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Leopard on 700MHz - Advice?

AmazingHenry

AmazingHenry

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 6, 2015
1,285
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Central Michigan
As my signature states, I have a 700MHz iMac G4, 15 inch. It's currently running Tiger and I'm pretty happy with it. TFF works pretty well with tweaks, and there is some software that supports it. Normally I always prefer Tiger. But in the past month or so I've seen more of the advantages to Leopard. Like Leopard-WebKit. Or the Sierra theme (soon). Or access to the full selection of software on the PPC Archive. To be honest I want Leopard on this Mac but I don't want it to be slow. So now I'm looking for some advice by anyone who has hacked Leopard to run on a Mac below the requirements. Is it too slow to be useable? Are there any hardware problems? Thanks so much for any advice you can provide.

P.S. Please don't go telling me how to get Leopard on this Mac, I already know how to do that.
 
I've been curious about that too actually. My QSG4 is spec'd out at this point to run leopard just fine but I am worried that it will slow down the speed I'm used to in Tiger. On the other hand, I'll have access to a bunch of software that could make it more usable i.e. webkit, better iTunes integration, Time machine etc. Still, I got a PMG5 with Leopard in mind, so since I have it, I dunno if it is even necessary to mess with leopard on the QS.

Good luck either way you go :)
 
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The lowest I've had Leopard running on is a dual 533 MHz G4 tower. But it ran acceptably on that, and although a single 700 MHz is a little bit slower, I think it'd run fine with some optimizations like turning off the 3D dock.
 
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redheeler said:
The lowest I've had Leopard running on is a dual 533 MHz G4 tower. But it ran acceptably on that, and although a single 700 MHz is a little bit slower, I think it'd run fine with some optimizations like turning off the 3D dock.
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Yeah, the optimizations do help a lot. Now, did all of the 3rd party software run at an acceptable speed? Or was it slow? Thanks.
 
A 700mhz eMac was actually my first PPC Mac, and I ran Leopard on it for a while. As far as I know, these are effectively the same machines-if nothing else they at least have the same GPU. At the time, I didn't even know about optimizing, but I did not find it to be particularly cumbersome to use. That was also before I knew about Leopard Webkit, so used TFF as my primary browser on it.

Tone down the eye candy for faster UI response, but otherwise I think you'll be pleased with how it runs.

BTW, I like pushing limits, and don't really even consider the 700mhz/2mx combo to be particularly low for Leopard. I forget the lowest I've run, but it's either a 350 or 400mhz, and on systems that are in pretty much every other way inferior. I mentioned elsewhere that I'm trying to get it running on a Lombard, and if I'm feeling motivated next week I'll do my best to get it going on my G3 All-in-one. I just put a 500mhz Sonnet G4 in the AIO, but we'll see how Leopard cooperates with the Rage 2C GPU.

I'll also throw in this gratuitous photo

IMG_3448.jpg
 
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bunnspecial said:
A 700mhz eMac was actually my first PPC Mac, and I ran Leopard on it for a while. As far as I know, these are effectively the same machines-if nothing else they at least have the same GPU. At the time, I didn't even know about optimizing, but I did not find it to be particularly cumbersome to use. That was also before I knew about Leopard Webkit, so used TFF as my primary browser on it.

Tone down the eye candy for faster UI response, but otherwise I think you'll be pleased with how it runs.

BTW, I like pushing limits, and don't really even consider the 700mhz/2mx combo to be particularly low for Leopard. I forget the lowest I've run, but it's either a 350 or 400mhz, and on systems that are in pretty much every other way inferior. I mentioned elsewhere that I'm trying to get it running on a Lombard, and if I'm feeling motivated next week I'll do my best to get it going on my G3 All-in-one. I just put a 500mhz Sonnet G4 in the AIO, but we'll see how Leopard cooperates with the Rage 2C GPU.

I'll also throw in this gratuitous photo

View attachment 671619
Click to expand...
Thanks for the advice, and as for the photo, that's actually a pretty good way to get Leopard on a lower performance Mac, maybe I should consider that. ;)
 
It's the early beta of Leopard. I have that build in my possession and it runs on G3 units. It's basically Tiger with a few early versions of Leopard features thrown in, like Time Machine. It's unstable as hell though. Fun to mess with, but definitely not something you'd want to run day to day.
 
