Aperture 2 on PowerPC G4?

[BennyES]

Hi all,
I have a Dual 1 Ghz PowerMac G4 Quicksilver with 1.5 gb of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce 4 MX- I am trying to get Aperture 2 to install on my machine and have been looking online at hex editing the files as a solution, but is there a simpler way? If anyone knows a way, I would appreciate it greatly! Thanks!

 

[socom_22]

As far as I know, there is no simpler fix to bypass the hardware checks. I did this a few years ago on a G4 MDD - it ran quite well on a Geforce4 Ti 4600. It was a long time ago so I will try to piece this together as best I can.

The installer has RAM and CPU hardware checks that need to be bypassed, which involves modifying the installer package itself. Then the application will install.

However, even once installed, it won't work yet because the application itself has its own built-in hardware checks. We can bypass those as well, but the exact process varies a bit depending on which version of the program you are using.

 

[socom_22]

Unable to add images to my post at the moment, but will explain step by step once it works.

 

[davisdelo]

https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/pacifist

Try Pacifist, it’ll get you installed. If it still won’t launch and complains about hardware after installing, I’d start with the plist in the app package.

 

[socom_22]

OK, images are uploading again. Here is the process I used to get this working.

In order to modify the installer package, you can create a modifiable version of the disk image for future so you will only need to create this working installer once for your unsupported G4 machines. Use Disk Utility to convert the read-only Aperture disk image to a read/write .DMG and mount it.

The "Install Aperture" file you see is simply an alias to a hidden installer package.

To make things easier, we can unhide the actual .mpkg file within the DMG by opening a new Terminal and entering the below command:

chflags nohidden /Volumes/Aperture/Aperture.mpkg

You will end up with this:

 

[socom_22]

Right click on Aperture.mpkg > Show Package Contents. Navigate to the Contents folder.

Replace the file Aperture.dist with the one attached to this post (need to unzip it first). I have modified it to remove the CPU check.

Note that you need a minimum of 1 GB of RAM installed and must be running OS X Tiger v10.4.11 or OS X Leopard v10.5.2 or newer for this file to work. In my opinion, you should have 1 GB of RAM when using this program anyway.

 

[socom_22]

Now, the custom modified installer should allow you to install on unsupported G4 hardware.

Next, to bypass the hardware checks built into the application itself:

Download and install the Hex Editor called 0xED.

In 0xED, open the file: /Applications/Aperture.app/Contents/MacOS/Aperture.

Change to Overwrite mode in the Edit > Write Mode menu.

Navigate to Offset 0x6D21B0.

You should see the below data:

Modify the data so that it exactly matches the below:

Save and close the file. Aperture v2.0 should now work correctly on a G4 system.

 

[socom_22]

If you want to update the software to v2.1.4 via Software Update, you can do so, however it will break the hex editing we just did in my last post!

So I recommend installing the update immediately after installing v2.0 and without launching the program.

The hex editing required for the v2.1.4 application is the same, but the Offset you need to navigate to is 0x6F9A80 instead of 0x6D21B0.

Now you should have v2.1.4 working on a Mac with "unsupported" G4 CPU and unsupported graphics card!

 

[barracuda156]

Now, the custom modified installer should allow you to install on unsupported G4 hardware.

Next, to bypass the hardware checks built into the application itself:

Download and install the Hex Editor called 0xED.

View attachment 2249709
In 0xED, open the file: /Applications/Aperture.app/Contents/MacOS/Aperture.

Change to Overwrite mode in the Edit > Write Mode menu.

Navigate to Offset 0x6D21B0.

You should see the below data:

View attachment 2249711

Modify the data so that it exactly matches the below:

View attachment 2249712

Save and close the file. Aperture v2.0 should now work correctly on a G4 system.

Is there some generally usable algorithm for this fix? We have this problem on 10.6 PPC, where some software does not want to start due to impossible combo of arch and OS.

 

[ojfd]

Is there some generally usable algorithm for this fix? We have this problem on 10.6 PPC, where some software does not want to start due to impossible combo of arch and OS.

What happens when you start the app's binary from the Terminal? What message does it spit out? Also, check the crash logs. Those might give you a clue.

 

[barracuda156]

What happens when you start the app's binary from the Terminal? What message does it spit out? Also, check the crash logs. Those might give you a clue.

[I will return to this topic by the end of month, due to being away from PPC hardware for the time-being.]

In the meanwhile, I made a port for HexEdit (that good old PPC one): https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/20235

 

[ojfd]

In the meanwhile, I made a port for HexEdit (that good old PPC one): https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/20235

Thats cool. Can you post a compiled one somewhere? I'm not a fan of macports..

 

[barracuda156]

Thats cool. Can you post a compiled one somewhere? I'm not a fan of macports..

If you prefer having it pre-built, I guess just get it from upstream repo: https://sourceforge.net/projects/hexedit

 

[ojfd]

Thanks! I didn't realize it is up there.