Inaugural Winter PowerPC Challenge! January 1-7, 2017

[Slix]

So I just got back from my trip over New Years, and on the trip I learned that my iPod touch with iOS 10 has a terrible Music app. So I cheated a little bit for this challenge right when I got home, and am syncing my iPod and doing a few small things (I could do this on my PowerBook G4, but alas, here we are) on my MacBook Air. Once this is done until the week is over, I'll be doing the challenge! I'll probably extend it for myself another day or so to make it a little more fair too.

Edit: Here goes! Shutting down the Air and moving to my other PowerPCs. Here we go!

 

[redheeler]

i don't have iLife 09' but i have iLife 06' and it works fine for me

i think i might know why your imovie 9 is not working. it might be that your restoring from a Intel machine not a PPC one. i could be wrong.

iLife '09 is the last version which supports PowerPC, and to my knowledge there was never an attempt to strip the PPC code from versions intended for Intel Macs. Other apps (iPhoto '09, GarageBand '09, iDVD, iWeb) from the same disk have been installed and run fine, but iMovie is the one I really need.
[doublepost=1483322278][/doublepost]

I really want to do this. G4 cube or MDD dual g4???

Unless your Cube is heavily upgraded like mine, I'd go with the dual G4 MDD.

 

[ApplesDotCom101]

Welcome Back! @Slix hope you had a great trip!

i learn't something about version 0.6.6.10 of spotify. you can't see playlists except for ones you subscribed to.

and it stops and plays all the time. might be my Internet. so i am using spotify on my macbook pro now.

 

[WeFixMacs]

my g4 MDD is heavily upgraded and the office is pretty cold. i could use the space heater. But the noise is going to get to me. I truly want to use it as a space heater. The loud noise of my space heater fan is about as loud as the g4 mdd.

loading up 10.5.8 on my sata ssd for my MDD g4
Modded power supply seems to have messed with my FireWire power. Seem boot disk will have to be loaded onto a working ide drive

 

[ziggy29]

I confess to waking up this morning and starting to get on my '12 Mini to do some morning web surfing and check email. But before I really did much of anything I caught myself and went over to my TiBook. So in some sense I did "use" an Intel Mac and cheated according to the letter of the law. But I complied in spirit. Now I'm on my G4/550 Pismo running Tiger and TFF 45. It was a little painful having to download video on the TiBook to watch with CorePlayer instead of streaming it. But otherwise browsing was just a little slower, and I have Civ 3. The video stuttered a little bit and I had to keep a small window but it worked reasonably OK.

I now have a "DO NOT USE EXCEPT FOR EMERGENCY" post-it on the display for it.

 

[Gamer9430]

I really want to do this. G4 cube or MDD dual g4???

why not both?

*Mexican music plays*
[doublepost=1483329211][/doublepost]Ive been away for most of the day, so all I really did today was plug a second monitor into my G5 and setup the Google Chat. Since i was hooked on Planet Coaster on my superior PC, im going to pop in one of my favorites, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 on the G5 and play that.
[doublepost=1483330281][/doublepost]So i tried to spread the word out on Reddit, which generated a lot of interest!

/r/retrobattlestations: https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattl...one_want_to_take_part_in_a_powerpc_challenge/
/r/vintagecomputing: https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecom...one_want_to_take_part_in_a_powerpc_challenge/
/r/vintageapple: https://www.reddit.com/r/VintageApp...one_want_to_take_part_in_a_powerpc_challenge/

 

[matt_toplack]

Am I the only person having an issue setting up their google account into iChat? At first, it was telling me that my password was wrong, even though it was not, but now it just gives me an error about not being able to verify the security of either gmail.com or googlemail.com

Also, if I could be added to the chat, it would be much appreciated

 

[ApplesDotCom101]

well i found out why YouTube wasn't working. Umatrix made it so the HML5 player won't work at all. i fixed it. it now plays YouTube at 360p smoothly when i don't touch anything or move the mice at all.

