Myths about PowerPC Macs

[eyoungren]

I just posted over in the Vintage Macs subreddit for the nth time concerning a fallacy people have out there about the Quad G5 and Dual Core Macs.

I was thinking, maybe we could post here the myths about certain PowerPC Mac models we consistently and frustratingly run across all the time. Of course this would include the typical myths of "You can't do X" with PowerPC Macs, but I want to include stuff that we've all encountered from time to time with our various models. Stuff other people say to you or that you've observed somewhere, things like that.

So, my two, I am sure most have heard…

Myth1: A Quad or DC G5 will cause your electric bill to skyrocket. False. I had both my Quad and 2.3DC at full power 24/7 for over two years and all they added to my bill was $20 a month. If that is a significant impact to you then there are perhaps other issues.

Myth2: A Quad or DC G5 will cause a LOT of heat and you can warm a room with them. I live in Phoenix, where the temps during winter never get much below 35º. While these Macs do produce heat, I've never been able to warm up a room or keep a room warm simply by having them on. Conversely, in the summer they don't impact the use of air conditioning either. The 110º heat outside is what drives the AC to come on.

 

[Amethyst1]

A Quad or DC G5 will cause your electric bill to skyrocket.

This perception depends on how much the bill is without the machine, and how much of an increase it’s going to cause both in absolute and relative numbers.
To me, a 20 bucks-per-month increase would be big (+30%) since I’m paying about 70 bucks per month right now.

 

[eyoungren]

This perception depends on how much the bill is without the machine, and how much of an increase it’s going to cause both in absolute and relative numbers.
To me, a 20 bucks-per-month increase would be big (+30%) since I’m paying about 70 bucks per month right now.

I suppose it may be relative then. Our bill rarely falls under $100. That's a winter bill and it marks the nadir point. All subsequent bills will begin to climb as the weather warms up. I could technically argue that the bill remains roughly the same because our gas bill climbs during the winter. During the summer, the gas bill is around $20-30. It hits over $100 during the winter some times.

But I also live in a two story house with four people, not an apartment.

 

[alex_free]

Myth2: A Quad or DC G5 will cause a LOT of heat and you can warm a room with them.

I've been running the Mac Mini G4 and 07 C2D mini pretty much 24/7 in my bedroom and TBH it is hotter then every other room. IDK if its a coincidence or not.

 

[eyoungren]

I've been running the Mac Mini G4 and 07 C2D mini pretty much 24/7 in my bedroom and TBH it is hotter then every other room. IDK if its a coincidence or not.

Well, I shut down Macs this year in the living room because of heat. That was because our AC is out and so we rely on portable AC which keeps the room around 80-85º during August. I did leave my Mac Pro running and I would have left other Macs running if our central AC was working. But combined, two Minis, a G3, a G4, a Thinkpad AND my Mac Pro, no I wasn't going to strain the portable AC.

But again, that's a combination of Macs (in my case).

 

[TheShortTimer]

I just posted over in the Vintage Macs subreddit for the nth time concerning a fallacy people have out there about the Quad G5 and Dual Core Macs.

I was thinking, maybe we could post here the myths about certain PowerPC Mac models we consistently and frustratingly run across all the time. Of course this would include the typical myths of "You can't do X" with PowerPC Macs, but I want to include stuff that we've all encountered from time to time with our various models. Stuff other people say to you or that you've observed somewhere, things like that.

An excellent (and important) thread!

Myth5: PowerMac G5's are useless. This is an egregiously dishonest assertion that I've seen propagated in numerous FB Mac groups and it's so frustrating because simply turning on a PM G5 and using it exposes the hollow premise of these statements. Those machines remain highly capable and can cope with a wide variety of present day computing tasks.

Myth6: PowerPC Macs cannot boot from USB. Just a few days ago I saw this misinformation that just refuses to die being shared in a FB group. Some PPC Macs can boot from USB by just holding down the Option key post-chime whereas others require fiddling with Open Firmware settings. I've got 4 machines of varying generations and models (desktops and laptops, G3s and a G4) that fall into the former category.

So, my two, I am sure most have heard…

Myth1: A Quad or DC G5 will cause your electric bill to skyrocket. False. I had both my Quad and 2.3DC at full power 24/7 for over two years and all they added to my bill was $20 a month. If that is a significant impact to you then there are perhaps other issues.

Myth2: A Quad or DC G5 will cause a LOT of heat and you can warm a room with them. I live in Phoenix, where the temps during winter never get much below 35º. While these Macs do produce heat, I've never been able to warm up a room or keep a room warm simply by having them on. Conversely, in the summer they don't impact the use of air conditioning either. The 110º heat outside is what drives the AC to come on.

