Post Your "About This Mac" Screenshots (PowerPC)!

just some simple OpenFirmware hackery

although a bit more complicated then when I got OS X Server 1.2v3 booting on my PowerBook4,1/PowerMac2,2/PowerMac3,6 machines , since here not only did I have to do the usual of change the Model identifier to one which is compatible with the BootX boot loader (in this case I changed PowerBook3,1 to PowerBook2,1), I also had to figure out the GPU situation since I could get OS X Server 1.2v3 booting but the window server would not load as no GPU drivers at all where loading. (these same hacks might even get OS X Server 1.2v3 booting on a first Gen TiBook but I lack such a machine to try it on)

the fix for the GPU issues was actually the same fix for getting XGA screens working in FW clamshells, setting that display-family property at the root of the device tree in the Pismos case, actually causes the GPU properties to change from RageM3 to RageM3p29 which is OS X Server1.2v3 friendly

the way I have done it so far has been volatile (ie OF commands need punching in at every boot)


however I could prolly wrap it all up into an nvramrc script but as the Pismos PRAM is backed up by a probably flat/missing PRAM battery the script would just get lost every time the machine loses Power....

 

Hmm. How did you get past the DVD issue? Pismos don't have CD drives and Rhapsody does not support DVD booting or even reading any media from them. Did you snag a Lombard CD drive and put it in the Pismo? I think TiBooks would fail on this hardware issue.

 

Server 1.2v3 booted and installed fine with my Sawtooth’s stock DVD-ROM drive. I also installed the Dev tools disc from the same drive, no problems.. it took a while though.

I am also fairly confident the external Firewire DVD-RW drive was being read fine in the Rhapsody OS, but I could be just making that up... I’ll have to give it another try.

 

Rhapsody has no support for FW anything, so probably not. I swapped a DVD-RW for the dead CD drive in my otherwise supported beige G3 desktop and Server 1.2 died when the helper OS9 booter started the X-installer.

Actually, you're right. I did have Server 1.2v3 on my Sawtooth, too. Hmm. Maybe Apple Combo drives will work then. Otherwise, the hardware requirements on Rhapsody pretty much state no DVD drives, which is why the Lombard 400MHz model is excluded from the list of supported hardware.

 

to get OS X Server 1.2v3 onto the Pismo I simply took the 10GB image I made using my sawtooth a while back, imaged it to a Fast 16GB CF card and then just slotted that into my Pismo (I have a CF card adapter in the HDD bay)

 

I see. I tried installing with the OF strings on a spare Pismo and OSX is having none of it.

 

alright heres an nvramrc script I knocked up just now

at an Open Firmware prompt type the following:

nvedit<hit enter>

dev /<hit enter>

" PowerBook2,1" encode-string " MacRISC2" encode-string encode+ " MacRISC" encode-string encode+ " Power Macintosh" encode-string encode+ " compatible" property<hit enter>

3 encode-int " display-family" property<hit enter>

unselect-dev<dont hit enter>

then hit control C and then type (you should be back at a 0> prompt)

nvstore<enter>

then type

setenv use-nvramrc? true<hit enter>

then type

reset-all<hit enter>


and the Pismo will reboot,it may take a bit longer then normal to POST and when it does the LCD Rez will be 800x600 but OS X 1.2v3 should boot now and it will switch the LCD to 1024x768 on its own

keep in mind that this is semi-permnant (until someone or something resets the PRAM or does setenv use-nvramrc? false this will keep the nvramrc script but just tell OF to ignore it) so if you make a typo entering the commands above YOU MAY BRICK YOUR MACHINE so use with caution I have personally tested it on my Pismo and it works fine for me. But I will not be responsible if someone makes a typo and bricks a machine.

 

I'm wondering if we can fix the issue of 256 colors in both the Pismo and Lombard by some judicious plist editing as the kext seems to be there that will work with the Rage GPU.

 

"in Both the Pismo and Lombard"

I got thousands and millions of colours working on the Pismo (see the picture on the previous page)

but I dont own a Lombard so I cant do much there sadly. (also if I had a Lombard there would be a thread on here of me upgrading it to a G4 already )

 

Yes but I am wondering if tricking the system into believing the components are something they are not can be done more simply by adding IDs to the right kext. The RageM3p29 kext seems to have no issues with the RageM3 chip in the Pismo.

I have a suitable Lombard. If you can tell me which kext gets loaded, I could see if I can get full colours without OF twiddling. I think the Lombard shares the same weak GPU with the Pismo.

 

My G5 received a breath of fresh air with a OSX Tiger install.

 

My iBook G4 1.33 running Debian 8/XFCE4 with kernel 4.17.0, and running it nicely:

 

Is it the one with the radeon 9200 gpu @swamprock ? If so does Debian support this gpu? I have the same iBook

 

Radeon 9550, the last 12" iBook released. I downgraded the mesa drivers to gain 3d acceleration, per PPC Luddite's guidelines. I find that this iBook is in somewhat of a sweet spot for low-resource linux- once the usual PowerPC linux issues are bypassed (video drivers, sound, wifi), it runs very well.

