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What have you done with a PowerPC today?

ojfd said:
Spare yourself the trouble. ;) I am an EE by trade, old enough and have overclocked/downclocked many Macs for myself and my clients. Swapping oscillators, PLL chips, slow RAM chips, ratio resistors, you name it.. From the result poin of view, the one that I liked most was Q605 running at 40MHz and full 68040 processor for the MIDI sequencer guys. Made several of those.
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Sorry, I wasn’t writing to you but everybody. Thought that such thing might be interesting to some but nvm.
 
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ToniCH said:
But, I think my charger broke after it managed to pull the aftermarket battery from the abyss. I guess too much was asked from it after all this time - 3 totally empty batteries and one that is probably not fully functional, or same quality as originals to start with. :(
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So, the charger appeared dead and I was about to put it into scrap bin when I noticed one of the pins is bent and the insulation is cracked. It wasn't before and I cannot bend it back so I assume the socket has melted inside and hardened to that position when it cooled down. I found a new one (in them parts boxes ;) ) and replaced it hoping the socket alone is broken and voilá that was it. With a new socket the charger works again! :D

Never seen that happen before. So, I guess charging 3 batteries from 0 to 100% in a row is a bad idea - especially if one of them is non original brandless one. ;)

I also charged the aftermarket battery, over many hours it finally charged to 100% capacity (1 load cycle only!) even after being uncharged plugged in the PB since 2012. But, the status leds are malfunctioning, they are lit all the time like the button is pressed all the time. I think the casing is interfering with the button, ie. the button hole is too small or misaligned. The decorative lid with the button has become little unglued from riding on the button, so I might be able to enlargen the hole and glue it back.
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So, I fixed the aftermarket battery lid-button interference too. The hole was 4.2mm and the lid was ever so slightly misaligned so it pressed the button continuously (maybe this is the reason the charger overheated over night?). Drilled it with a 5mm bit and now it fits semiperfectly. You can still see how its misaligned but doesn't touch anymore.

EDIT: I didn't have to glue the lid back. Now that it sits properly the original adhesive sticks and the lid is good. :)
 

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Oh snap! The latest Adelie beta finally boots on my G4.

Looks great, seems fast. Unfortunately the main menus aren't clickable with a mouse... they pop up and immediate disappear (any suggestions?).

But browsing the gui files window works fine and clicks respond correctly on folders and applications within those windows. It's getting there...
 
How do you download YT-videos?

I used to do it with VLC but when I tried it again few weeks ago it didn't work.
 
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but that requires you to open youtube.com (slow on powerpc!), while with a website like yt5s.io you search video title or supply an url, and you can download either mp3 128kbps or mp4 144p - 4320p (depending on video)
 
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Played around with 16.04 gui on my a1047 PowermacG5, added docky, neofetch and worked on updating repositories.
Screenshot from 2023-11-04 17-06-55.png

I also got conky on there but for some reason that I dont understand, it was installed to my home folder. I thought it was going to go to system settings but whatevs lol it's on there too. At the end of the day, it doesnt have to be pretty, it just needs to get done I guess :p I also noticed this quirk - I was, running the cpu monitor in docky which shows a constant 48% ram usage, but conky shows just 15% which is weird as I assumed it would pull data from the same place as cpu monitor so would be the same number.
Conky docky 2023-11-04 22-27-42.png

I assume that docklet is defunct so I'll ditch it for Conky which I prefer anyways.
 
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wicknix said:
It'll run on a G4. I installed Fienix on my 17" powerbook not that long ago. It has issues with graphics, but can be worked around. I just don't remember everything i did. Anyway, here's what i remember.....

Boot in to single user mode: Linux single
This will bring you to the text based log in.
Log in and su or sudo to root user.
Get a network connection (ethernet required and may require manually starting dhcp or the like)
NOTE: all root commands will need to be done by typing the whole path in single user mode (e.g. /sbin/reboot)
Run sudo apt update
Install some other DE or WM (xfce4 or icewm are good choices) and also install another session manager as the default session manager (try maybe lightdm, xdm, etc) and Mate are causing the graphics issue.
Once those are installed reboot and graphical login should work. Don't use Mate. Choose your new DE or WM.

There may be more to it than that, but that's what i remember when i installed it. It should get you going in the right direction at least.

Cheers
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How much hard disk space is needed for fienix? It took a while to install sid and other hard drives I have aren't as big. As I'm having difficulties with the internal display of Titanium Powerbook G4 under sid.
 
I tried to update my MacPorts 10.4.11 packages, but legacy-support fails to build and thus packages won't compile. Is there a way to bypass the legacy-support update and just compile the packages with the older version?
 
I've finally received the PSU and fans (PAPST Multifan 4212H) for my G4 MDD resurrection project.

The guy I bought the PSUs from had a AcBel and a Samsung unit, as expected, the AcBel is dead as doornail, I haven't decided if I'm gonna try and recap it or gut it and cram the innards of a SFX PSU (still need to find out how I can get a 25V supply for the ADC port..).

The Samsung works, the motherboard also shows signs of life (chimes) but since I don't have a monitor or a hard drive attached, I'm stuck here for now.

Oh and if you have a OPTi FireLink USB card, those seems to run unusually hot, unless my card somehow is bad and is heating up..

