A New Browser is needed for Mac OS 9

[Gamer9430]

I know based on some people on the Internet. I don't have a PowerPC Mac.

I know @bunnspecial from the internet... does that immediately qualify me to be a professor of Chemistry at a major US university? Or to mess with $500,000 scientific equipment because someone on the internet told me "most things work" with said scientific equipment with no evidence to base that statement off of whatsoever?

 

[ScreenSavers]

I know based on some people on the Internet. I don't have a PowerPC Mac.

Why the sudden large amount of posts in the PowerPC section?

 

[ZeitGeist]

I will never understand why some people swear so much by virtualization, they completely ignore all issues that come with it to push it further. Yes, virtualization can be easier and more convenient at times. But that doesn't negate the issues of software needing bare metal to properly do its thing, or run at acceptable speeds, which virtualization on consumer scale will not get you to.

Because Virtualization let’s you do a lot, a lot more conveniently, that baremetal won’t let you do. That’s all there is to it.

Software ‘does its thing’ just fine on virtualized hardware, since the software can’t tell the difference. The ONLY place where it makes a difference is hardcore gamers and gaming, but you should have a dedicated PC for that anyway, if you’re that serious about.

So your musings are purely academic and don’t apply to any real use-case.

 

[ZeitGeist]

I’m talking about virtualization on newer, real hardware, that has intel CPUs.

Nothing can help PPCs since they do not use virtualization, but emulation - which is an inherent sloth, when it comes to performance.

You can run OS 9 in an emulator on a PC box (Linux or Windows) and it will run better and faster than on any PPC device - I really, genuinely, do not understand the existence of this thread, and why there are people still running PPC machines, and even more so, OS 9 ???

 

[bunnspecial]

Software ‘does its thing’ just fine on virtualized hardware, since the software can’t tell the difference. The ONLY place where it makes a difference is hardcore gamers and gaming, but you should have a dedicated PC for that anyway, if you’re that serious about.

Please tell me how I can

1. Virtualize the operation of Nikon Scan 3 for use with SCSI scanners

2. Virtualize the operation of Nikon Scan 4 for use with FireWire scanners

3. Virtualize the software to run a TechMag NMR

These devices are $200, $1000, and $400,000 respectively. The software to do 1 and 3 is OS 9 native, while 2 is PPC native. I'm all ears.

And yes, these are all things I do regularly.

 

[XaPHER]

I’m talking about virtualization on newer, real hardware, that has intel CPUs.

Nothing can help PPCs since they do not use virtualization, but emulation - which is an inherent sloth, when it comes to performance.

You can run OS 9 in an emulator on a PC box (Linux or Windows) and it will run better and faster than on any PPC device - I really, genuinely, do not understand the existence of this thread, and why there are people still running PPC machines, and even more so, OS 9 ???

I disagree on both your two last posts.

It's true that virtualization and/or emulation can get a good portion of the stuff done. There are specific cases that need REAL hardware. Virtual platforms will usually virtualize a 'generic' hardware setup. And it can't run anything that relies on/assumes anything sepcific about the hardware. There's also the issue with applications that rely on precise timing, every single of these will not run just like it should, if run at all. There's more cases, though that's sufficient already

Virtual hardware runs better than real hardware, even under emulation? Funny, have you ever read the articles CK made about running a mac os X in a KVM? It's not that fast, even though there's no emulation, and even though it's run on a POWER9 cpu.

There's still a lot of stuff you can't do with virtual machines. There's things that won't ever be doable as well.

 

[Jubadub]

I’m talking about virtualization on newer, real hardware, that has intel CPUs.

Nothing can help PPCs since they do not use virtualization, but emulation - which is an inherent sloth, when it comes to performance.

You can run OS 9 in an emulator on a PC box (Linux or Windows) and it will run better and faster than on any PPC device - I really, genuinely, do not understand the existence of this thread, and why there are people still running PPC machines, and even more so, OS 9 ???

Get rid of the Intel ME or AMD PSP on a modern AMD64 processor, then we can begin negotiating. But only after you run Escape Velocity at 60+ FPS (good luck getting past 30), and don't forget the sound. Make sure we can get at least single-threaded 1.5GHz performance, so at least it compares to the Late 2005 Mac mini G4. Don't forget GPU hardware acceleration, too.

This is far from citing all that's relevant, but it's a great start.

 

[ZeitGeist]

Please tell me how I can

1. Virtualize the operation of Nikon Scan 3 for use with SCSI scanners

2. Virtualize the operation of Nikon Scan 4 for use with FireWire scanners

3. Virtualize the software to run a TechMag NMR

These devices are $200, $1000, and $400,000 respectively. The software to do 1 and 3 is OS 9 native, while 2 is PPC native. I'm all ears.