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Oh wow. I've been looking for a download of that for quite a while now. All of the links are broken. Would you mind sharing it? Or is that illegal? Thanks.
[doublepost=1478914164][/doublepost]Anyway, after hearing everybody I think I'll try it out tomorrow. At this point in time, Leopard is getting much better support than Tiger and people here are saying that the performance isn't too bad, so I'll give it a shot. It makes me sad, though, to see Leopard with so much better support. It used to be Tiger was just as useable; and it's still useable. But Leopard supports much more software, will likely be the only OS the Sierra theme supports, and will run my favorite browser, Leopard-WebKit (I'm not a big TFF fan). Hopefully it performs at an acceptable speed. Thanks, everyone!
 
My imac G4 flat panel works just fine with 700mhz in leopard. upgraded to 1gb ram.
you can Use leopard assist,
modify the DVD
or download the leopard disk image and clone it.
 
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Halibabamindingu said:
My imac G4 flat panel works just fine with 700mhz in leopard. upgraded to 1gb ram.
you can Use leopard assist,
modify the DVD
or download the leopard disk image and clone it.
Click to expand...
Well, here's something about this I forgot to mention earlier. My iMac only has 512MB of RAM. It used to be maxed to 1 GB but I had to remove the internal RAM in order to get it to boot, so now I'm stuck with only a 512MB card. Would this make a big impact on performance?
 
HFTaylor12 said:
Well, here's something about this I forgot to mention earlier. My iMac only has 512MB of RAM. It used to be maxed to 1 GB but I had to remove the internal RAM in order to get it to boot, so now I'm stuck with only a 512MB card. Would this make a big impact on performance?
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Yes. Very big. It would have a large but possibly usable impact with Tiger. With Leopard, anything less than 1 GB is pretty crippling.
 
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I have a couple "unsupported" machines running Leopard. The first is a 500MHz Cube with 1.5GB of RAM and a Radeon 7500. The other is my 667MHz TiBook with 1GB of RAM and the same GPU as the Cube. I also have a 17" 1GHz iMac G4 with Leopard. Its got 2GB of RAM and a 7200RPM drive in it. Out of the 3, I would actually say the TiBook is the best performing of the 3. The 1MB of L3 cache does wonders. The Cube is REALLY slow, but it does function. The iMac really just feels horrible to use. Its not a pleasant experience for what seems to be a fully capable machine (The 1.25GHz 20" is a totally different story). I don't expect you'll get a very good experience on a 700MHz iMac ESPECIALLY with only 512MB of RAM. I don't even like Tiger under 768MB of RAM. Its also going to be working with a pretty poor GeForce 2MX. The moral of the story is, some unsupported machines can be "hacked" to run leopard better than others. I don't think it'll be unbearable, but I would expect a serious loss of performance on that box. Absolutely get some more RAM in it though.
 
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More so than any other version of OS X, Leopard absolutely loves RAM.

I have to agree with the others that you need to try and get back up to 1gb. Virtually all the "unsupported" computers(some of them very unsupported) I have running it have 1gb or more.

In fact, the 512mb ceiling on the Lombard and the 768mb ceiling on the beige G3s(including the AIO I mentioned above) is an issue. GPUs are also a big issue on these two computers-a Rage series GPU will really hold back Leopard because it is GPU intensive and these have no hardware acceleration under Leo.

With that said, I do like to push limits. One of these days, I'll get it running(it's already installed) on my 8600. I stole the idea from @Intell but @LightBulbFun put together the hacked install that will run on these very unsupported machines(it's more involved than LeopardAssist or a hard drive transplant because there are missing platform support kexts that will keep it from booting). The 8600 and Lombard both need some additional tweaking to get their installs completely correct. In any case, I have a Sonnet 700mhz G4 in the 8600 courtesy of @Gamer9430 , a Sonnet ATA card(no ATA on the 8600, and if it did have it I would be stuck with the 8gb boot partition/128 total cap. Big SCSI drives are too hard to find), a combo USB/FW card and a Radeon 9200.

One of the nicest running "really far out" unsupported Macs I have is a B&W G3 with a FastMac G4 and a flashed Geforce 5200. The 5200 gives full core image support. Interestingly enough, Quartz Extreme on a PCI card typically must be manually enabled even if it is supported. This is true even in the B&W(and Yikes!), which has a "special" 66mhz, 32 bit GPU slot. QE is a subset of the CI instruction set, and CI is automatically enabled with the 5200 installed.

