F.A.Q. for Powerpc Macs

[chrismacguy]

Originally Posted by burnout8488

We desperately need a sticky with PPC information to avoid a lot of the redundant "Can I put snow leopard on my G4?" posts.

It's got my vote for sure. If not, someone should bump it once a week.

And the inevitable "Leopard on a G3?" and "Can I put an Intel CPU in my PowerBook/PowerMac G3?" posts as well - would probably be a lot more helpful than us all answering the questions so often.

[skinniezinho]

Guess mods don't want this to be sticky, and prefer lots of posts with the same questions...

[stroked]

maybe there are no mods for the PPC forum

[uller6]

Thanks so much for posting this...I was looking for a good Bluetooth card to put in my powermac so I could go wireless keyboard and mouse...

[VanneDC]

Yes mods sticky pls....

[Riky.loebis]

Originally Posted by VanneDC

Yes mods sticky pls....

Originally Posted by stroked

maybe there are no mods for the PPC forum

yes pls sticky mods,,
that's important for newbie like me,,

[nickn]

I have a YouTube suggestion besides using mactubes to add to the list if you want to. To get low CPU usage while watching YouTube you need to use safari and have the develop menu enabled. You enable this by going to safari preferences and then the advanced tab and then check Show Develop menu in menu bar. Then open the develop menu on the top right of the screen and click user agent, then Safari iOS 3.2.2 - iPad. When you open YouTube, videos will play in QuickTime on the YouTube page and you will still be able to see comments and have a nice browsing experience. Videos should play with a very good frame rate and there should be little video stuttering. This works very good on my 1.33ghz iBook G4.

[uller6]

Originally Posted by nickn

I have a YouTube suggestion besides using mactubes to add to the list if you want to. To get low CPU usage while watching YouTube you need to use safari and have the develop menu enabled. You enable this by going to safari preferences and then the advanced tab and then check Show Develop menu in menu bar. Then open the develop menu on the top right of the screen and click user agent, then Safari iOS 3.2.2 - iPad. When you open YouTube, videos will play in QuickTime on the YouTube page and you will still be able to see comments and have a nice browsing experience. Videos should play with a very good frame rate and there should be little video stuttering. This works very good on my 1.33ghz iBook G4.

Hey, thanks for the tip Nick. I'll have to give this a try...

[adcx64]

This is great.

[skinniezinho]

another bump to make sure that PPC are still alive

[Nameci]

Yes it is...

[iThinkergoiMac]

Originally Posted by nickn

I have a YouTube suggestion besides using mactubes to add to the list if you want to. To get low CPU usage while watching YouTube you need to use safari and have the develop menu enabled. You enable this by going to safari preferences and then the advanced tab and then check Show Develop menu in menu bar. Then open the develop menu on the top right of the screen and click user agent, then Safari iOS 3.2.2 - iPad. When you open YouTube, videos will play in QuickTime on the YouTube page and you will still be able to see comments and have a nice browsing experience. Videos should play with a very good frame rate and there should be little video stuttering. This works very good on my 1.33ghz iBook G4.

Or you could go to youtube.com/html5 and join the beta. Then all the other websites you go to won't present themselves as mobile websites. This works the same way without the convoluted messing around with user agents.

[Cox Orange]

pushing it up for i-Toy people, that ask for Lion to run on PowerPCs and won't find it, because they do not know how to search.

[simsaladimbamba]

Originally Posted by Cox Orange

pushing it up for i-Toy people, that ask for Lion to run on PowerPCs and won't find it, because they do not know how to search.

Then they won't look in here either.

[Cox Orange]

Originally Posted by simsaladimbamba

Then they won't look in here either.

I hoped, if it was closer to the top, they might find it by chance, when opening the subforum

[simsaladimbamba]

Originally Posted by Cox Orange

I hoped, if it was closer to the top, they might find it by chance, when opening the subforum

Bumping for no real reason is not really allowed.
When someone posts some "stupid" question like the ones you often seem to see, just post a link to this FAQ. That's how I do it.

[Cox Orange]

Since the Apple "available firmware updates"-list does not feature all, I would like to keep some that are not listed here, as some kind of a reminder

The Apple "available firmware updates"-list http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1395

SuperDrive issue: http://support.apple.com/downloads/P...ive_Update_1_0 (System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.1 or later * Power Mac G4 (Digital Audio), Power Mac G4 (Quicksilver), or Power Mac G4 (Quicksilver 2002) with an internal Apple SuperDrive)

NVIDIA Graphics Card firmware for GeForce2 MX, GeForce2 MX TwinView, GeForce3 oder GeForce4 MX: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL663?viewlocale=en_US (required when running 10.2 or later)

MDD Fans "wind tunnel": http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1175?viewlocale=en_US


That could be helpful as well http://www.apple.com/de/support/powermac/g4/

[Imixmuan]

Excellent thread, lots of killer info here. OP mentions Ubuntu PPC, which I found buggy and a poor performer on my ibook. There is also MintPPC, a Debian installation with a LXDE desktop GUI on top of. Its lightweight, fast as hell on a decent G4. Its not for every user, install is commandline, no flash of course, but the developer has backported miniTube for some youtube playback capability. He's also backported Iceweasel 5 and is working on a Linux Mint 11 version now. Its by far (and I mean by far) the best PPC linux I've ever seen.

http://www.mintppc.org

check it out. User experiences and "I got MintPPC working on a" in the forum are particulary helpful for xorg files and the like.

