Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

What have you done with a PowerPC today?

alex_free said:
What app and what was the reaction?
Click to expand...
An App called Tracks!; its not available any more. It was an app for pilots, tracking flight duty and duty times, alerting before violations happen (can be surprisingly tricky).

He was like “Hey, try this thing, its great, no more manuall calculating“. I said “Really? Can you show me in the app store? Who developed this thing?“.

When he saw my name there as developer he was speechless for a moment, wondering if this was a joke or something. I pulled out my Macbook and showed him the source code, but, being a pilot rather than a coder, he didn‘t really understand much
 
Last edited:
  • Like
  • Love
Reactions: B S Magnet, TheShortTimer, alex_free and 2 others
I got really busy with a PowerPC Today.

I have been using a Google Home Mini as an alarm clock, but recently it no longer connects to WIFI and without internet the Home Mini won't work. Of course, lack of a WIFI connection is a non-issue for vintage systems.

On my PowerPC Mac, I went into Energy Saver and set the Schedule to turn on the PowerPC Mac tomorrow morning. I created an AppleScript application that opens a music file using VLC and plays it. I added the AppleScript application as a startup item in my account. When I restarted the PowerPC Mac, it plays the song. My hope is that tomorrow, the song will play and this will be my new alarm clock.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Slix, B S Magnet, Captain Trips and 4 others
mmphosis said:
I got really busy with a PowerPC Today.

I have been using a Google Home Mini as an alarm clock, but recently it no longer connects to WIFI and without internet the Home Mini won't work. Of course, lack of a WIFI connection is a non-issue for vintage systems.

On my PowerPC Mac, I went into Energy Saver and set the Schedule to turn on the PowerPC Mac tomorrow morning. I created an AppleScript application that opens a music file using VLC and plays it. I added the AppleScript application as a startup item in my account. When I restarted the PowerPC Mac, it plays the song. My hope is that tomorrow, the song will play and this will be my new alarm clock.
Click to expand...
Applescript is soo great, simply amazing that nothing like it exists for other OSes... As someone who doesn't really write GUIs it can easily enable me to do what I need to. PPCMC 7 is 967 lines (well, including whitespace) of AppleScript https://github.com/alex-free/powerpc-media-center/blob/master/PPCMC.applescript . I think it's a great example of what the language can do.
 
  • Like
Reactions: dextructor, Captain Trips and mmphosis
Upgraded my 800Mhz Power Mac G4 (2002 Quicksilver) from 1.25Gb of RAM to 1.5Gb for absolutely no reason other than being bored!

As an aside: You can get 1Gb of 133Mhz SDRAM sticks. But am I right in thinking the Quicksilvers only support a max of 1.5Gb? Is that a software limitation, or simply due to the fact that 1Gb sticks were not available in 2002?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Amethyst1
Tried Macbuntu on my 1.5ghz Sawtooth. I can’t get it to dual boot with OS 9. After installation, I get the flashing question mark screen and My SSD appears as not mounted in drive setup and non-existent in Disk First Aid on my OS 9 CD. I can get Macbuntu to run if it is the only OS on the drive, but can’t get it to dual boot with OS 9. I tried Debian Sid remix, but I couldn’t get it to make partitions from the free space area on the drive, which I had reserved for Linux. Are there any distros that will dual boot with OS 9 on a 7455 G4?
 
I’ve uploaded a vid made on a PB G4 17 “ to YT. Recorded the screen on it yesterday, but had problem converting the thing, there was no sound.
Only found the solution today, but had to convert it and upload from a MBP…
Anyways here is this small useless vid, hope it’ll be fun but still understandable :

 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: wicknix, B S Magnet, Amethyst1 and 1 other person
AdelaideBen said:
Finally got my computer room hard wired with Ethernet today, noticed my G5 is running far quicker online using Ethernet compared to Wifi. I'm watching some BitChute video's whilst figuring out how to setup an Amiga Emulator, all running nicely :)
Click to expand...
I am currently running 160megabit dsl broadcasting 2.4 & 5g from the far end of the house and am contemplating upgrading to at least 400megabit cable. If I do that, I am considering punching through my office wall so that 400mbits is right there into a switch and directly into all my PPc boxes vs wifi based from the other side of the house lol.
 
  • Like
Reactions: TheShortTimer, AdelaideBen and Captain Trips
Certificate of Excellence said:
I really want to wire the rest of the house with cat but will be a real work in progress if I do. Wireless is certainly convenient but nothing beats Ethernet cable.
Click to expand...
Yes it's not easy and for me is a work in progress also. Currently got 3 far endpoints (2 POE security camera's and now my home office). I would like to get the TV in our bedroom hardwired also but I'd want the cable to be hidden in the wall (brick with render applied) so that will be a messier task, a job for another day :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Captain Trips and Certificate of Excellence
Captain Trips said:
I started using Ethernet for my desktop Macs. It helps that they are only about 1 - 2 feet away from the router, though.
Click to expand...
At my condo, inet came in through the wall into my office and with that wired ethernet goodness for all my retro pc and PowerPC macs. The only wireless devices were my laptops, phones and television which ran off a single 2.4g n network from the router. Fast forward to now, I have 2700sf and three floors to manage vs 1 floor and 1100sf and with that 2.4 and 5g wireless n networks for wife's business office (uber important), tvs, phones, laptops & ipads ( serves the majority of the house) and an ape 2.4 n network for legacy boxes, the garage/backyard and an inet radio in the den (plus if Im up there dicking around on one of my g4 power or ibooks). It all seems rather unnecessary and complicated but is how I constructed useful coverage with what I already had.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Captain Trips
Installed xubuntu 10.04 on a 12" powerbook for kicks. I gotta say the older i go with linux distros the better the hardware support and the faster they boot and run. Anyway, having some fun with my donated machine. :)