I live in Northern Europe and I don't recall my living room growing warmer during winter when the G5 has been running - I wish it would!

 

[Doq]

I got one:

Myth: G4 PowerBooks get notoriously hot just like MacBooks.
Fact: While the cooling isn't optimal especially on Aluminiums, most PBG4s don't get all that hot. My Companion hardly gets above 60 C, and it doesn't have proper thermal paste applied-- I didn't have any on hand so I tore part of the thermal pad from the GPU to apply. It still rocks temps lower than my ThinkPad while still being quieter.

 

[B S Magnet]

Myth: The final 15-inch and 17-inch PowerBook G4s featured an undocumented late run of PPC 7448 CPUs.
You hear me, rabidz? YOU HEAR ME?!

Myth: The iBook G3 clamshell had pRoToTyPeS from Cupertino with polka dots.
mhd59michel, you scammy clown…

Myth: You can’t use PC2 SO-DIMM RAM from a CD/C2D Intel Mac in a 15- or 17-inch PowerBook G4 with the dual-layer SuperDrive.
Oh yes you can. The 2GB on my 15-inch DLSD came from a late 2006 C2D MacBook.

Myth: You can’t boot from an SSD with a Power Mac G5.
False, false, false. If an SSD can’t boot a G5, it’s the SSD controller’s fault and is likely really old in that it can’t auto-negotiate down to SATA i/II buses..

Myth6: PowerPC Macs cannot boot from USB. Just a few days ago I saw this misinformation that just refuses to die being shared in a FB group. Some PPC Macs can boot from USB by just holding down the Option key post-chime whereas others require fiddling with Open Firmware settings. I've got 4 machines of varying generations and models (desktops and laptops, G3s and a G4) that fall into the former category.

Heck, I’ve booted from a USB key into OS X on my key lime iBook’s USB 1.1 port — only once, and I had plenty of time to make coffee and enjoy it to the last drop, but it worked.

I got one:

Myth: G4 PowerBooks get notoriously hot just like MacBooks.
Fact: While the cooling isn't optimal especially on Aluminiums, most PBG4s don't get all that hot. My Companion hardly gets above 60 C, and it doesn't have proper thermal paste applied-- I didn't have any on hand so I tore part of the thermal pad from the GPU to apply. It still rocks temps lower than my ThinkPad while still being quieter.

G4fancontrol is essential software.

 

[Amethyst1]

Myth: Macs can't boot a version of Mac OS older than the one they shipped with.
*Looks at Mac mini G4 running OS 9 and Jaguar*

Myth: Macs that are OS X only can't boot OS 9.
See above.

Myth: PowerPC Macs can't run Windows.
They can, just not natively.

 

[Bug-Creator]

Myth: PowerPC Macs can't run Windows.
They can, just not natively.

Lets be real, they can‘t run Windows.

They maybe able to walk it, but surely not „run“

 

[erikkfi]

I feel the mhd59michel comment very strongly. That guy is destroying a large number of early iBooks.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Myth: PowerPC will get you mad play with hot genius bar chicks.

This is patently false.

 

[alex_free]

Myth: PowerPC will get you mad play with hot genius bar chicks.

This is patently false.

IDK man a clamshell is a great ice breaker

 

[originaldotexe]

I just posted over in the Vintage Macs subreddit for the nth time concerning a fallacy people have out there about the Quad G5 and Dual Core Macs.

I was thinking, maybe we could post here the myths about certain PowerPC Mac models we consistently and frustratingly run across all the time. Of course this would include the typical myths of "You can't do X" with PowerPC Macs, but I want to include stuff that we've all encountered from time to time with our various models. Stuff other people say to you or that you've observed somewhere, things like that.

So, my two, I am sure most have heard…

Myth1: A Quad or DC G5 will cause your electric bill to skyrocket. False. I had both my Quad and 2.3DC at full power 24/7 for over two years and all they added to my bill was $20 a month. If that is a significant impact to you then there are perhaps other issues.

Myth2: A Quad or DC G5 will cause a LOT of heat and you can warm a room with them. I live in Phoenix, where the temps during winter never get much below 35º. While these Macs do produce heat, I've never been able to warm up a room or keep a room warm simply by having them on. Conversely, in the summer they don't impact the use of air conditioning either. The 110º heat outside is what drives the AC to come on.

my g5 quad actually does heat up my room substantially when doing much of anything with it. to the point where i get sweaty and have to start wearing less clothes and running a big fan 24/7 when i use it

 

[lepidotós]

Myth6: PowerPC Macs cannot boot from USB.

