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What have you done with a PowerPC today?
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done a speedometer cuz yes. results are horrible of course 🤣
I made an interactive letter in APPLEWORKS 6 in Mac OS 9. (It had a QR Code in it, thus “interactive”). It was sent to the work printer and it printed with zero problems.
It still amazes me that I can do that kind of thing from OS 9 sometimes.
It still amazes me that I can do that kind of thing from OS 9 sometimes.
Imported all 377 of my partners CDs and synced the to an iPod classic. All done on my (heavily upgraded) PowerMac G4 Gigabit running Tiger.
Decided to put together a os9 quicksilver box out of some spare parts I had around last night - mostly to leverage an acard sata pci card and a stiig usb2 card I had laying around in my parts bins boxes for years now. IIRC the acard sata card is bootable in os9. It technically works in OSX but drives show up as scsi and it has issues consistently working in OSX. Both do not like 9.2.1 and need 9.2.2, so next steps are to upgrade to 9.2.2, grab the acard driver off wayback (I might have it already somewhere on my NAS) and get both up and running.
I also noticed on this particular rescue QS that one of the 1,1 USB ports is broken off so I will pull one off a dead mdd lobo I have and solder that on at some point as well and with functional sata, I'll try my luck with an SSD in os9. After that, I dont know exactly what Ill do with it as I prefer OSX environments generally although I admit it was fun to surf macintoshgarden through IE5
.
I also noticed on this particular rescue QS that one of the 1,1 USB ports is broken off so I will pull one off a dead mdd lobo I have and solder that on at some point as well and with functional sata, I'll try my luck with an SSD in os9. After that, I dont know exactly what Ill do with it as I prefer OSX environments generally although I admit it was fun to surf macintoshgarden through IE5
.
Today, after snatching it from an e-waste in a campus basement years ago (~2018), I finally got my G4 MDD to boot for the first time! The big delay was that it was missing a PSU completely and had a sticker saying “DEAD - JUL 2012” on top, so I wasn’t going to try tracking down a new PSU until I was sure the board wasn’t fried from the PSU failure.
Anyway, I borrowed a spare ATX PSU and rewired an ATX-to-ATX extension cable to map the right pins to the MDD’s logic board, and it works!!! First time it’s booted in over a decade, if that sticker’s to be believed. It’s a dual 1.25 with 1.75 GB RAM, dual HDDs and a Radeon 9000 Pro. Had to swap the Radeon with a spare Rage 128 to get it to show anything on the monitor. The Radeon *does* work seemingly fine in my G4 Digital Audio though, so the card’s not 100% toasted: will have to figure that out later.
Next step is running Apple Service Diagnostic to test the hardware more thoroughly, and look into cheap SFF ATX PSUs that could fit into the case’s limited space!
Anyway, I borrowed a spare ATX PSU and rewired an ATX-to-ATX extension cable to map the right pins to the MDD’s logic board, and it works!!! First time it’s booted in over a decade, if that sticker’s to be believed. It’s a dual 1.25 with 1.75 GB RAM, dual HDDs and a Radeon 9000 Pro. Had to swap the Radeon with a spare Rage 128 to get it to show anything on the monitor. The Radeon *does* work seemingly fine in my G4 Digital Audio though, so the card’s not 100% toasted: will have to figure that out later.
Next step is running Apple Service Diagnostic to test the hardware more thoroughly, and look into cheap SFF ATX PSUs that could fit into the case’s limited space!
Today decided to run an experiment and only use my 12 inch PowerBook for all my postgrad classes(didn’t bring my MacBook Pro as a backup). Useing some of the Omni applications for notes and diagrams and opened teachers instructions no problem in word and PowerPoint….everything was submitted electronically to the teachers office 365 share for grading of course all thanks to tenfourfox and articfoxppc….everything just worked….almost to well… I had meant to bring my MacBook Pro as a backup this morning but my dog decided swimming in the pool when I had to to leave was more important….I was freaking out this morning because it’s an hour drive there and back home, but everything was doable on my PowerBook….insane…and having such a small compact laptop felt different….
You might like my Powerbook only tale...
Surviving With A Powerbook
I'm now on my 2nd week away from the UK, in Nova Scotia, Canada - my only companion being my 12" Powerbook - ok, I have my Lumia Windows 10 phone but that's used for txt, calls, taking snaps and WhatsApp and an iPhone 4S that's used for iOS music apps only. So far, I've been able to get by...
forums.macrumors.com
My distance learning classes rely heavily on remote desktop environments which dont work at all for me unfortunately - even earlyintel is very very sluggish to where I do the majority of my work on my windows box.