 

[Gamer9430]

Am I the only person having an issue setting up their google account into iChat? At first, it was telling me that my password was wrong, even though it was not, but now it just gives me an error about not being able to verify the security of either gmail.com or googlemail.com

Also, if I could be added to the chat, it would be much appreciated

If you have 2-step authentication turned on, you need to make an application specific password for iChat. I personally had to do so. Also, I'm having difficulties getting the chat on iChat anyway, so it may be easier to use the pop-out web client or a different application other than iChat.

I added you

 

[ApplesDotCom101]

Am I the only person having an issue setting up their google account into iChat? At first, it was telling me that my password was wrong, even though it was not, but now it just gives me an error about not being able to verify the security of either gmail.com or googlemail.com

Also, if I could be added to the chat, it would be much appreciated

well you have to turn the firewall off in system preferences in security > firewall > allow all incoming connections That is how you skip verifying security

 

[ZacharyFurgeson]

I'm off to a great start!

 

[redheeler]

Well, it looks like I'm going to have to fail the challenge, and here's why. I did get iMovie HD 6.0.4 working on the G5, but PPC versions of Quicktime (Perian is installed), VLC, and CorePlayer won't even play back the footage I want to edit, meaning importing it is out of the question. This is a video file downloaded from YouTube at 1080p quality using an extension for TenFourFox; the 720p version does seem to play back/import fine but I'm picky about quality.

If it weren't for this setback I might try to see the challenge through; although I certainly have other valid reasons for yearning to switch back to my modern Macs, such as the big difference a 27" 5K display makes even over the dual monitor setup I have with the Quad (24" 1920x1080 IPS display + 1680x1050 20" Apple Cinema Display). The Quad is handling basic tasks fine, although a bit slower than I'm used to. It's also doing a good job heating up this room (turns out winter is a good time of year for a PowerPC challenge). And most 1080p files actually do play back fine, but YouTube in 1080p is just about impossible; as outside of using the ancient Flash player in Leopard Webkit the most I've gotten to work is 720p.

I am shocked at how unplayable even basic browser-based HTML5 games are, this is a good example of how bad software optimization is on PowerPC, especially on Power Mac G5 Quad. But then again, sometimes even my 12-core Mac Pro seems to struggle with these, so maybe the optimization problems are not all limited to PPC.

My G5 has just locked up so I'm going to post this from my iPhone and call the end of it here (edit: well maybe not quite yet, but sometime tomorrow for sure). To those who are continuing the challenge, I wish you all luck!
[doublepost=1483341044][/doublepost]

I'm off to a great start!

Interesting. Mine seems to be running a bit hotter than yours and the difference between CPU temps is huge. Definitely louder than the first-gen 2006 Mac Pros even with fans on idle.

 

[Cyclone159]

I really want to do this. G4 cube or MDD dual g4???

Use the dual G4 you want the fastest one possible

 

[gavinstubbs09]

Today has been rough. Many many problems. I'm trying to fight with it, so we shall see!

Biggest pain by far - the web. Everything is terribly slow, many glitches, I dunno. And TFF has 16GB of ram it could use but with 5 tabs open the G5 is using less than 2GB in total. This machine is the best PowerPC someone could own, if I'm having a disappointing experience with a Quad, I'm wondering how you G4 guys are doing!

My biggest thing was trying to make YouTube videos play under VLC. I found one firefox extension however it doesn't work due to some https:// issue. Even trying to open the YouTube video URL in VLC also gave me issues. QuickTime Enabler does not work worth a s*** either. "Not a video" error. If there was one thing that would keep me satisfied during this week is YouTube. I give up, I'll come back to this tomorrow possibly.

Internet is also a huge issue, the G5 isn't using it's full potential (the TX rate is 54Mbps like it should be), and I did a speedtest on my MBA then my G5, and the results are below. Trust me I'm bummed too!

My post is long, I've been working on it for hours! Worth a read if you're interested in my story for the day.

https://powerpccentre.wordpress.com/2017/01/02/ppcc-2017-day-1-configuring-the-g5-quad/

 

[redheeler]

Today has been rough. Many many problems. I'm trying to fight with it, so we shall see!