And yes, these are all things I do regularly.

Oh, you have tried to run these on a virtualized Mac running on a PC (ie Intel?)?

For 1 and 2 - what is your use case? What scanner models? Are those supported by vuescan? Does Nikon provide newer devices that are supported on newer software?

For 3) there will always be exotic fringe cases that are stuck on specific hardware and software - CNC devices or Vinyl cutters are very similar in terms of being stuck in such extremely fringe use-cases.

 

[bunnspecial]

Oh, you have tried to run these on a virtualized Mac running on a PC (ie Intel?)?

For 1 and 2 - what is your use case? What scanner models? Are those supported by vuescan? Does Nikon provide newer devices that are supported on newer software?

For 1 and 2:

Yes, there is a newer Coolscan V that works over USB and can work in an SL VM. I have one. The III, which is SCSI, is my backup.

No VM software does FW pass-through, so the Coolscan 8000 and 9000 can't work in a VM. These are not in any way comparable to the V/5000 and lower, as 8000/9000 are medium format scanners and the II/III/IV/V etc are 35mm only.

I have a Vuescan license(I paid extra for the one with perpetual updates) but to put it bluntly, despite its quirks, the Nikon software is better. Among other things, for scanning color negatives and transparencies, Digital ICE is far superior to Vuescan's IR cleaning algorithm(ICE refers to BOTH IR channel scanning and AND the Applied Science Fiction/Kodak algorithms that use that information). In addition, the Nikon software simply gives me truer, more accurate colors.

My Mac Pro 5,1, which I use to run both the Coolscan V and Coolscan 8000, runs Snow Leopard for a reason.

Aside from that, there are plenty of non-exotic OS 9 games that-as many of us have point out-simply run better natively on OS 9 hardware than in any VM or emulator.

 

[2984839]

Here’s a curveball for y’all. What about using Lynx or another terminal based text only browser? The http protocol competitor gopher protocol is still around and active. Both protocols were released in 1991, with http winning obviously. Gopher is text only but still operates similarly to http in a few ways.

I just wonder if any of you PPC folks use terminal browsers at all.

I regularly use Lynx on my PowerBook running OpenBSD, as well as on many other older machines (T23 ThinkPads, sparc64 servers, etc). For graphical browsers, I like Dillo and Netsurf.

 

[bunnspecial]

I'm sure plenty of people would also blow a gasket over the GC-MS I have at work that's running on Windows 98. From playing with the software, Windows 2000 is pretty much the end of the line, and I'd have to pay a nice sum to get a version of the software that will even work there.

Once again, virtualization isn't an option. The software needs to access an ISA HP 82335 or 82341(I'm mildly alarmed that I know those numbers off the top of my head) HP-IB interface card. I've found the PCI 82350 touchy, and I MUST use the Hewlett Packard card-a similar card from National Instruments or the like is a no-go. There again, virtualization is out, much less finding something modern with ISA slots.

I have a newer GC-MS sitting right next to it that ditches the bulky(but rock solid) HP-IB interface for LAN. It runs on Windows 7. The new one is used by most people, but the old one serves as a backup(even simple routine maintenance usually means a full day of down time) and also overflow since the systems essentially give comparable results(I've done some upgrades to increase the sensitivity/signal-to-noise on the old one, but the new one is still an order of magnitude better-an irrelevant amount most of the time) and the old one actually has some capabilities lacking in the new one.

We're talking about $50K for a similar system at current new prices. 10 years ago, when we bought what I call the "new" system, it was an absolute necessity and the money materialized. The "old" system is one I found stuck in a corner abandoned and I brought it back to life, but $50K is a hard sell for limited funds just to add redundancy.

That's not a Mac application, but it's another good example-for me-of a place where I can't virtualize.

 

[0248294]

Why are you even in this forum then?

Shockingly, he's not the first to wander in to here while holding the belief that PowerPC Mac is old junk hardware. No idea why these people don't stay in the Intel Mac forums where they can beat eachothers' heads in over not having the latest and greatest in peace.

 

[Project Alice]

Shockingly, he's not the first to wander in to here while holding the belief that PowerPC Mac is old junk hardware. No idea why these people don't stay in the Intel Mac forums where they can beat eachothers' heads in over not having the latest and greatest in peace.