I threw 768MB of RAM at the Beige Restoration Project so that I could stake my claim for worst score in the Speedometer thread. It now has twice the RAM of the Six Dollar eMac and maybe I should bless it with RAM too.
I swear the Linux disc was easily 50x faster to desktop and it wasn't nearly as tragic navigating. If your machine struggles, get some RAM if you haven't already maxed your machine out.
I swear the Linux disc was easily 50x faster to desktop and it wasn't nearly as tragic navigating. If your machine struggles, get some RAM if you haven't already maxed your machine out.
What you don’t realize good sir is I’ve watched your videos on your YouTube channel and your kinda the reason I got back into PowerPC…along with action retro and dosdudes cool side project videos. I think I saw that post a long time ago. The PowerPC challenge videos are the reason I tried using it for an entire day and now honestly because I like my 12 inch size wise(get your head outa the gutter people) I may use it without bringing my MacBook Pro a few times a week for some of my liter classes….keep up the videos!!!!! Your channel rockkksssss.
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It's that time of the season. My Chillhop disc arrived and as (almost) always I pulled Vittorio out to enter titles and submit them to GnuDB.
This time the back of the case was hard to read, so I had to source a text file with the track names on them. It was probably just the lighting, though.
Greetings from Amberglow Glade the Spring and Fall Essentials came with postcards but not Summer? or maybe I just forgot to grab it out the packaging.
This album on GnuDB. (gnudb.org)
This time the back of the case was hard to read, so I had to source a text file with the track names on them. It was probably just the lighting, though.
Greetings from Amberglow Glade the Spring and Fall Essentials came with postcards but not Summer? or maybe I just forgot to grab it out the packaging.
This album on GnuDB. (gnudb.org)
Why did the background of this webpage suddenly remind me of OS X Mavericks? 🤔
yeah, the color scheme is sea green, like the wallpaper on OSX 10.9.
wallpaper for comparison:
wallpaper for comparison:
I use discord on my IMac g3 today! with tenfourfox! (see this thread for more info)
Attachments
My iMac is low on disk space and to build C programs I have to install the 20 GB Xcode app. Or I could get out the trusty iBook G4.
Everything from this class works fine on the iBook, but the OpenGL he is using is very ancient...if it works it works
Everything from this class works fine on the iBook, but the OpenGL he is using is very ancient...if it works it works
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Not true. I placed a food order over, like, 20 painful minutes of loading. It got there though.
It's a miracle nobody thought to block "InterWebPPC" from placing online orders with actual money.
(Oops, I meant 20 minutes of loading total, not to load the page)
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You see, that's what I'd say if I got around to replacing mines hard drive. Currently it's sitting taken apart ready for a drive. I'd better get on that. Thanks for the reminder.
20 minutes of loading? That's a rather slow PowerPC Mac you have there. TenFourFox/IWPPC's about:config settings can be optimized with TenFourFoxPEP (https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/poweruoc-tenfourfox). This (prefs.js) is a file you install in your user directory (/Users/*****/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/********.default/prefs.js). Replace the current prefs.js, and voilla! You'll notice a great performance boost in TenFourFox/IWPPC.
Oops. I put that on TenFourFox but not it's replacement. Gotta go do that. Maybe it's just because the food site was stupidly complex.
The 20 minutes was how long it took to complete the order, I meant. Oops.
To print, I first connect a Brother HL-1430 mono laser printer from 2004 to a 12-inch PowerBook G4 A1104 running OS X 10.5. Then, I print from the Mac mini via printer sharing over WiFi. Drivers for the printer were only supplied until OS X 10.10. With printer sharing, that's not an issue. The printer can last forever! It is in superb condition. I just had to learn how to clean the drum unit.
What have I done with a PowerPC Mac lately?
Well, after having it on my low-priority “tasks to do” list, I finally went back to — slooowly and carefully — patch PPCMC 7.2.6 to actually download videos from YT after being without a working PPCMC (on any machine) for the last several months (at least since March or April).
The test bed was my A1139 PowerBook G4.
It took a couple of hours of re-reading the discussion on here and on the garden about how to manage both the python/openssl patching and also getting the latest yt-dlp in place, with __main__.py symlinked to the directory one level up (I’m doing a lousy job of describing this, but for those here who’ve done it, they’re probably following along reasonably okay... knock on wood).