Biggest pain by far - the web. Everything is terribly slow, many glitches, I dunno. And TFF has 16GB of ram it could use but with 5 tabs open the G5 is using less than 2GB in total. This machine is the best PowerPC someone could own, if I'm having a disappointing experience with a Quad, I'm wondering how you G4 guys are doing!

My biggest thing was trying to make YouTube videos play under VLC. I found one firefox extension however it doesn't work due to some https:// issue. Even trying to open the YouTube video URL in VLC also gave me issues. QuickTime Enabler does not work worth a s*** either. "Not a video" error. If there was one thing that would keep me satisfied during this week is YouTube. I give up, I'll come back to this tomorrow possibly.

Internet is also a huge issue, the G5 isn't using it's full potential (the TX rate is 54Mbps like it should be), and I did a speedtest on my MBA then my G5, and the results are below. Trust me I'm bummed too!

My post is long, I've been working on it for hours! Worth a read if you're interested in my story for the day.

https://powerpccentre.wordpress.com/2017/01/02/ppcc-2017-day-1-configuring-the-g5-quad/

Any reason you can't simply use a wired connection on the G5 like I do? Either way, those speeds actually don't look that bad to me. Certainly good enough for most things.

As for keyboard and mouse, I found that the Apple Magic Mouse actually works fine with the Quad G5, no issues with stutter, and only had one issue where Leopard's Bluetooth process stopped responding and I had to do a system restart. Keyboard is the appropriate Leopard-era aluminum wired extended one, and no issues with this.

 

[gavinstubbs09]

Any reason you can't simply use a wired connection on the G5 like I do? Either way, those speeds actually don't look that bad to me. Certainly good enough for most things.

As for keyboard and mouse, I found that the Apple Magic Mouse actually works fine with the Quad G5, no issues with stutter, and only had one issue where Leopard's Bluetooth process stopped responding and I had to do a system restart. Keyboard is the appropriate Leopard-era aluminum wired extended one, and no issues with this.

The modem is a few rooms over and I don't have a wire going into my room anywhere, so I'm stuck on Wifi. In the past I did have a DD-WRT repeater that gave me LAN but I've had so many problems with the DD-WRT stuff I just gave up. As far as the internet thing goes, I'm torn if TFF is just making everything load slow or if the speeds are so low it's taking forever to load pages. Who knows. At this point I'm leaning towards TFF, but I'll test some other browsers and figure it out.

I don't know what the deal is with my mouse. It was just so jerky I couldn't stand to use the thing. The wireless keyboard however works great! No issues with it and it's also the proper era with the dashboard key. I just wish my other keyboard worked, I'm just spoiled with the backlit keys!

 

[bobesch]

Huuh, don't expect to get everything done with any of the PPC machines - especially not viewing/editing high-res video or viewing streaming content (Netflix/Amazon etc.). Even my core2duo MacBook of 2008 gets in trouble if it comes to 4k-video.
Can't teach every new trick to an old dog.
And concerning Cloud I'm also happy to get that iOS workaround to make Cloud-files accessible for the PPC, if PPC/Leopard itself fails. Same for using a "file-server" at home (that is any other capable machine) for getting synched Dropbox-access etc., if PPC-Dropbox should ever fail or there's no other option on PPC. Or for AppleMusic with a capable iOS device connected with LineIn and played through "LineIn"-app of RogueAmoeba.
"Good PPCs to heaven, tricked-in PPCs to everywhere ..."

 

[pochopsp]

My biggest thing was trying to make YouTube videos play under VLC. I found one firefox extension however it doesn't work due to some https:// issue. Even trying to open the YouTube video URL in VLC also gave me issues. QuickTime Enabler does not work worth a s*** either. "Not a video" error. If there was one thing that would keep me satisfied during this week is YouTube. I give up, I'll come back to this tomorrow possibly.

Have you tried with PPC Media Center?