Seriously though. I have a 12 Core Mac Pro 5,1 with 3.33Ghz X5680s; I've posted a couple things in the Catalina (macOS 10.15) section and there are a few people that just reply with "unsupported" or "buy a new mac it's almost 10 years old".

A f*****g 12 core 24 threaded machine will not be obsolete for another 15 years. I will never understand these people. It's even worse on some of the facebook groups, I'm in quite a few standard PC groups and people are shunned for having an Intel CPU that is two or three generations old.

 

[bunnspecial]

Seriously though. I have a 12 Core Mac Pro 5,1 with 3.33Ghz X5680s; I've posted a couple things in the Catalina (macOS 10.15) section and there are a few people that just reply with "unsupported" or "buy a new mac it's almost 10 years old".

A 12 core 5,1 with an upgraded GPU and a few other upgrades can match a 6,1 in many areas, and beat even the top spec 6,1 in most areas...and you can still buy a new 6,1. Yes, I am qualifying that by specifying an upgraded one, but there's something important in the fact that a 5,1 CAN be easily upgraded.

Apple didn't really start making a computer competitive with the 5,1 until the iMac Pro came out. The newest, highest spec 15" MBPs are up there also.

Of course, the 7,1 will blow it out of the water, and you probably won't have to up spec it much to get there. A 7,1 so specced would also cost more than a nice used car 🙂

 

[2984839]

Seriously though. I have a 12 Core Mac Pro 5,1 with 3.33Ghz X5680s; I've posted a couple things in the Catalina (macOS 10.15) section and there are a few people that just reply with "unsupported" or "buy a new mac it's almost 10 years old".

A f*****g 12 core 24 threaded machine will not be obsolete for another 15 years. I will never understand these people. It's even worse on some of the facebook groups, I'm in quite a few standard PC groups and people are shunned for having an Intel CPU that is two or three generations old.

I never really encountered that until joining this site, but yes, it is strange. I think you're seeing people who are insecure and so lacking in meaning that an inordinate amount of their self-worth is tied to their possessions, so they endlessly compare them with those of others to try to inflate their ego.

 

[Appleuser201]

I never really encountered that until joining this site, but yes, it is strange. I think you're seeing people who are insecure and so lacking in meaning that an inordinate amount of their self-worth is tied to their possessions, so they endlessly compare them with those of others to try to inflate their ego.

Then again, 15 years or 20 years ago no one thought some people would still be using and enjoy using early 2000's Apple hardware in the year 2019. It's mostly coming down to software support that defines usability of these machines. I've found more than what I need for software support, 2 up to date browsers that each have their own uses, Webkit being the youtube and video browser. Of course Office and iMovie HD, and Garageband and all the other built in Leopard apps are useful for their own purpose. Why someone would think that they would need the latest and greatest machine for anything other than serious hardcore gaming and 4k video editing... A 1.33ghz G4 provides everything I need, web browsing, HD movie watching, light video editing, word processing, and other basic stuff you could use a modern mac for but why would you?

 

[z970]

Seriously though. I have a 12 Core Mac Pro 5,1 with 3.33Ghz X5680s; I've posted a couple things in the Catalina (macOS 10.15) section and there are a few people that just reply with "unsupported" or "buy a new mac it's almost 10 years old".

A f*****g 12 core 24 threaded machine will not be obsolete for another 15 years. I will never understand these people. It's even worse on some of the facebook groups, I'm in quite a few standard PC groups and people are shunned for having an Intel CPU that is two or three generations old.

Welcome to the modern Apple customer, specially bred by the company's heavy handed, hyper-consumerist mindset.

Anyone who behaves differently is the exception.

 

[Project Alice]

Then again, 15 years or 20 years ago no one thought some people would still be using and enjoy using early 2000's Apple hardware in the year 2019. It's mostly coming down to software support that defines usability of these machines. I've found more than what I need for software support, 2 up to date browsers that each have their own uses, Webkit being the youtube and video browser. Of course Office and iMovie HD, and Garageband and all the other built in Leopard apps are useful for their own purpose. Why someone would think that they would need the latest and greatest machine for anything other than serious hardcore gaming and 4k video editing... A 1.33ghz G4 provides everything I need, web browsing, HD movie watching, light video editing, word processing, and other basic stuff you could use a modern mac for but why would you?

I absolutely agree. I’ve been using my PowerBook G4 as a main daily laptop for a few months now just to show that I can, and I enjoy using it.