Finally, after getting close (I was managing to grab videos, but they were being sent down as VP9-encoded and not MPEG-4), the last thing fell into place. Suddenly, I was — once more — able to begin downloading .mp4 versions of stuff I’ve had queued for just this moment for several months. Seeing it work again brought a giant smile to my face.
Still, I don’t yet know how, if possible, to request 2K+ clips (like 1440p and up) to be pulled down with MPEG-4 codec and not the newer, more limited vp9 codec (which, for now, only VLC seems to know how to deal with it). Frankly, if I could get PPCMC to succesfully grab MPEG-4-encoded videos from YT (and to error out if only a VP9 in a particular resolution is the only variant available), then that would be the best possible outcome.
And speaking of DLSD PowerBook G4s… I’ve been thinking about consolidating my Mac life — namely, by bringing my SL-PPC test mule partition over to the A1139 and letting go of my imperfect, but still more-than-serviceable A1138 (on which I did all the SL-PPC 10A96 tweaks). The A1139 is, aside from the display, the same system. One of the duties on my A1139 which had kept me from doing much in the way of SL-PPC work has since been off-loaded to another Mac, freeing it up for this opportunity (provided I get back into SL-PPC work, which is another on the “tasks to do: low priority” running list).
My mind isn’t yet made up, but this is the closest I’ve come to letting something go which I’m liable to never come across again for as good of a deal as when I found this one back in 2019.
Last bit of PPC-related recent activity: I noticed macports seems to be finally letting go of supporting Tiger, on PowerPC (and possibly Tiger on Intel), as my last couple of efforts to update the iBook G3/466 have failed to build legacy-support (v1.1.1 seems to be where these troubles began).
So that’s a mild disappointment.
Well, after having it on my low-priority “tasks to do” list, I finally went back to — slooowly and carefully — patch PPCMC 7.2.6 to actually download videos from YT after being without a working PPCMC (on any machine) for the last several months (at least since March or April).
The test bed was my A1139 PowerBook G4.
It took a couple of hours of re-reading the discussion on here and on the garden about how to manage both the python/openssl patching and also getting the latest yt-dlp in place, with __main__.py symlinked to the directory one level up (I’m doing a lousy job of describing this, but for those here who’ve done it, they’re probably following along reasonably okay... knock on wood).
Finally, after getting close (I was managing to grab videos, but they were being sent down as VP9-encoded and not MPEG-4), the last thing fell into place. Suddenly, I was — once more — able to begin downloading .mp4 versions of stuff I’ve had queued for just this moment for several months. Seeing it work again brought a giant smile to my face.
Still, I don’t yet know how, if possible, to request 2K+ clips (like 1440p and up) to be pulled down with MPEG-4 codec and not the newer, more limited vp9 codec (which, for now, only VLC seems to know how to deal with it). Frankly, if I could get PPCMC to succesfully grab MPEG-4-encoded videos from YT (and to error out if only a VP9 in a particular resolution is the only variant available), then that would be the best possible outcome.
And speaking of DLSD PowerBook G4s… I’ve been thinking about consolidating my Mac life — namely, by bringing my SL-PPC test mule partition over to the A1139 and letting go of my imperfect, but still more-than-serviceable A1138 (on which I did all the SL-PPC 10A96 tweaks). The A1139 is, aside from the display, the same system. One of the duties on my A1139 which had kept me from doing much in the way of SL-PPC work has since been off-loaded to another Mac, freeing it up for this opportunity (provided I get back into SL-PPC work, which is another on the “tasks to do: low priority” running list).
My mind isn’t yet made up, but this is the closest I’ve come to letting something go which I’m liable to never come across again for as good of a deal as when I found this one back in 2019.
Last bit of PPC-related recent activity: I noticed macports seems to be finally letting go of supporting Tiger, on PowerPC (and possibly Tiger on Intel), as my last couple of efforts to update the iBook G3/466 have failed to build legacy-support (v1.1.1 seems to be where these troubles began).
So that’s a mild disappointment.
Perhaps VP9 compatibility needs to be added to PPCMC? I've found the VP9 codec to be lighter on system resources than MPEG-4. For example, VP9 encoded UHD content performs much better on my 2011 i5 MBA eGPU set-up than the equivalent UHD MPEG-4 file does.
Is there a way that we could take over Tiger PPC support?