I've seen this one so frequently recently due to looking up the Lombard's New World peculiarities. I have to wonder if they've just never, ever plugged in a bootable USB stick into their Mac that they may or may not have, because booting my iBook G3 from USB was one of the very first things I ever did with a PowerPC Mac.​

Myth: You can’t boot from an SSD with a Power Mac G5.
False, false, false. If an SSD can’t boot a G5, it’s the SSD controller’s fault and is likely really old in that it can’t auto-negotiate down to SATA i/II buses..

That's good to know. Unfortunately, I got one of the older ones known not to work anyway, because I didn't check before buying, so I'll have to use it for some other reason.
Myth: PowerPC won't get you any ladies. This is also patently false.
Myth 2: PPC Macs are active security holes. This one at least has some merit, but they're pretty secure on the hardware end of things, obviously they have attack vectors but still far fewer than the recent competition now that SPARC and MIPS are dead. Combined with OpenBSD (or hardened Mac OS X), a pfSense router, and smart Internet habits, I'd trust my iBook G4 with deeper secrets than any Intel system, which at this point I'm afraid to give the first four digits of my bank card number to and basically only use as either toys, a build environment for naughty toolchains that aren't open source, or game consoles.
And, I'm just gonna say it, Myth 3: You can't daily drive a PPC Mac. Except that's exactly what I do, see above.
3(a): PowerPC is a dead architecture with nothing but reference boards using embedded chips to its name. This one isn't specifically about Macs, but besides the awesome Raptor lineup, there's the OSH PowerPC notebook project that's currently in hardware tests.​

 

[Amethyst1]

I have to wonder if they've just never, ever plugged in a bootable USB stick into their Mac

I’ll be honest: I’m just so used to booting from FireWire — which “just works” when it comes to PPC (and early Intel) Macs — that it doesn’t even occur to me that booting from USB is also an option. I don’t like fooling around in OpenFirmware to get it to work on my machines either, so I’ll stick to FireWire.

 

[Bug-Creator]

On a bit more serious note then my previous reply:

Most of these myths and their debunking are really cases of "your mileage may vary"

Any PC sucking in 500W or more will be noticeable on your bill (depending on how long you run it and what your rate is) and will for sure act as a (small) spaceheater for rooms that don't have AC.

Running a Windows of that time (aka XP) with SW of that time on a G5 might be feasible but also rather limited, while a 1st gen MacPro (with enough RAM and an SSD) will handle Win10 and most current SW just fine, so saying that PPC can't run/walk Windows is a fair point.

Same as with booting from USB which AFAIK isn't trivial on any PPC Mac.

 

[lepidotós]

Same as with booting from USB which AFAIK isn't trivial on any PPC Mac.

YMMV, sure, but on my iBook G3 and Oddball, bootable partitions on a USB flash drive can be selected from the option key boot menu, that's how I installed OS 9/10.4.11 on them.​

 

[Amethyst1]

YMMV, sure, but on my iBook G3 and Oddball, bootable partitions on a USB flash drive can be selected from the option key boot menu, that's how I installed OS 9/10.4.11 on them.​

That doesn’t apply to all PPC Macs though, and to someone less experienced, a drive not showing up in the boot menu… can’t be booted from.

 

[B S Magnet]

IDK man a clamshell is a great ice breaker

Part of me is kind of glad I haven’t had a working battery in my key lime clamshell since 2018 (the last one lasted only six months). While it can be fun to occasionally have that as a flex whilst at a café or in some public space, I found that the getting the attention — a woman using a clamshell iBook in such a bright colour — was not always what I was looking for, owing to several interruptions I’d get from strangers in awe of seeing one of these in use so many years later, but completely ignoring my “I’m busy” body language.

Myth 2: PPC Macs are active security holes.

“Security by obscurity.”

3(a): PowerPC is a dead architecture with nothing but reference boards using embedded chips to its name.

Hrm. No fewer than seven (and more than likely, it was eight) PowerPC CPUs were shot into a Lagrangian point in space just last week.

 

[lepidotós]

“Security by obscurity.”