I should also install on the minitower G3 in my office. It has the "king" of CPU upgrades, at least if you want a G4, in the Sonnet 1ghz. This one also has a 9200, and the guy who gave it to me set it up with a nicely sized 15K SCSI drive run off a factory "Jackhammer" UW SCSI card.
 
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Greetings,

Something I can finally throw my 10 cents in. I too, am the proud owner of an original iMac G4, 700Mhz. I got it last year when the owner said it kept Kernal panicking and he removed the hard drive, and put it up for sale.

Its running Leopard right now actually. Dual booting Leopard with OS 9. I cloned leopard off my eMac G4, and this iMac is running with a gig of ram, 80GB HDD and a DVD RW with airport card. Granted the machine isn't as a fast as the 1.42Ghz eMac, but its actually quite usable.

Haven't gotten it on the net as the original Airport wont connect to a WPA2 network, but I've used adobe CS4 on it, iTunes and even use it from time to time to watch a DVD in French (I'm learning the language. LOL)

I've considered putting tiger on it, but don't have time and its more then usable with the 1gb ram and 7200RPM HDD.
 
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Thanks, everyone. Now, since I removed the internal RAM, would a single 1GB card work in place of where my 512MB is now? Or would I have to put in new internal RAM (which would mean full disassembly)? Thanks.
 
I'm not sure if 1gb SD-RAM SO-DIMMs exist.

I think someone here tried a 1gb regular SDRAM DIMM a little while back in a Quicksilver and it didn't work. That's not to mention that it was unbelievably expensive.

It's best just to open it up and install the 512mb inside.
 
bunnspecial said:
I'm not sure if 1gb SD-RAM SO-DIMMs exist.

I think someone here tried a 1gb regular SDRAM DIMM a little while back in a Quicksilver and it didn't work. That's not to mention that it was unbelievably expensive.

It's best just to open it up and install the 512mb inside.
Click to expand...
OK, I'll take a look at some options later. Thanks!
 
I run leopard on both my G4 Cube and G4 TiBook. The Cube has a 450MHz processor, with 256MB RAM, while the TiBook has a 500MHz processor with 512MB RAM. Needless to say, the specs are much slower a than yours, but leopard runs fine on both. The main issue with these 2 machines is the fact that the Rage 128 isn't supported under leopard, making graphics non-accelerated.
 
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MacCubed said:
I run leopard on both my G4 Cube and G4 TiBook. The Cube has a 450MHz processor, with 256MB RAM, while the TiBook has a 500MHz processor with 512MB RAM. Needless to say, the specs are much slower a than yours, but leopard runs fine on both. The main issue with these 2 machines is the fact that the Rage 128 isn't supported under leopard, making graphics non-accelerated.
Click to expand...
Then maybe I can just go with my 512MB of RAM. It's not like I'll be using this as my main machine, or anything like that. Mainly just to test things out, some writing, and maybe some music (with Spotify or iTunes).
 
MacCubed said:
I run leopard on both my G4 Cube and G4 TiBook. The Cube has a 450MHz processor, with 256MB RAM, while the TiBook has a 500MHz processor with 512MB RAM. Needless to say, the specs are much slower a than yours, but leopard runs fine on both. The main issue with these 2 machines is the fact that the Rage 128 isn't supported under leopard, making graphics non-accelerated.
Click to expand...
Not gonna lie man, systems with half the "required" specs on both CPU and RAM plus no graphics support probably don't run "fine." Sure it'll boot up, but you can't really tell me there is much you can do with Leopard on a 450MHz G4 and 256MB of RAM. Thats barely enough to load the Finder.
 
Hrududu said:
Not gonna lie man, systems with half the "required" specs on both CPU and RAM plus no graphics support probably don't run "fine." Sure it'll boot up, but you can't really tell me there is much you can do with Leopard on a 450MHz G4 and 256MB of RAM. Thats barely enough to load the Finder.
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Well, I've got a little bit more on my Mac. 700MHz and 512MB of RAM. Should at least load the Finder. Tomorrow I'll try it out. If it's really bad, I can upgrade the RAM and then it should work little better.
 
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