How slow could you REALLY go?

A G4 with only 133 mhz? Did you downclock that thing? I always thought G4s are starting at 350 mhz...?
And Leopard on that thing?? Wow... just wow I'm pretty amazed

 

it is/was a NewerTech ZIF G4 with dip switches to adjust the PLL multiplier on the CPU, it has well had (I have a BGA rework station/setup be afraid be very afraid ) a 400Mhz rated early rev 7400 and in that photo indeed dropped the multiplier as low as i could which was 2x so 2x66.8=133 the machine in question is a Rev B Power Macintosh G3 Beige Tower

 

I busted out the MacBook tonight to just see if I could use it as my main machine without doing any video editing. Besides from the fact I don't like Opera it works great. It may get some more use now. Just wish I could take advantage of the FW400 on it. I love having ports though. That's the biggest turn off for me with the new MB and MBP's. I don't need the thinnest thing possible.

 

Why not TenFourFox instead of Opera?

 

TenFourFox works on Intel? Well I'll be darned. You just made my day!

 

Ah, well. There's an Intel version someone made and they are working on a TenFourSix (someone else), but I assumed you meant Opera on your G5. Sorry about that.

 

No worries. Did a quick search and just found some blog posts. I would really love a G5 system again. With Lion being the max OS my MB can take browser support is dead.

 

Here’s something interesting... there is currently no mainstream browser that still supports Snow Leopard (Intel), so ironically, you have to use TenFourFox with Rosetta if you still want support.

 

Aye, that explains a lot my first thought was, that sonnett maybe made a G4 upgrade for pre-G3 Powerbooks - these guys might even be doing insane things like that

 

There is a browser called "Roccat" which supports OS X 10.5 or later, PowerPC or Intel, but it still uses WebKit, so unless you have Leopard-WebKit installed, it is just as insecure as Safari.
Actually, whenever I get around to buying a suitable PowerPC(which I have been planning on since 2015, but never got around to it), I *might* be able to start compiling "Stainless", it has been discontinued by its developer, and it's(OS X) source code is up on github.
Speaking of compiling, I wonder, if Darwin is open source, would it be possible to compile a newer kernel for PowerPC's?

 

If you are capable of developing (I'm not a coder myself) I'd vote for Demeter if you're open to that. Assuming you can get access to that.

Stainless is cool, but Demeter has always been the fastest of the Webkit browsers (including Roccat).

 

I cannot guarantee that I can provide builds of anything right now, I would need to buy a suitable Mac before compiling anything(Yes I have 2 hackintoshes, but one of them is Intel-based, runs Mountain Lion, and is in storage, the other is an Intel-based laptop running Yosemite, and will not function for more than about 2 days before something happens and the whole thing crashes, and requires re-installing Yosemite.

After I get a suitable Mac, I can then only compile programs that have source code available, also I am not that good with the objective-c that OS X and it's apps use, so I cannot change much in them(no new features or security improvements).

 

Or how about The Graham Norton Show?
Does it stream coherently via Flash on your 933 Quicksilver?
I've recently been made aware of him on YouTube.
I think he's great to watch if in need of a laugh
(perhaps after the seriousness of BBC news ...or the...uhh...*cough*...personality...of Prez Trump).

 

Development of Stainless would not resume, there would just be newly compiled binaries.
No new features, *MAYBE*(and thats a big maybe), I could look into some more optimizations, and bug fixes.

 

The Quicksilver currently still has Tiger (I generally wont go Leopard under 1Ghz) - but was presenting it as a "what if" solution.
Maybe I could use the non-availability of Flash as a means to purge the toxicity of mainstream soundbite news media from my system

 

I find using Google News suits my needs. I never watch any videos (Flash or otherwise) but can browse the news. Other than this forum it's probably the one site I am on constantly.

In your case it's probably: https://news.google.co.uk/

 

Thanks - I'll give that a go. I'm struggling with news at moment - there's lots going on that the mainstream isn't reporting on.

 

I hear you. I have several search terms, none of which appear to be appropriate to the task any more - for precisely the reason you say.