pb12-ubuntu.png
 
  • Like
Reactions: xeno74, Macbookprodude, RogerWilco6502 and 6 others
wicknix said:
Installed xubuntu 10.04 on a 12" powerbook for kicks. I gotta say the older i go with linux distros the better the hardware support and the faster they boot and run. Anyway, having some fun with my donated machine. :)
Click to expand...
Even faster than your 12.04?
 
Yeah even a bit faster than 12.04. Not sure i'll go any older though as i don't think it'd be possible to build AF on anything older, and 10.04's last firefox build was 19, which doesn't work very well any more.
 
  • Like
Reactions: dextructor
Certificate of Excellence said:
I really want to wire the rest of the house with cat but will be a real work in progress if I do. Wireless is certainly convenient but nothing beats Ethernet cable.
Click to expand...
There is a third way and I've been using it for a little while. Wireline works well for me. During the fall and winter I have several Macs in the garage. I'm not willing to punch through a wall to run cable out there so I hooked up a 1GB wireline. One unit is plugged into the wall in the kitchen and the other unit is plugged into the same socket in the garage ceiling that the garage door opener uses. Into that I have a Gigabit switch plugged in that handles all the connections in the garage to the single wireline device. I repurposed a light metal kitchen storage stand so that the switch and the wireline device do not come into contact with the moving parts of the garage door opener.

Gigabit wireline is actually pretty cheap. I think I got my two off eBay for about $50-80. But you can also get Fast Ethernet wireline (100mbps) even cheaper. My twist to using wireline is to plug in a switch so one port is multiplied.

As far as speeds are concerned it's comparable to ethernet. Large files transfer in roughly the same amount of time.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Certificate of Excellence, dextructor and Captain Trips
For almost a week on and off, with limited time each day, I've been slowly making every change I think is necessary to SuperMario64GameSharkWriter for it to work on Mac OS 9. Now, it's time to see what MacintoshProgrammer'sWorkshop has to say about that source code. C89 is the way to make truely portable software. From less then 300 lines of C to 500+ lines in the single .c file (including whitespace).
 
  • Wow
  • Like
Reactions: Captain Trips and dextructor
Macbookprodude said:
With regards to older Linux versions, how will the apps be updated if older versions of Linux aren't even supported anymore ?
Click to expand...
While a specific distribution may no longer be supported the application developers typically continue to update their applications. Thus you can keep the applications updated by going directly to the developers of the applications.
wicknix said:
You can compile newer versions of most software. Much like i did with 12 Remix, or how @xeno74 built Arctic Fox for ubuntu 10.04 (as seen in my screenshot above).
Click to expand...
This is a great way to keep an older distribution in use longer. The only problem is that as the underlying distribution ages the supporting components become outdated making compiling more challenging (as the supporting components need to be compiled and sometimes those components need supporting components, and so on).
 
Currently trying out Classilla 9.3.4b. I was hesitant about upgrading for awhile, but today I decided to go for it and see what happens. I have been able to log in to Macrumors, now let's see if I can send this post.

EDIT: Success!
 
  • Like
Reactions: wicknix and Captain Trips
alex_free said:
For almost a week on and off, with limited time each day, I've been slowly making every change I think is necessary to SuperMario64GameSharkWriter for it to work on Mac OS 9. Now, it's time to see what MacintoshProgrammer'sWorkshop has to say about that source code. C89 is the way to make truely portable software. From less then 300 lines of C to 500+ lines in the single .c file (including whitespace).
Click to expand...
Just tested it. MPW caught one error I forgot mattered on Mac OS 9, but after that I successfully used Mac OS 9.0.4 to write the 'skip intro' gameshark code into a sm64 rom. That rom is tested and working in an emulator (sixtyforce has a Mac OS 8.6/9 release that runs on the Mac mini great btw).

Now need to clean up the user interface I threw together.
 
  • Like
Reactions: G4fanboy
MacFoxG4 said:
Currently trying out Classilla 9.3.4b. I was hesitant about upgrading for awhile, but today I decided to go for it and see what happens. I have been able to log in to Macrumors, now let's see if I can send this post.

EDIT: Success!
Click to expand...
STAY AWAY from 9.3.4b - it does not work very well, nothing opens up with it, just 3 websites - 9.3.3 is far better and you can load about 80 percent of the web with that, except youtube and heavy java websites.. 9.3.4b is garbage and that russian site to download movies and use Quicktime to run them won't work either - nothing works with 9.3.4b - b stands for beta and of course its buggy as well. 9.3.3 is the best for classila.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back