Edit: hooked up my iBook in target boot disk mode and it appears that the G4 indeed works as I heard the iBook's hard drive seek back and forth I don't know what hard drive it has but it's so quiet that it's practically inaudible.

The G4 on the other hand, I frankly expected it to be noisier than that but it's still tolerable to me.
 
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Little follow-up... I found a 80GB HDD pulled out of a iMac G4 I upgraded, serendipitously enough, this MDD originally came with a 80GB HDD :)

With that in mind, I got the MDD firing up, so far it's promising there's life in it. This puppy wants to run.

So far I'm stuck here: 17003876673442506471763051816100.jpg

I admit: I don't have any IDE DVD drives on hand, so I copied the OS9 DVD files I had (and blessed the system folder, as is tradition with Mac OS9) and got the MDD booting from a USB drive.

Now, how can I bypass this? :/
 
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Alexis Trinquet said:
Little follow-up... I found a 80GB HDD pulled out of a iMac G4 I upgraded, serendipitously enough, this MDD originally came with a 80GB HDD :)

With that in mind, I got the MDD firing up, so far it's promising there's life in it. This puppy wants to run.

So far I'm stuck here: View attachment 2314466

I admit: I don't have any IDE DVD drives on hand, so I copied the OS9 DVD files I had (and blessed the system folder, as is tradition with Mac OS9) and got the MDD booting from a USB drive.

Now, how can I bypass this? :/
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You probably need to get the MDD version of OS 9.2.2. The 'official' way to get it is from the restore DVD/CD set (the English version of which, at least, is widely available. Not sure about other languages.) for the MDD, you install Panther first, then run the restore utility and it will give you a bootable 9.2.2 system folder. I believe you can also extract it from a hidden .dmg.

Or there are modified MacOS 9 images floating around as well, though I've never tried those...
 
VivienM said:
You probably need to get the MDD version of OS 9.2.2. The 'official' way to get it is from the restore DVD/CD set (the English version of which, at least, is widely available. Not sure about other languages.) for the MDD, you install Panther first, then run the restore utility and it will give you a bootable 9.2.2 system folder. I believe you can also extract it from a hidden .dmg.

Or there are modified MacOS 9 images floating around as well, though I've never tried those...
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Thank you, I've tried something and, it turned up an interesting issue, I did manage to install (using TDM) OS9 from my iBook, it worked but...

Here's the kicker: Now, whenever I try to boot the G4 from the newly installed OS9, all I get a flashing question mark floppy, despite the drive appearing in boot picker. I'm so close, yet so far... 😢

I guess I'll have to get the MDD 9.2.2 image then? I wonder if it's possible to take the "magic boot file" that the MDD requires and patch it into a 9.2.2 French installer image (at least until I can find a original French MDD restore disk set). I've seen talks about the "ROM" (and since the New World architecture Macs have the ROM that is loaded off the disk) playing a part in this.
 
Alexis Trinquet said:
Tried the ol' ROM switcharoo, now we're getting a bit further but still nowhere near booting OS9. It just hangs on the "Welcome to Mac OS" splash screen.

I'm literally fuming right now.
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You're not doing that badly. :)

When I bought my MDD, the eBay seller had not properly formatted the drive for OS 9. I turn it on, boot it up in Tiger, set the startup disc to the OS 9 folder, and boom, blinking folder icon. And I didn't have a monitor with the proper display modes and a proper Mac keyboard yet which basically meant I couldn't try to access Open Firmware.

Tried resetting PRAM. Tried booting up with the 'X' key. No luck.

The only way to fix that was to boot up a Tiger disc and then go back into startup disk. And then repartition the drive with the proper OS 9 support, install Panther, restore OS 9, upgrade to Tiger. With the lack of peripherals, it probably took me a week or two to get back to the situation before I broke everything by changing that startup disk.
 
VivienM said:
The only way to fix that was to boot up a Tiger disc and then go back into startup disk. And then repartition the drive with the proper OS 9 support, install Panther, restore OS 9, upgrade to Tiger. With the lack of peripherals, it probably took me a week or two to get back to the situation before I broke everything by changing that startup disk.
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Uh.. that's where I have trouble figuring out what I need to do, right now as the drive stands I split it into two 40 gig partitions (both have OS9 support active, according to Disk Utility), so, if I understand right, I need to nuke it all and start from scratch?

Sorry if I sound like a total newbie :p this is my first New World PowerMac and I've got a truckload of questions to go with it.

(in the meantime I found someone selling a NIB FW400 MDD, I sent a message asking for pictures of the restore disks so I can find a part number to look up)
 
Alexis Trinquet said:
Uh.. that's where I have trouble figuring out what I need to do, right now as the drive stands I split it into two 40 gig partitions (both have OS9 support active, according to Disk Utility), so, if I understand right, I need to nuke it all and start from scratch?

Sorry if I sound like a total newbie :p this is my first New World PowerMac and I've got a truckload of questions to go with it.

(in the meantime I found someone selling a NIB FW400 MDD, I sent a message asking for pictures of the restore disks so I can find a part number to look up)
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I'm not the best person to answer your substantive question. Re the restore discs, I am trying to find where I had found my set. I'm finding individual disks at archive.org but I am convinced there was a place that had everything. Basically, there's a DVD and 5 CDs required, I think...
 
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