no issues booting. Straight away noticed dashboard periodically crashes and the sharing preference pane hangs. Time to go through all these pages to find the updated tweaks. If anyone wants me to test things, let me know.

 

[kby]

I found that while on most of my machines OpenGL graphics accel does not yet work, with the tool OSX86Tools (that´s actually some kind predecessor of Kext Wizard or Kext Utilities that runs on PPC despite its name) QuartzGL can at least be activated and makes even slower machines more usable.

The exception is my Quad G5 that runs with all acceleration (ATI GPU kexts loaded, OpenGL, QuartzXtreme, QuartzGL, CoreImage by HW etc.) like a whirlwind...
I´m currently trying to get the right kexts loaded for other Macs as well with 10.6. PPC
Might also be a matter of the right frameworks as a package for Geforce FX5200..5500 suggests that I found for 10.6. (intel).

Could this be due to the fact that the Quad is the only PCI-e machine (so it's gfx cards are all unique to it)?-kby

 

[Project Alice]

Could this be due to the fact that the Quad is the only PCI-e machine (so it's gfx cards are all unique to it)?-kby

It isn’t the only PCIe machine. All the multicore G5s are PCIe. As in G5 chips with more than one core on a single socket. Including the 2.3Ghz dual core.

 

[Larsvonhier]

Hi all,

I've been doing some tests with VPC6 and VPC7 and can report that both work
in SL PPC without problems.
The only one where network is working properly is VPC7 using the VirtualSwitch option,
I could not get "Shared Network" running but it might be my network because inside
the VM the network seems to get configured ok but I'm unable to connect outside.
To get Virtual Switch running after installing you need to replace the VirtualSwitch binary
VirtualPCNetworking1040 with the one attached
inside the kext ( /Library/Extensions/VirtualPCNetworking1040.kext/Contents/Macos ).

Before loading VPC7 you have to load the Virtual Switch kext manually doing from the
command line.

sudo kextutil /Library/Extensions/VirtualPCNetworking1040.kext

Best regards,
voidRunner

Great find.
It is also not commonly known fact, but VPC7 can also run Windows 7 (!) after setting the right AHCI and boot mode in the emulated BIOS (these settings are not accessible from the GUI of VPC like i.e. in Parallels Desktop). Don´t expect wonders, but on dual/quad G5 with enough RAM it´s semi-usable, especially with good QE GPU card... ;-)

 

[diggledude]

Has anyone had success using darwinbuild to build anything? It seems darwin strictly aligns with mac os x and the first build of darwin 10 got rid of ppc architecture. I edited the plist to add ppc but once it generates the build script it just returns "bad CPU type in executable."

 

[ChrisCharman]

Has anyone had success using darwinbuild to build anything? It seems darwin strictly aligns with mac os x and the first build of darwin 10 got rid of ppc architecture. I edited the plist to add ppc but once it generates the build script it just returns "bad CPU type in executable."

I’ve run into similar problems trying to set-up DarwinBuild for PPCSL - seems the environment for Darwin 10 has been set up for intel only which isn’t surprising.

I’m still personally trying to figure out how to create a reliably sane environment but at the moment i’m just manually downloading and compiling the tools i need individually for each project i try to build. Lots of ‘chicken & egg’ unfortunately, and i’m not able to spend more than a few hours here and there a week on this. Compiling the tools alone keeps my old PPC systems nice and warm while i’m at work.

Hopefully once most of the base system has been recompiled to be closer to parity with the release versions we might be able to bootstrap some tools to the new system and build from there...or i could be completely wrong as i’m really just learning this stuff as i go which is part of the fun for me.

If you manage to get DarwinBuild functioning please do let us know as it would make things much easier.

 

[Hughmac]

It's been a while since anyone posted here - has there been any progress on anything lately?

Also, and while thanking you for all the hard work , I would like to ask if any of the main developers are willing to upload an image of a working build (ready-to-go) as was kindly done early on, which contains all the latest hacks and improvements made to date?

Cheers

Hugh

 

[netsrot39]

It's been a while since anyone posted here - has there been any progress on anything lately?

Also, and while thanking you for all the hard work , I would like to ask if any of the main developers are willing to upload an image of a working build (ready-to-go) as was kindly done early on, which contains all the latest hacks and improvements made to date?

Cheers

Hugh

I visited to ask the same. Even though I'd consider myself tech-savy, I do unfortunately have a low level of knowledge about programming, especially when it comes to creating and adjusting frameworks and drivers from one architecture to another. I'd love to run Snow Leopard on my PowerBook and from what I've read in the past in this thread, there have been reached considerable achievements like working WiFi. An up to date image, one that is restorable, would be so awesome and I know since I haven't contributed to the project I do not have the right to ask but if there will be any updated image out there in the future I'll shall be very intrigued by and grateful for it (as will many others I believe).

