Most Useful PPC Apps

[bunnspecial]

Oh damn I could always run MS Train Simulator, but it would always crash after maybe 15 mins. I always got bored after that anyway, and Id just start up and see how many ways I could derail. Must have been a Rage 128 in there.

One of the routes was in the Swiss Alps and was all uphill/downhill for about 75 miles depending on which direction you started. I would put the Flying Scottsman at the top of the hill running light, spend about 20 minutes building up a massive and hot fire(as a train nut, I loved how much control the game gave over that kind of stuff) and then take off down the hill with the throttle wide open. I'd have to tweak the reverser a fair bit to keep the boiler pressure up close to the max, but with a big enough fire and going fast enough(meaning a lot of good draft through the fire) I could keep the cut off at around 12%, meaning lots of power going to the wheels. Doing all of this could get it up to 130 or 140mph by the time I got to the bottom of the hill(just as long as I remembered to close the firebox doors in tunnels).

Then I found out that there was a "config" file that set the maximum speed of every locomotive. I changed it to 500mph on the Flying Scotsman, and was able to get it to up around 300mph doing all the same as above.

 

[tevion5]

the slowness of 2008

Ha! Sounds like a famous historical and generational hardship being recounted by a weathered old man wearing a straw hat by an open fire.

But yes, I would agree that version 1's of everything are generally avoidable. And that's interesting know why it might be less efficient.

But then I suppose, Office 2007 (2008's PC brother) was largely a rewrite too, as the file formats changed and the new layouts emerged. Forward compatibility was cut, something Microsoft always does as late as possible. So in that respect, Office 2003/2004 represent the last of a generation (like Windows XP/Mac OS 9), so they should be expected to be solid and efficient. Whereas 2007/2008 are the firsts of their kind (Windows Vista/Mac OS X Cheetah). And I don't think Microsoft has a much better reputation with firsts, as Windows Vista -> Windows 7 was night and day.

----------

I changed it to 500mph on the Flying Scotsman, and was able to get it to up around 300mph doing all the same as above.

Sounds like you made the locomotive truly live up to it's name so. I always found the steam trains complex as a child. I would be perplexed to see my train obsessed cousin operate them with ease. I preferred the boring asian commuters, with simple electric controls. I had a huge model train set in the attic too. A mix of Hornby and more expensive Bachmann models.

 

[Hrududu]

The Quad does 1080p no problem, mine was capable of 4K as well.
The best all round video player is VLC which is still being developed for PowerPC.

Being top of the pile, there's little the Quad can't do with the right software.

Did someone else takeup development of the PPC version? The last official version for PPC is over a year old and it was made clear to be the last to support Leopard.

 

[tevion5]

...mine was capable of 4K as well.

Hmm I'll believe it when I see it. Sounds too much like Radibz7 for me!

 

[Dronecatcher]

Did someone else takeup development of the PPC version? The last official version for PPC is over a year old and it was made clear to be the last to support Leopard.

I haven't checked recently - if that's case I apologise. Even so, it's still reasonably contemporary.

----------

Hmm I'll believe it when I see it. Sounds too much like Radibz7 for me!

I don't appreciate being called a liar.

Anybody can try for themselves if they go to the effort and find videos with codecs sympathetic to PowerPC.

EDIT: After looking for the 4K trailer I tested, I found it to be 2K, so I withdraw the 4K claim. However, I still suspect a Quad with the best graphics card available might have a chance - either way, 1080p is standard for a Quad.

 

[eyoungren]

Just a note here…

Above I mentioned iScroll2. This is a great little tweak that gives you two finger scrolling for early PowerBooks. However, I fear that there may be some issues so install at your own risk.

While searching for something else the other day I ran across someone who was having kernel panics after installing iScroll2. That made me curious because since I recently got this A1013 17" PowerBook I have all of a sudden developed kernel panics.

Now the drive, SmartUtility tells me is failing (SmartReporter and Disk Utility say it's ok) so that's what I first put it down to. Then I began systematically running through things and other issues trying to stabilize the Mac. It would go for a while and then either KP or outright freeze.

So, with nothing to lose last night I uninstalled iScroll2 using the uninstall script you can find on the site I linked above.

So far, no KPs. I am continuing to test but so far I am willing to state that it's iScroll2. So, again, install at your own risk.

The curious thing is that this NEVER happened on my original A1013 and the replacement, just this third replacement. The ONLY difference between those two Macs and this one is that there is no external cache failure on THIS A1013.

I am theorizing that the external cache failure on the two previous Macs somehow short-circuited any KPs that iScroll2 may have been triggering and because I never saw anything I didn't realize it was happening. Now, with L3 cache that's not happening and the KPs that iScroll was triggering are occuring when it's installed.

P.S. Another app I wanted to mention yesterday - but couldn't remember.

Unplugged

The funny thing about this is that the version I had installed on my MBP was not working. So, I deleted the pref pane. Now the damn thing works but I have no preference pane for it!

 

[tevion5]

I don't appreciate being called a liar....After looking for the 4K trailer I tested, I found it to be 2K, so I withdraw the 4K claim.

Dude, this is why I was skeptical... :roll eyes:

I was only joking anyway. It just seemed like a suspicious claim.