 

[Dronecatcher]

For those struggling with Youtube in TFF, in about:config, media.mediasource.enabled must to set to true - this will give you back control over the playback resolution - however, even my Quad drops heavily at 720P in HTML5.
For decent playback, abandon HTML5 - for TFF install Greasemonkey/Viewtube or in Webkit/Leopard go with CTP or Ninjakit/Viewtube (if you can still find it anywhere).
Of course, PPC Media Center works great too.

 

[bobesch]

Here's a real-time clip about connecting my PowerBook-G4 with my office-Win2008Server.
Since Win2008Server denies access through the original MS-RDP-Client for PPC I use WinXPpro running in a virtual machine with "VirtualPC7"
The overall performance of WinXP/VPC7 is really slow, but adequat for this special purpose. Win2000pro/VirtualPC7 performs much much better and is my first choice to run Windows-applications on my PPC.

As for YouTube-videos: Dronecatcher mentioned all the options - my favourite is Webkit/ClickToPlugIn(360p) with or without downloading the clip. After download just mark the video and press space-bar for hassle-free viewing without even starting any video-player ...

The video was shot with iPhone6s, cut and edited on the iPhone, sent with WhatsApp back to myself to reduce video-resolution and size (about factor 10, which took about 30 seconds). Then the downsized video was sent to my PowerBook with iFiles (AFP-connection) and uploaded to Youtube using Webkit for Leopard.
The real PPC-Competition-Way would have been: connect the Powerbook and my old DV-Camcorder via FireWire. Start iMovieHD (v.5.x) and life-record directly into iMovie. Then cut the video, add effects etc and export to any convenient video-format.

To be honest: life is short and the real PPC-Competition-Way would have lasted so much longer ...

 

[SkyBell]

Had no problems using only PPC yesterday. Did a fair amount of browsing and music playback on my eMac, and watched a lot of YouTube through PPC Media Center. I've noticed since TFF hit version 45, Facebook has become actually bearable to use! That's a nice surprise. Ended the night looking at a few forums, browsing Wikipedia and watching a 480p .mp4 with VLC. on my PB G4.

I guess my computing needs are simple, I have no problem setting down games for a while, or any need of my machines for work purposes. Good luck to all of us, here's to another successful day!

 

[eyeleica]

I started the challenge thinking I could get along nicely using a Wall Street g3 with os9, but the slowness and lack of features crushed my spirits. I tried a Pismo that has a g4 conversion and things were better but still slow.
This morning after two days, I fired up the G5 and everything is normal. Everything I want to do I can on the G5 and the powerbook aluminum G4, which I haven't used yet. I will continue to use the G4 and G5; however, I will keep fiddling and experimenting on the G3s. My biggest frustration has been with uMatrix on the Pismo.
Like someone said earlier in this thread that life is too short to be waiting for a machine to function. Best to find
the speed of processing one is acceptable with and go with that. I can dig the G5.

 

[Lastic]

Day 2

On the train commute to home, 4G tethered Personal Hotspot from my iPhone via Wifi to the Powerbook G4 12".

Watching a Youtube video 360P in Cruz , whilst posting this :



This site stutters more than the Youtube window in Cruz, CPU use fluctuates between 80 and 90%

 

[bobesch]

Day 2

On the train commute to home, 4G tethered Personal Hotspot from my iPhone via Wifi to the Powerbook G4 12".

Watching a Youtube video 360P in Cruz , whilst posting this :

View attachment 681376

This site stutters more than the Youtube window in Cruz, CPU use fluctuates between 80 and 90%

How did you manage to run CRUZ? I can only find versions for OSX 10.6?

 

[Lastic]

I don't remember from where but here it is :

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hs60j2ie1vj460l/AAAO7G9HnFTA8HLk5xJxXgxla?dl=0

And in the spirit of the challenge

1. Connected a FW800 CF CardReader with my Sandisk Extreme CF 128 GB card containing all my PPC software
2. Being home , Automatic 2 pulled in the Showrss feed and uTorrent is getting the latest Brooklyn 99 episode
3. Copied from the CF to Dropbox Public folder, went to the desktop (website) version of Dropbox ,created the link
4. Took a screenshot , and posting this while my pizza was delivered , gonna watch the show now with Coreplayer