Myths about PowerPC Macs

[mectojic]

USB booting has saved me so much trouble.

I've managed to boot from USB using 4 iBooks (300, 466, 466, 500), 2 iMac G4s (both 800), 2 iMac G3s (500 Graphite and 450 Ruby), and 1 Power Mac (G4 350 AGP), and maybe more that I'm forgetting about.

From my experience, all Macs from mid-1999 (Power Mac G4 AGP, slot-load iMacs, all iBooks, Pismo) onwards can boot from USB, but then there seems to be problems again around 2003+ (but I haven't tested enough of these to confirm, since it's not really an era I'm interested in.)

The early new-world Macs (tray-load iMacs, PMG3 B&W, Lombard) cannot boot from USB, I've tried it on all of them.

I always would prefer that my Macs are self-reliant-- i.e. if the HD/SSD failed, I would be able to solve the problem without relying on another Mac. Bootable USB drives and drive cloning software makes this easy, and I'm patient enough to wait for USB 1.1 speeds when transferring data.

I don't care for Firewire, especially since my old iBook and Wallstreet don't have it anyway. As for CDs, I've had too many CD drives die on me to care for that option, either.
Even if it's USB 1.1, I'd rather boot from USB as a backup, and for Macs that can't do it, I use a USB-SSD adapter and test on another Mac...

PS: of course, results may vary. But we should also remember that a lot can go wrong with weird/faulty USB drives, incorrect formatting, and even faulty hubs which don't provide enough power to the device.

 

[B S Magnet]

This is why I've called for a sticky that lists which machines are confirmed as able to do this. At some point I'll get round to checking whether my PM G5, Quicksilver and PowerBook G4 also support it.

This sounds like a perfect new WikiPost!

I don't care for Firewire, especially since my old iBook and Wallstreet don't have it anyway. As for CDs, I've had too many CD drives die on me to care for that option, either.

Strangely, it wasn’t until I read this sentence that it dawned on me how every single Mac I’ve owned, going back to my very first Yikes! G4 in November 1999, has had some iteration of FireWire — even if indirectly, as with my 2013 iMac and early 2015 MacBook Pro (via the Thunderbolt-to-FireWire dongle).

 

[TheShortTimer]

This sounds like a perfect new WikiPost!

@mectojic and I have a number of machines which we could immediately add to it.

 

[B S Magnet]

@mectojic and I have a number of machines which we could immediately add to it.

Nice!

I mentioned on page 1 how I’ve used a USB stick to boot a 466MHz Rev. C iBook G3 (because this was about a year before I finally fixed the faulty FireFire connection which had come with the laptop when I bought it used in ’07). As memory serves, I was booting into a Tiger Retail DVD image.

 

[mectojic]

@mectojic and I have a number of machines which we could immediately add to it.

It's a good idea.
People who are completely new to PowerPC Macs are very unlikely to own any Firewire devices or drives, whereas (as of 2022) you can easily walk into any hardware store, buy a USB stick, and format it on any new Mac/PC.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Nice!

I mentioned on page 1 how I’ve used a USB stick to boot a 466MHz Rev. C iBook G3 (because this was about a year before I finally fixed the faulty FireFire connection which had come with the laptop when I bought it used in ’07). As memory serves, I was booting into a Tiger Retail DVD image.

Yes, I saw that.

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.

Likewise - I just got on with other things in the meantime whilst Tiger was installing.

Patience is a virtue, after all.

 

[TheShortTimer]

It's a good idea.
People who are completely new to PowerPC Macs are very unlikely to own any Firewire devices or drives, whereas (as of 2022) you can easily walk into any hardware store, buy a USB stick, and format it on any new Mac/PC.

Or if you're in a situation where the PowerPC Mac doesn't even have a FireWire port - which was my predicament with the iMac G3.

 

[lepidotós]

Hey out of curiosity, which macs and what OS versions? Anything special about the flash drive or is just 8gb min, APM format and the iso on it?