I was more just getting at the lack of either intentional hardware backdoors or just being so badly made that four different exploits are found in 2020 alone (and a fifth in 2021), both of which apply to Intel. There are vulnerabilities, but I guarantee that they have fewer. For example: Spectre doesn't work on G3s. From what I've read, Meltdown wouldn't be introduced until 7448. I realize these are fringe cases that generally speaking don't apply to most people. PowerPC, even the 7448, doesn't have VISA, or IME, or micro-op caching (an AMD-afflicting example for a change).​

 

[B S Magnet]

I was more just getting at the lack of either intentional hardware backdoors or just being so badly made that four different exploits are found in 2020 alone (and a fifth in 2021), both of which apply to Intel. There are vulnerabilities, but I guarantee that they have fewer. For example: Spectre doesn't work on G3s. From what I've read, Meltdown wouldn't be introduced until 7448. I realize these are fringe cases that generally speaking don't apply to most people. PowerPC, even the 7448, doesn't have VISA, or IME, or micro-op caching (an AMD-afflicting example for a change).​

I mean, the caution for things like Spectre or Meltdown is not unwarranted, but the likelihood of being a personal target of these exploits, at least at this time, is not enough for me to halt using a mid-2013 iMac for things like personal banking. The principal threat appears to be how much of an impact an applied exploitation of those vulnerabilities it can have on, say, cloud computing platforms.

That said, it might be nifty if someone here with information security knowledge and experience (and ideally, someone who isn’t a conspiracy theorist) to eventually set aside some time to assemble a bulleted list of known security vulnerabilities on Early Intel Macs into a WikiPost (and, well, maybe a sibling WikiPost for known PowerPC vulnerabilities, viz., the pre-bash 4.3 security holes) — with each bulleted vulnerability linking to an article, a fix, and/or white paper on the nature of that vulnerability, followed by a short, one- or two-sentence summary of how that vulnerability can affect the impacted Mac(s).

Although a lot of this information is out there with some searching on DDG or Google, the MR PowerPC and Early Intel forums have become an excellent springboard/portal/directory for finding as much as one can on their vintage gear without having to bounce around for it.

 

[lepidotós]

The principal threat appears to be how much of an impact an applied exploitation of those vulnerabilities it can have on, say, cloud computing platforms.

Right, hence all the "it's probably not a big deal for most people" stuff. It's just an easily pointed to, cherry picked example highlighting that the lack of out of order execution or branch prediction (or multithreading, come to think of it) on 603es, 750s, and 7400s are one less thing that can potentially be abused, even if that comes at the cost of speed. It's much harder to quantify something being very secure, it's much easier to acknowledge the opposite of that happening elsewhere.
IME isn't a government black box, though I couldn't tell you whether they're happy it's in there. It's (from what I can tell) just a diagnostic tool for sysadmins running headless boxes that just so happens to be an inappropriate inclusion in consumer PC processors that provides sysadmin-diagnosing-a-server levels of potential access, and can't be disabled without bricking your processor. That doesn't mean I won't avoid it like the plague, because why let Intel slide and give my money to that already trash fire of a company regardless of their blatant disregard of the potential concerns of their decisions? I'm not your mom, if you're comfortable with it go ahead, I'm not exactly an authority on anything.
I certainly would be interested to see those threads, though.​

 

[B S Magnet]

Right, hence all the "it's probably not a big deal for most people" stuff. It's just an easily pointed to, cherry picked example highlighting that the lack of out of order execution or branch prediction on 603es, 750s, and 7400s are one less thing that can potentially be abused. It's much harder to quantify something being very secure, it's much easier to acknowledge the opposite of that happening elsewhere.
IME isn't a government black box, though I couldn't tell you whether they're happy it's in there. It's (from what I can tell) just a diagnostic tool for sysadmins running headless boxes that just so happens to be an inappropriate inclusion in consumer PC processors that provides sysadmin-diagnosing-a-server levels of potential access, and can't be disabled without bricking your processor. That doesn't mean I won't avoid it like the plague, because why let Intel slide and give my money to that already trash fire of a company regardless of their blatant disregard of the potential concerns of their decisions? I'm not your mom, if you're comfortable with it go ahead, I'm not exactly an authority on anything.
I certainly would be interested to see those threads, though.​

No, I understand the general gist of what you’re saying, and in a more general sense, my acceptance of Intel Macs as a paradigm took me a lot of time. Fortunately, with all the Intel Macs I’ve used since 2011, none of my money has made its way back to Intel (three cheers for the world of secondhand).

 

[eyoungren]

my g5 quad actually does heat up my room substantially when doing much of anything with it. to the point where i get sweaty and have to start wearing less clothes and running a big fan 24/7 when i use it

OK. I guess I need a smaller room, rather than using it and the DC in the living room.