Anyways, props to the guys that are still tinkering around to get this to work in a stable manner and share their knowledge

 

[internetzel]

Hi Tobias @internetzel,

Thanks for all the help and taking the time to look at our "adventure"
I'll wait for your help off course. We all deserve some vacation time ;-)
Meanwhile I'll look into the current builds to see if replacing the frameworks inside the
frameworks folder get us past the NSURLRequest error about the missing method in
Foundation.

Let us know when you have more news.

Best regards,
voidRunner

Unfortunately, at the moment I can't bring myself to start digging into Leopard WebKit once more...
But I still hope to find the right moment for dedicating time to this project.

 

[z970]

Forgive me if this is common knowledge at this point (as I haven't been following anything), but here's my $0.03 on this project so far (given my past experience with the inner-workings of Tiger and Leopard) ...

1. While manipulating kexts, right-click them to see 'Show package contents'.

2. Inside the kext packages, scan through 'Info.plist' and 'version.plist', as well as any 'Plugins' folders. Sometimes, these can provide additional information as to what purpose a kext serves, and where else it ties into the system.

3. Refer to (https://developer.apple.com/library...erview/SystemFrameworks/SystemFrameworks.html) for descriptions of each applicable kext, what role they were designed for, and what major version they were introduced with.

4. Delete 'Extensions.mkext' and 'Extensions.kextcache' after making changes to clear the kernel cache, which may prevent unnecessary problems or inconsistencies during testing.

5. Repair the disk permissions after making changes to effectively "apply" those changes, otherwise the system won't boot if certain kexts have been modified (i.e. removed, replaced, etc.). This can be done through the terminal with sudo diskutil repairPermissions /.

Hopefully this will be useful to somebody.

 

[B S Magnet]

I know it’s been kind of low-key on this project for a minute, but I added to the wiki a summary of testing various basic software which appear to run on SL-PPC and those which seem to be incompatible. Have a look at items #5 & #6 and see how these compare and contrast with any software testing any of you’ve tried so far.

Once more people here begin to pick up where they left off, hopefully this new info can come in handy.

 

[Macbookprodude]

Just a follow up - has Snow Leopard for PPC been perfected with QE/CI yet and WIFI ?

 

[G4fanboy]

AFAIK if your graphics isn´t AGP and are QE/CI is OK : for example iMac G5 (latest only) and PM G5 not AGP

That doesn't mean you can't get a functional install on a G4 with PCI or AGP ATI Rage 128 to say the bare minimum.

 

[Macbookprodude]

AFAIK if your graphics isn´t AGP and are QE/CI is OK : for example iMac G5 (latest only) and PM G5 not AGP

That doesn't mean you can't get a functional install on a G4 with PCI or AGP ATI Rage 128 to say the bare minimum.

I am referring to two machines here: G4 1GHZ Titanium and the G5 Quad - QE/CI wifi work ?

 

[B S Magnet]

I lack the know-how and I’m also not going to touch the settings within it, but for those of you who have some sense of the lower-level hardware functions of PPC architecture (thinking folks like @LightBulbFun and @dosdude1 might be better situated than most around here to know about this stuff), you all might want to look at various low-level hardware settings using CHUD Tools’ utility called Reggie SE. (I’m using Reggie SE 4.6.2 (227.9) from CHUD 4.6.2, but earlier 4.0+ versions of Reggie ought to function similarly).

In particular (or rather, of particular) interest for those of us testing Snow Leopard on our PPC systems, especially those of us dealing with the obstacle of trying to get 10A96 or 10A190 to deliver hardware support for embedded Mobility Radeon 9x00 AGP GPUs on Al PowerBook G4s and last-edition iBook G4s, there is on Reggie SE an “AGP Status” button under the the PCI tab. This opens a menu of the 32-bit AGPStatus and AGPCommand address values.

Of what value this could provide testing is probably insignificant here, but if you know what you’re doing, this might be an interesting tool to browse. I do know that a search on “Reggie” and “AGP” on the forums doesn’t bring up any past discussions.

 

[Rikintosh]

I have some powerbooks here, I have no knowledge, but I'm going to play exchanging files with leopard and snow leopard, and see what I can get.

 

[B S Magnet]

I have some powerbooks here, I have no knowledge, but I'm going to play exchanging files with leopard and snow leopard, and see what I can get.

Excellent to hear. It’ll be good to hear what you deduce from your testing different components from Leopard within the SL environment.