I can vouch for the earliest Power Mac G4s... in particular, the Sawtooth and Gigabit. Probably. I know for sure the Sawtooth boots from USB via the options menu, can't test on a Gigabit because mine is currently waiting to be revived, I'm just going by how similar the two are. It booted into Mac OS 9.2.2. I've booted Linux on my iMac G5 from USB, but haven't been able to boot Mac OS X. iBook G3 and G4 are both bootable from USB as well, but the G4 needs to be put into OpenFirmware.​

 

[lepidotós]

Another myth about PowerPC Macs: everymac.com is a reliable source of information.​

 

[Intell]

Here is a fav Apple support article of mine that states when USB booting was first supported on PowerPC Macs: https://support.apple.com/kb/TA25908?locale=en_US

Beginning with the Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics) and the iMac (Slot-Loading), two new features to USB are most apparent: support for USB audio devices and booting from USB drives.

USB Audio Devices: This includes any device also that supports the Isochronous USB protocol (which are mostly Audio in nature). This includes USB speakers, microphones, and other recording/playback devices.

Bootable USB drives: A storage device such as a SuperDisk, Zip disk, or other USB storage drive can be used to hold a valid system folder and used at startup.

 

[eyoungren]

@Intell Are you handing out cheese hats today? Haven't gotten one in quite a while!

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

iBook G3/500
iBook G3/800
iMac G3/350
eMac G4

All of them with Tiger - but that's because it's my preference for most of my PPC Macs. If it were the G5 then I'd just go with Leopard: or rather, Sorbet Leopard nowadays.



The iMac G3 has a faulty optical drive and no FireWire and this made USB booting a god send when I was working through replacing the HDD with an SSD and reinstalling Tiger onto the computer. There's an entire thread in which my experiences are documented but you can skip to right here for a guide on creating a bootable macOS USB installer that, providing your PPC Mac supports booting from USB by holding down Option after a cold boot or restart, will be recognised by your computer identically as if you were booting from a CD or DVD.

I used an 8GB stick and created the installer using El Capitan but only because the 2011 MBP is my daily driver and as I mentioned in the post, I've also done it on Snow Leopard and the steps are essentially more or less the same for Tiger and Leopard. From what I can recall, I didn't need to worry about the format because Disk Utility takes care of that for you when it effectively images the ISO to the USB stick.

It's really easy and on a PPC Mac with USB 1.1 the installation time is around 30-40 minutes. To put it into perspective, that's about the same time that it would take for Win 9x to install from CD on my PCs and even after that I'd still need to spend further time installing the necessary drivers for the hardware.

If you have any additional questions or queries that aren't covered in the guide, let me know.

Yep this is the same method that failed on a 1.33ghz ibook g4 - although you are using physical media to create the flashdrive and I was using a DL'd tiger 10.4.6 dmg on some new 20gb flash drives I picked up for cheap. I do have physical media of both Leopard and Tiger, so I could give that route a try when creating the USB but I dont see why that should make any difference. Also, hypothetically it could be the flash drive - perhaps its too new and the ibook doesnt like the satan inside it. It is known to be good as I have quite a few partitions for other OS's that do boot to intel without issue from it. I'll pop it into my powermac g5 & QSg4 as they are both currently set up and see if the result is different. If that does not do the trick, I will swap out to different flash drives. If that doesnt do the trick, I'll ditch the method and stick with cloning/physical media routes that work for me. Thanks for sharing.

 

[originaldotexe]

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

yes, my room is about 100sqft (10x10ft) and it gets quite bad when running the quad for a while.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Yep this is the same method that failed on a 1.33ghz ibook g4 - although you are using physical media to create the flashdrive and I was using a DL'd tiger 10.4.6 dmg on some new 20gb flash drives I picked up for cheap. I do have physical media of both Leopard and Tiger, so I could give that route a try when creating the USB but I dont see why that should make any difference.