[MAC MAN JW]

Originally Posted by Imixmuan

Excellent thread, lots of killer info here. OP mentions Ubuntu PPC, which I found buggy and a poor performer on my ibook. There is also MintPPC, a Debian installation with a LXDE desktop GUI on top of. Its lightweight, fast as hell on a decent G4. Its not for every user, install is commandline, no flash of course, but the developer has backported miniTube for some youtube playback capability. He's also backported Iceweasel 5 and is working on a Linux Mint 11 version now. Its by far (and I mean by far) the best PPC linux I've ever seen.

http://www.mintppc.org

check it out. User experiences and "I got MintPPC working on a" in the forum are particulary helpful for xorg files and the like.

Looks like that might be the last version of mintppc if he does not get a new powermac


From:www.mintppc.org


"Hi all,

I demolished my third PowerBook Pismo two days ago as I had to swap disks too many times (broken hard disk controller?). I don't have any PPC machine left to continue my work on MintPPC. I am looking for some volunteers to pay a donation to me so I can buy a seond hand G4 desktop. I am happy with 100 euro in total. Once I have the money I can buy the new machine and continue working on MintPPC 11.

Thanks for your understanding.

Jeroen Diederen aka Linuxopjemac"

[zen.state]

Unless you're a hardcore Linux person then any older OS X will be much better for the average user. I have used PowerPC Linux, Yellow Dog Linux, Black Dog Linux and Ubuntu (many versions from 6-10) and none of them compare to OS X.

Virtually all people buy Macs to run Mac OS.

[AdrianK]

Originally Posted by zen.state

Unless you're a hardcore Linux person then any older OS X will be much better for the average user. I have used PowerPC Linux, Yellow Dog Linux, Black Dog Linux and Ubuntu (many versions from 6-10) and none of them compare to OS X.

Virtually all people buy Macs to run Mac OS.

Wholeheartedly agreed. I'd much rather use Tiger than any current linux distro.

[skinniezinho]

bump =)

[Marcush1286]

Zen,

I have Yellow Dog Linux, but how do I get the G5's wireless card to be recognized? Also, the sound does not seem to work either.. Do I have to download from YDL's website the drivers for the airport card and sound chip on the G5 Quad to get them to work? I am not sure why they advertise YDL to work out of the box with all of Apple's hardware in the G5 Quad. It plainly does not support everything. I did notice that the fans were quiet, very quiet upon boot up into YDL, but since I can't use my airport wireless and or sound, its become useless and there I went back to using Leopard again.

Originally Posted by zen.state

Unless you're a hardcore Linux person then any older OS X will be much better for the average user. I have used PowerPC Linux, Yellow Dog Linux, Black Dog Linux and Ubuntu (many versions from 6-10) and none of them compare to OS X.

Virtually all people buy Macs to run Mac OS.

[skinniezinho]

Originally Posted by Marcush1286

Zen,

I have Yellow Dog Linux, but how do I get the G5's wireless card to be recognized? Also, the sound does not seem to work either.. Do I have to download from YDL's website the drivers for the airport card and sound chip on the G5 Quad to get them to work? I am not sure why they advertise YDL to work out of the box with all of Apple's hardware in the G5 Quad. It plainly does not support everything. I did notice that the fans were quiet, very quiet upon boot up into YDL, but since I can't use my airport wireless and or sound, its become useless and there I went back to using Leopard again.

I never used YDL, but in other distros if you connect your machine to wired internet it may download the necessary packages and enable it for you.

[adcx64]

Originally Posted by Marcush1286

Zen,

I have Yellow Dog Linux, but how do I get the G5's wireless card to be recognized? Also, the sound does not seem to work either.. Do I have to download from YDL's website the drivers for the airport card and sound chip on the G5 Quad to get them to work? I am not sure why they advertise YDL to work out of the box with all of Apple's hardware in the G5 Quad. It plainly does not support everything. I did notice that the fans were quiet, very quiet upon boot up into YDL, but since I can't use my airport wireless and or sound, its become useless and there I went back to using Leopard again.

If you do not understand how YDL works, you shouldn't run it. believe me, Leopard will run 10x better as its optimized for the hardware!