 

I've been using a black core duo macbook as my "main" machine for a couple of weeks just for kicks, excluding gaming. Besides being stuck on snow Leopard, it's really no worse than using a newer computer after putting an SSD in,so yours should be great haha . Just no HD video on YouTube because of the horrible video card. Not that the tiny screen really needs it.
---
PowerPC-wise, I no longer have any but I had a G5 a few years ago that handled the Web pretty well for office work despite its age. I wonder how it would hold up in 2017? I could probably use it no problem for a month if it hasn't gotten much worse.

 

For the slowest I have:
Laptop: iBook clamshell 300MHz
Desktop: Power Macintosh 9500 200MHz (because I don't have any slower CPU cards)

While I could use these at original spec (32MB RAM!?) for a month, no one would really want to force themselves to. Realistically, I'd want to use for the summer challenge:
Laptop:
1. PowerBook Titanium 1GHz (1GB RAM, dual CF to IDE adapter, 128GB CF, 128GB CF, Airport, USB2 PC Card, dual-layer SuperDrive)
2. PowerBook Pismo (550MHz G4, 1GB RAM, dual CF to IDE adapter, 128GB CF, 128GB CF, Airport, USB2 PC Card, x2 of Zip250/LS120/battery/floppy/SuperDrive)
Desktop:
1. Power Mac G5 Quad 2.5GHz (16GB RAM, 7800GTX 256MB, 1TB SSD, 4TB HD, Airport Extreme, BluRay burner)
2. Power Mac G4 MDD 1.42GHz (2GB RAM, GeForce 4Ti, 1TB HD, 2TB HD, Airport, SuperDrive)

 

WOW!!!! It is the definitive Mac G5!! Are you even able to watch bluray movies with it??

 

I would imagine that you could, if you use Linux(which gives you a non-prehistoric VLC version).

 

Slowest vintage Mac I still have is an iMac G3 333Mhz, it got repurposed as a FileMaker box but lately I plan to migrate it to a modern Mac mini as the database has gotten big enough that 160MB of memory isn't enough & maintaining spare PATA HDDs isn't worth the headache(PATA to SATA adapters would be too much of a tight fit). I wasn't impressed by opensource solutions, they're either clunky or stupidly bloated.

Fastest PPC Mac is my 12" PowerBook G4 at 1.33Ghz, oddly I never found it too slow until everything went Javascript heavy--2008 was the last time I actively used the internet on any PPC system, it became too painful. TenFourFox is a love-hate type of experience, when it works it'll be great and other times its a miserable failure. Work wise since I'm a web developer, I did optimize my render server web front-end for batch processing to be TenFourFox friendly-- if I ever had to do something on an older Mac due to preferring iMovie 6 HD/Final Cut Express, my workflow wouldn't be hellish of needing to grab a FW400/800 HDD.

If you use a script blocker to prevent ads(often toxic redirect ads), http://full-spectrum-dominance.com/ covers the widest range of news via automated headline+short snippet in screenshot format--I only learned of that site back in 2011 from Coast To Coast AM. Outside of that, read non-English newspapers via VPN--some overseas papers will region block. Knowledge of multiple languages is also useful.

On the other hand, if you have a spare RaspPi3/x86/x64 box there are "news" indexers/scrapers which can work in a similar way of how the owner of FSD had tweaked it for "keywords" and filter out "filler and dull over-reported news". An old mini-project I've been working on has been training an AI(Adapteva Parallella & nVidia Jetson TX1 based) to auto blog news, sadly it tends to get suckered into re-reporting Russian Conspiracy hell. I used to think Alex Jones went off the deep end in 2004, mainstream news has outdone him

 

Here is my Mac retirement home:



Basically all of those G4 Macs in the picture - 5 of them - are IMO unusable. Even the G4 1.7 GHz Cube with 1 GB RAM and G4 1.25 GHz iMac with 2 GB RAM are IMO unusable. There is also a 2.0 GHz Core Duo white iMac in there which is usable, but just barely with its 2 GB RAM, platter drive, and OS X 10.6. The fact that it sometimes struggles with even 480p Netflix drives me up the wall.

The two laptops I do use regularly are a 2008 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook running Lion and a 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro running El Capitan. My current drivers are that latter MacBook Pro and a Core i7 870 27" iMac, but my Kaby Lake 12" MacBook arrives today to replace the MBP, and a Kaby Lake Core i7-7700K 27" iMac arrives this week to replace the older Core i7 iMac.