If memory serves me, I initially tried creating the USB installer from a DMG and it didn't work. Burning a DVD and then imaging that to USB, however, has been faultless. I don't understand why but for me, the main thing is that it works.

Hopefully that method will have a positive outcome for you as well.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

If memory serves me, I initially tried creating the USB installer from a DMG and it didn't work. Burning a DVD and then imaging that to USB, however, has been faultless. I don't understand why but for me, the main thing is that it works.

Hopefully that method will have a positive outcome for you as well.

Yeah man I'll give that a shot - I do have the media, so no skin off my back other than time. Kinda hard at the moment though as my wife works from home and is on my case to take down Xmas decor, suck up leaves, take down lights (the list never ends) vs doing fun and productive (to me) things with my macs. Might have to put this on the back burner until tomorrow morning and knock down that honey list a bit. No need to feed the fire.

Oh Ive got another myth.

Wives absolutely love nerdy PowerPC hobbies.

This is also patently false.

 

[Luposian]

My G4 QuickSilver is used for one thing and one thing only, nowdays... making MIDIs. I can't go online with it, because 10.3 (Panther) is no longer supported by any browsers. I need Panther because iPiano sounds right. It doesn't sound right in Jaguar (10.2) and iPiano in Tiger (10.4) doesn't function right. And Leopard (10.5)... iPiano doesn't work at all. I would love it if someone would whip up a recent version of FireFox or similar... JUST to prove you can still browse the Internet fine on a G4 QS or similar era computer. But how much would I have to pay someone to do that? $500? $1,000? Might be worth it... just to prove a point.

 

[Amethyst1]

10.3 (Panther) is no longer supported by any browsers.

Links2

 

[R3k]

This very important PSA has hit the front page, we did if guys.

 

[TheShortTimer]

This very important PSA has hit the front page, we did if guys.

Behold!

 

[lepidotós]

Another myth about PowerPC Macs: everymac.com is a reliable source of information.​

Apple's own website isn't much better. They officially report the Sawtooth as having a max RAM of 1.5GB and only being able to run up to Mac OS 9.0, which... isn't true, because mine runs 10.5.9 just fine. They also say that some Lombards had 83MHz buses.​

 

[e-coli]

The Power architecture is still in use today on a large scale in enterprise AI applications. It’s used for AI acceleration in cloud and transactional environments. The Power accelerators are even ported over to the upcoming IBM Telum processors on Z systems, which are the backbone of the most critical infrastructure globally. But they are indeed power hungry and hot.

 

[lepidotós]

The Power architecture is still in use today on a large scale in enterprise AI applications. It’s used for AI acceleration in cloud and transactional environments. The Power accelerators are even ported over to the upcoming IBM Telum processors on Z systems, which are the backbone of the most critical infrastructure globally. But they are indeed power hungry and hot.

It's also used in these (they want you to build your own, the prebuilts are for institutions) and this and sometimes even these familiar faces.​

 

[B S Magnet]

It's also used in these (they want you to build your own, the prebuilts are for institutions) and this and sometimes even these familiar faces.​

Dang. They really don’t make the pricing very accessible.

 

[lepidotós]

Dang. They really don’t make the pricing very accessible.

Between inflation (they started out at $799 for the base model), a lack of economies of scale, being manufactured in... I think Texas? and the CPUs themselves being a fair amount, there's reasons. Still, ~$2900 to build your own isn't exactly unheard of for a workstation or small server; I've brought it up before but the lower-spec baseline Mac Pro is $6,000, and $8,600 when including 8TB of storage ($9,100 for a rack mount), which you can pick up from Amazon or Newegg for like $130.​

 

[Amethyst1]

I've brought it up before but the lower-spec baseline Mac Pro is $6,000, and $8,600 when including 8TB of storage ($9,100 for a rack mount),

The 2019 MP is a bit of an extreme example; the older cheesegraters started at a much more reasonable $2,500 back in the day (the 2008 being the exception at $2,800).