The “hard core gamers” are the worst. I cannot stand those people. I find the majority of them are computer wannabes; similar to to a “google mechanic” for car enthusiasts. I’m all for learning this stuff and teaching oneself. But they blow hundreds of dollars on hardware some YouTuber told them to get, along with ridiculously large cases and absurd lights everywhere. Like they’re building a spaceship rather than a PC. With almost no knowledge of what it is they’re actually doing. A lot of them just buy prebuilt ones from places like ibuypower.
I stuck a GTX 1060 in my old 2008 3,1 Mac Pro and got an average of 60fps on high settings on all my newer games. I spent a total of $500 on that computer computer all said and done to accomplish more or less the same result these wannabes spend $1500 for.

 

[Appleuser201]

I absolutely agree. I’ve been using my PowerBook G4 as a main daily laptop for a few months now just to show that I can, and I enjoy using it.

The “hard core gamers” are the worst. I cannot stand those people. I find the majority of them are computer wannabes; similar to to a “google mechanic” for car enthusiasts. I’m all for learning this stuff and teaching oneself. But they blow hundreds of dollars on hardware some YouTuber told them to get, along with ridiculously large cases and absurd lights everywhere. Like they’re building a spaceship rather than a PC. With almost no knowledge of what it is they’re actually doing. A lot of them just buy prebuilt ones from places like ibuypower.
I stuck a GTX 1060 in my old 2008 3,1 Mac Pro and got an average of 60fps on high settings on all my newer games. I spent a total of $500 on that computer computer all said and done to accomplish more or less the same result these wannabes spend $1500 for.

Plus, those PC's are running something awful called Windows 10. Even if the PBG4 is much older, I like the look and feel of old style OS X.

 

[Jubadub]

A f*****g 12 core 24 threaded machine will not be obsolete for another 15 years. I will never understand these people.

I personally find it very easy to understand: literal ignorance. Lack of knowledge. And lack of self-criticism (and thus lack of overall competence as a person) to pursue self-improvement.

 

[JoSch]

I absolutely agree. I’ve been using my PowerBook G4 as a main daily laptop for a few months now just to show that I can, and I enjoy using it.

The “hard core gamers” are the worst. I cannot stand those people. I find the majority of them are computer wannabes; similar to to a “google mechanic” for car enthusiasts. I’m all for learning this stuff and teaching oneself. But they blow hundreds of dollars on hardware some YouTuber told them to get, along with ridiculously large cases and absurd lights everywhere. Like they’re building a spaceship rather than a PC. With almost no knowledge of what it is they’re actually doing. A lot of them just buy prebuilt ones from places like ibuypower.
I stuck a GTX 1060 in my old 2008 3,1 Mac Pro and got an average of 60fps on high settings on all my newer games. I spent a total of $500 on that computer computer all said and done to accomplish more or less the same result these wannabes spend $1500 for.

And if your system can't drive 4K at 120Hz (at least, that is), they laugh about you as if you wanted to play Doom on an ZX80 1K.

 

[Appleuser201]

And if your system can't drive 4K at 120Hz (at least, that is), they laugh about you as if you wanted to play Doom on an ZX80 1K.

The Fortnite players are the worst. Can not stand that game. Apparently you need the latest i7 intel processors and 32gb of ram to play a game with graphics from 2008.

 

[Project Alice]

The Fortnite players are the worst. Can not stand that game. Apparently you need the latest i7 intel processors and 32gb of ram to play a game with graphics from 2008.

I'm 100% sure I could play that game on a G4 if it were compatible. Lol. Graphics from 2008 is giving it a bit too much credit.

 

[swamprock]

I'm 100% sure I could play that game on a G4 if it were compatible. Lol. Graphics from 2008 is giving it a bit too much credit.

My kid runs the PC version on a five year old AMD CPU with an old Radeon HD GPU. Doesn’t look great but it works for those times that he runs out of game time on his Switch (yeah... I limit him a bit or he’d never sleep).

 

[bunnspecial]

I see real work get done every day on old, expensive hardware also using obsolete computers. Granted, I'm sure none of that stuff is of any significance-it only makes its way down the pipeline to diagnosing diseases, creating new drugs, and other little insignificant things like that.

If anyone wants to write a check for a couple million dollars, I can get you in touch with the development office at my work and we can clear out all of our legacy mass specs, NMRs, IRs, and other stuff and get things that runs on newer OSs with newer interfaces. If you want guidelines for the exact amounts(just so you know that I'm not pulling numbers out my rear end) I can provide you with formal quotes from major manufacturers for a lot of this stuff(I don't have any on NMR, but I have chromatography and coupled chromatography-MS, along with a few other odds and ends) that I've obtained in the past ~6 months.

I'll also just emphasize again that this stuff CAN NOT be virtualized...