Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I am happy with the fact that the Classilla author can afford a 2017 PowerPC-9 Talos II workstation

IMG_20170806_085919.jpg
 
Cant help but wonder how toasty that would have gotten if it had made it to market. Odd looking power cable on it, did any retail products use ones shaped like that?
 
I wonder if... when the Talos is out, will we be able to use KVM and run PowerPC OS X?
It would probably be faster than emulating PPC on X86.


P.S. That motherboard is not really out of the ordinary, except of course a different northbridge, and non-x86 compatible socket. A lot of heavy-duty workstation motherboards are like that, or course, Talos is supposed to be a workstation.
 
I wonder if... when the Talos is out, will we be able to use KVM and run PowerPC OS X?
It would probably be faster than emulating PPC on X86.

QEMU KVM should work pretty well and will likely be faster than emulation on x86_64, however Mac OS X guests are limited to utilizing one CPU and less than 2GB RAM. It will run multiple instances of Tiger, but it won't be anywhere as fast as running natively on a G5 as there is no direct GPU access currently in KVM/PPC.

Mac-On-Linux would perform quite a bit faster than QEMU/KVM, but is still limited to a single CPU core.

If the QEMU team can find a way to support SMP/Multicore with the 'mac99' machine emulation then it would open up a massive speed boost for KVM on ppc/ppc64.
 
I wonder if... when the Talos is out, will we be able to use KVM and run PowerPC OS X?
It would probably be faster than emulating PPC on X86.
It's highly likely that that will be possible. A version of Mac-on-Linux was made to support KVM, and an AmigaOne X1000 was shown to run OS X Tiger and Panther within a VM in MOL. That version of MOL was made to support POWER8 as well, so it should theoretically run on POWER9. It's also possible with QEMU.

Also, I was still typing this up before @AphoticD ninja'd me, but still posting it anyways ;)
 
It's highly likely that that will be possible. A version of Mac-on-Linux was made to support KVM, and an AmigaOne X1000 was shown to run OS X Tiger and Panther within a VM in MOL. That version of MOL was made to support POWER8 as well, so it should theoretically run on POWER9. Itd's also possible with QEMU.

Also, I was still typing this up before @AphoticD ninja'd me, but still posting it anyways ;)

Are there any PowerPC systems, besides Macs, that can be bought today, for a reasonable price?
Ideally, powerful enough to be used as daily driver desktops.
 
AmigaOne X5000? Here's one running 24 instances of a first person shooter:


Still the best part of $2000 though!

AmigaOne X5000, if it can run 24 instances of Quake, that should be plenty powerful.
Of course, for the price, I can buy a used MacBook Pro
 
AmigaOne X5000, if it can run 24 instances of Quake, that should be plenty powerful.

For anything running on the CPU, each G5 model (except maybe the single CPU ones) has it beat.

What it can do is support newer PCIe GFX cards without much hassle, but these wouldn't be supported under Tiger/Leopard anyways and once you go Linux (with or without MOL) those cards can be made to work in a PCIe G5 just as well.
 
For anything running on the CPU, each G5 model (except maybe the single CPU ones) has it beat.

What it can do is support newer PCIe GFX cards without much hassle, but these wouldn't be supported under Tiger/Leopard anyways and once you go Linux (with or without MOL) those cards can be made to work in a PCIe G5 just as well.

So a PowerPC Mac is still the best way to get a modern PowerPC computer.
Thats probably what I am going to do, get a quad G5, and a DLSD PBG4
 
If you're getting a quad, be prepared to service the liquid cooling system pretty much as soon as you get it. If it hasn't sprung a leak, it will do it eventually. There's a pretty good guide here on doing that.

I will probably use some non-conductive cooling fluid, and flush the original cooling fluid, and of course, modify the system to make it easier to add fluid, that way, if it ever leaks again, no risk of ruining the system.
 
For anything running on the CPU, each G5 model (except maybe the single CPU ones) has it beat.

Is that based on personal experience or benchmarks?
[doublepost=1503433734][/doublepost]
If you're getting a quad, be prepared to service the liquid cooling system pretty much as soon as you get it. If it hasn't sprung a leak, it will do it eventually.

In the past five years i've had two Quads - each one was used as my main machine and I sold both on, still in perfect working order - no leaks or bother from the cooling system. I'd only bother refurbing the LCS if your Quad is a keeper and you don't mind the actual cost outweighing the practical output eg Quad+new LCS >£$€ than Mac Pro.
 
No direct benchmark, but....

Compared to X1000 the X5000 completly lacks Altivec but boost 200MHz more.

The X1000 on the other hand was beaten by my QuickSilver (Sonnet with 2x1.8GHz G4) in a Blender benchmark under Linux Mint.

Every G5 beats that old QuickSilver....
 
All I could find in benchmarks to compare the AmigaOne systems to a PowerMac G5 is this graph showing the Million Instructions Per Second rate of the systems compared. This isn't painting a complete picture given there's far more to benchmark and compare when it comes to the systems, and sadly I don't think there are any benchmark programs for PowerPC Linux. Anyways, it's from Generation Amiga, so if it has any bias in it, it leans towards the Amigas.

AmigaOne-X5000-40-quad-core-AmigaOne-news-AmigaOne-speeds-AmigaOS4-Amiga-news-PowerPC-speeds.png


That said, the 2.5GHz PowerMac G5 in question, which isn't clear whether it's a Dual or Quad, outperforms all but the most recent AmigaOne system. If it's a Dual, the Quad probably would still be outperforming the best AmigaOne in this particular field. However, going by the fact the most recent system is a quad core unit, I'm thinking it is a Quad.

But this chart really doesn't justify the high price of the AmigaOne X5000/40, at least for me, since you're paying way more for not very much improvement over the old PMG5 Quad it's most likely compared to, let alone the older AmigaOne models. Sure, the older PowerMacs are a bit more prone to failure, and need attention, but with good care can last quite a long while.

I could get a Quad, disable the Chime, put Amiga stickers over the Apple logos on the side, buy and install MorphOS, and it's almost the same for way less money. It's really for those Amiga fans that don't mind shredding their wallets just to have a new toy.
 
Those numbers don't represent any reality, better look up Blender or memcoder benchmarks that can be found when backsearching some years on sites like amiga.org or amigaworld.net.

Not sure wether my 2x1.8 G4 ever got listed there but other G4 and G5 s were.

As for putting stickers on a quad, that is as far as you will get as support for PCIe based Macs isn't coming anytime soon in MorphOS and the Dual2.7GHz will remain king of the hill for the time being.
 
Are there any PowerPC systems, besides Macs, that can be bought today, for a reasonable price?
Ideally, powerful enough to be used as daily driver desktops.

There was a Linux workstation on PowerPC 970 Quad-core, as I recall. Basically, non-Apple G5 Quad.
I haven’t seen them on second hand market ever since. Did they ever make to the market or what happened?
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.