 

[bunnspecial]

Sounds like you made the locomotive truly live up to it's name so. I always found the steam trains complex as a child. I would be perplexed to see my train obsessed cousin operate them with ease. I preferred the boring asian commuters, with simple electric controls. I had a huge model train set in the attic too. A mix of Hornby and more expensive Bachmann models.

I spent a lot of time studying steam engineering(mostly railroad, but also marine and stationary) so the adjustments made a lot of sense to me. IMO, MS did a fantastic job with regard to steam locomotives in that program-you could effectively control everything you would on a real steam locomotive with about 80% of the same level of control and actual realistic responses to your actions. The only things absent were things like the throttle lag-or regulator lag to those of you across the pond(on a real steam loco there's actually a noticeable amount of lag between moving the lever and the valves opening or closing due to the length and "slop" in the mechanical linkage).

I also really missed the lack of American steam-or really very much steam at all other than the Scotsman and a European locomotive. I downloaded and even bought a few third-party locomotives, but they were pretty widely varied. Some were decent-I bought LNER Mallard(the steam speed record holder) which mechanically isn't much different than the Flying Scotsman(it's a Gresley A4 class Pacific as opposed to the A3 class Scotsman) and basically used all the Scotsman programming with a reskin and a few parameter tweaks. Most of the other I tried were pretty bad, as they didn't have the amount of detail in their programming as the MS ones.

The complexity was what made it fun for me. If I were to play it now, I'd be interested to see how long it took me to relearn the key commands-I use to know them in my sleep.

BTW, I was(and still am) a Lionel man

 

[Dronecatcher]

Dude, this is why I was skeptical... :roll eyes:

I was only joking anyway. It just seemed like a suspicious claim.

No problem - I know it sounds suspicious against the context of "Macs don't do HD" notion but we are talking Quads here.
When I first got mine my first test was to see how it fared on Youtube - I was amazed that it went all the way up to 1080p using flash. I downloaded some HD test files and it played those too (including a 2K file).

I no longer have the Quad but my Dual 2.3 plays 1080p - in fact, it also plays 2K resolution as long as I convert the video using either the Apple MPEG4 compressor or the Apple Intermediate Codec. Bear in mind my G5 has the FX5200 card - the lowest spec and I had better graphical performance with the Radeon 9600, so any Dual 2.3 upwards can do this.

 

[MrPilot]

XBMC on ppc plays some 1080p movies in a powerbook G4. use v11 on 10.5.8 or 9.04 (I think) in tiger for performance.
I have posted video samples in the past.

Also don't get a better gfx card for better playback, it doesn't work that way.

 

[ptdebate]

XBMC on ppc plays some 1080p movies in a powerbook G4. use v11 on 10.5.8 or 9.04 (I think) in tiger for performance.
I have posted video samples in the past.

Also don't get a better gfx card for better playback, it doesn't work that way.

I personally was unable to get 1080p playback in XMBC on my 2 GHz G4 tower. I'm pretty sure it depends a lot on the video format being used.

 

[Dronecatcher]

XBMC on ppc plays some 1080p movies in a powerbook G4. use v11 on 10.5.8 or 9.04 (I think) in tiger for performance.
I have posted video samples in the past.

Also don't get a better gfx card for better playback, it doesn't work that way.

I'm sorry but I talk from experience - as soon as changed from a 9600 to 5200, the first thing I noticed was choppy playback on high bitrate mpgs that had played fine before.

XBMC is a great media player and is often over looked - I highly recommend it.

 

[SuperKerem]

Huh, does YouTube run better on Flash or HTML5? (Website on tenfourfox)
I know for a fact that the Quad doesn't run HD YouTube on HTML5 very smoothly, on the latest tenfourfox. Or maybe the new YouTube website layout is more demanding than the old one?

 

[robertdsc]

GraphicConverter. It does so many things for images that I can't list them all. I've used it in various forms since the OS9 days and it runs like a champ across many different PPC machines.

 

[eyoungren]

GraphicConverter. It does so many things for images that I can't list them all. I've used it in various forms since the OS9 days and it runs like a champ across many different PPC machines.

I use GC every week (or rather, the automated process I set up on a G4 Mac does). I cobbled together an applescript that calls GC in the background (meaning you never see it open, modify, save and close images) to run a batch command. There are two batch commands and based on the folder our editorial staff drops pictures into the script calls the appropriate batch command.

The editorial staff drops in an RGB jpg, bmp or gif and gets either a CMYK or grayscale TIF out the other end named appropriately, resized to our measurements.

GC is superior in this over Photoshop. PS is a major PITA to script.

 

[Dronecatcher]

Huh, does YouTube run better on Flash or HTML5? (Website on tenfourfox)
I know for a fact that the Quad doesn't run HD YouTube on HTML5 very smoothly, on the latest tenfourfox. Or maybe the new YouTube website layout is more demanding than the old one?

It was 2013 when I had my Quad - Youtube has changed since then, this was the clip it played up to 1080:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiwcUdX7XMw

I've found HTML5 video playback choppy and un-useable on my Powerbooks - the whole issue is the architecture of the website, the protocols, how the file is wrapped up and delivered and the browser - if you download the actual video file and play in VLC etc it's fine.

I recently learnt from the Leopard Webkit developer that the Youtube HTML5 player delivers the video file as h264 mpg which is more demanding than the FLV file but using ClickToPlugin your options are many - best fit for my G4 portables is to play 240p FLV in browser, low CPU use and no hiccups.