You're limited to Debian Jessie (Stretch and beyond have no PPC support), but you can install the later kernel (install linux-base from Jessie-Backports first). I want to try Lubuntu and MATE, but I've gotten this iBook to a state where I'm super-happy with it and don't want to nuke the install just yet.

Oh... stick with webkit browsers. Midori is the best one that I've found. Firefox-ESR (56) just crashes and is very buggy. YouTube video is via HookTube and VLC, so no in-browser video (not a deal-breaker for me). I'm exploring other browser options...

 

Yeah debian is a great Linux distro. Wheezy works great on my MDD. If you get every hardware piece working it is really fast, the only thing which makes you regret OS X is the lack of softwares. So no gpu support for the Radeon 9200 sooner or later I'll try it, maybe there's a workaround

 

recently aquired mdd upgraded mostly everything, its okay

 

Would you mind sharing the wallpaper? It's very cool

Back on topic: Mac OS X Developer Preview 3 dressed in Platinum, showing off the About This Mac easter egg:

 

one of my ibooks only machine of mine that runs leopard

 

ibook g3

 

Hi,

I just found this sub-forum of forgotten computers... well... maybe not that forgotten... but, I still have my first Mac, which is a 12" Powerbook G4 1Ghz I bought in 2003... it was my main computer until 2007 when I got a mid-2007 20" iMac... it is still chugging along... and, I am actually using it to write and post this, which is an excruciating exercise and has got to be considered masochistic to be doing this... I am not sure if this is normal.... but this is PAINFUL writing this... and the only reason why I am doing it is because I recently got my h ands on a Powermac G5 that I posted incorrectly in a Mac Pro section, not knowing that this section for PPC Macs existed... line is here for anyone who cares: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ac-g5-owners-out-there.2125970/#post-26210773

As is, I don't think this POwerbook is useable.. How are you guys coping with this slowness? Writing this is has like a 5 second lag... and if I make a mistake and use backspace... forget about it...

Do you think my POwerbook has a fault for being this slow or is this just nomral?... I mean normal... I don't wanna backspace and edit it ebcause of how low... slow this is...

anyway, i will post my "About This Mac" before my Mac explodes!

 

You need to go into your profile preferences and turn off the rich text editor - the javascript constantly running taxes PPCs like hell.
Other than that, you'll find lots of advice on here to bring the Powerbook up to speed

 

Click on the spanner icon at the top right of the MR text editor toolbar to switch to the basic editor which is javascript-free and works as expected on any old Mac regardless of the browser or state of JavaScript. You can switch back and forth between rich and basic text editing as you go.

The G5 will operate just fine with the rich editor, but it is still recommended to optimize TenFourFox and only enable Javascript when needed.

Most websites run background scripts for analytics and advertising/tracking. This is what is causing the older CPUs to barely crawl.

Don’t blame the hardware. It is just as capable (if not more so) as the day it was manufactured. It all comes down to the money grubbing state of “The Modern Web”.

 

Puma 5F24:

--- Post Merged, Jul 4, 2018 ---

This is why I consider NoScript, or another extension that allows turning on JavaScript only for the sites which absolutely need it, essential for surviving with (T)FF.

 

You're right! The C19 cord arrived today and I was able to boot her up. I am typing this now on the G5 (using TFF FPR8 G5 browser) and it's not bad at all. Youtube at 360p is fine, too. And, 720p is playeable with just tiny amounts of missed/skipped frames

It's almost like the difference between Dusk and Night... not quite night and day... but it's serviceable... useable...

The only thing I need to do is see if I can make this Tenda W311M USB Wifi Adapter to work... because right now, I am tethered to my iMac via ethernet cable and using Internet Sharing. Any ideas for that?

 

Well done on ressurrecting your new G5!

They are great machines and a link to the Mac's past which is still completely usable in many ways. You could add a Tiger partition for a dual-boot setup and install Classic to run a lot of the old OS9 apps and games you'll find on the Macintosh Garden (or Repository). Leopard's Disk Utility can add/remove and (sometimes) resize partitions without reformatting the drive.

For the Leopard WiFi Driver, I would try to reinstall and then run Disk Utility's Repair Permissions feature.

You could also run the following in Terminal, after the driver installation to force the system to rebuild the boot caches in the event the driver installer failed to do this;

Code:

sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions

Follow this with a reboot and Leopard will then show you a "Rebuilding Boot Caches" message. This should take a minute or two.

BTW, I am typing this from my PowerBook G4 12" running Tiger. No lag and no typing delays. Knowing the limitations of the machine and restricting my browsing from this Mac to basically just a few forums, search engines and news websites with Javascript disabled, while using a barebones browser such as OneWindowBrowser (with an early iOS useragent) makes the experience zippy enough to use. I wouldn't expect an enjoyable experience with YouTube, FaceBook, Instagram or even eBay on this machine, but I'm okay with that.

The older version of iTunes (9.2.1) streams most internet radio stations just fine and even picks up my music library over Home Sharing from the Mac Pro so that I can listen to music while I work on my projects in the older versions of Xcode and TextWrangler.

If I reboot into 10.5, then Leopard WebKit makes this machine far more capable at web browsing without the overhead incurred by TenFourFox.