Snow Leopard PPC

[vddrnnr]

Hi Everyone,

Yesterday I had an idea and went looking inside the Snow Leopard DVD Retail.
I found that a lot of the binary files and also the mach_kernel register as PPC binary also.

Has anyone looked into this before?

I extracted the files directly to a disk partition with pacifist and copied the BootX from
my Leopard Install into the correct location on the new partition.

I'm able to start boot but receive a kernel error stating that there is no Powermac11,2 personality.

I also saw that many apps are Intel only but there are also PPC ones including Xcode 3.2 ( some of
the extra apps are Intel Only but Xcode.app is PPC also ).

Anyone up for diving a little deeper on this?

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[amagichnich]

This Post has covered many aspects of why it isn't (or maybe wasn't after your discovery) possible to run SL on PPC.
Darwin was a universal binary after the death of PPC, but Darwin alone is no OS X
On one of the PureDarwin, formerly OpenDarwin, threads PPC support was asked for but I think it wasn't possible

 

[vddrnnr]

Hi amagichnich,

I had some results yesterday.
Mainly the fact that some of the apps are still PPC ( like Xcode ) and no PPC version was released.
I found several things:

1. Many of the frameworks are also PPC
2. iCal is newer than leopard and is PPC, it only needs the Calendar private framework and that one is PPC too
3. Network Utility is PPC ( fails with missing image in framework )
4. Booting with Leopard mach_kernel and kexts goes until finding boot volume
5. Booting with Snow Leopard mach_kernel fails with the personality error ( maybe simulating another machine like
hackintoshes do when they boot will make it boot and kernel patching like for atom cpus and intel haswell cpus)
6. Using the standard install method will not be possible out of the box because the Install OSX.app complains
the architecture is not supported but the app is PPC too. ( I think a binary patch to skip this validation
is possible as it was done to be able to install on mackintoshes with mbr ).
7. It won't be possible to install a full Snow Leopard because many apps are intel only ( it will need leopard apps and
maybe the leopard frameworks too ).
8. Running Snow Leopard might give access to newer apps which may have been compiled with PPC support but
only run on Snow Leopard.
9. With Snow Leopard we might also be able to get SSD TRIM support and EXFAT filesystem access and maybe
other...
9. Strange things have been done previously which we're thought impossible for instance:

I'm running Lion on a CoreDUO ( 32 bit intel ) machine. Lion is not supported on apple 32 bit machines.
I'm using dosdude1's lion 10.7.2 disk image with everything working ( Speedstep and Firewire ) using
IntelEnhancedSpeedstep.kext and IOFirewireFamily.kext from Lion DP1.
This also requires an Lion DP1 Finder because the Finder in th release version is 64bits.
Dosdude1 wasn't able to go up to 10.7.5 but I think it may be possible with some extra work ( trial and error and
a lot of patience ).
My CoreDUO is a 17 inch macbookpro mid 2006 running inside a 2007 santarosa 17 inch case.
It's also running with usb3 provided by an expresscard usb3 card ( not full usb3 speed but it is 1.5 Gbit much
better than usb 2.0 )

I'll keep you posted on progress.

Best regards,
voidRunner

 

[Orizence]

How many of the kernel extensions are compiled to run on PPC I cant imagine many

 

[KawaiiAurora]

Hi amagichnich,

I had some results yesterday.
Mainly the fact that some of the apps are still PPC ( like Xcode ) and no PPC version was released.
I found several things:

1. Many of the frameworks are also PPC
2. iCal is newer than leopard and is PPC, it only needs the Calendar private framework and that one is PPC too
3. Network Utility is PPC ( fails with missing image in framework )
4. Booting with Leopard mach_kernel and kexts goes until finding boot volume
5. Booting with Snow Leopard mach_kernel fails with the personality error ( maybe simulating another machine like
hackintoshes do when they boot will make it boot and kernel patching like for atom cpus and intel haswell cpus)
6. Using the standard install method will not be possible out of the box because the Install OSX.app complains
the architecture is not supported but the app is PPC too. ( I think a binary patch to skip this validation
is possible as it was done to be able to install on mackintoshes with mbr ).
7. It won't be possible to install a full Snow Leopard because many apps are intel only ( it will need leopard apps and
maybe the leopard frameworks too ).
8. Running Snow Leopard might give access to newer apps which may have been compiled with PPC support but
only run on Snow Leopard.
9. With Snow Leopard we might also be able to get SSD TRIM support and EXFAT filesystem access and maybe
other...
9. Strange things have been done previously which we're thought impossible for instance:

I'm running Lion on a CoreDUO ( 32 bit intel ) machine. Lion is not supported on apple 32 bit machines.
I'm using dosdude1's lion 10.7.2 disk image with everything working ( Speedstep and Firewire ) using
IntelEnhancedSpeedstep.kext and IOFirewireFamily.kext from Lion DP1.
This also requires an Lion DP1 Finder because the Finder in th release version is 64bits.
Dosdude1 wasn't able to go up to 10.7.5 but I think it may be possible with some extra work ( trial and error and
a lot of patience ).
My CoreDUO is a 17 inch macbookpro mid 2006 running inside a 2007 santarosa 17 inch case.
It's also running with usb3 provided by an expresscard usb3 card ( not full usb3 speed but it is 1.5 Gbit much
better than usb 2.0 )

I'll keep you posted on progress.

Best regards,
voidRunner

Interesting discoveries If you want to waste your time on something, I'd suggest you try compiling Snow Leopard-only software for Leopard PPC and try getting them to work.

 

[SourceSunTom]

Hi amagichnich,

I had some results yesterday.
Mainly the fact that some of the apps are still PPC ( like Xcode ) and no PPC version was released.
I found several things:

1. Many of the frameworks are also PPC
2. iCal is newer than leopard and is PPC, it only needs the Calendar private framework and that one is PPC too
3. Network Utility is PPC ( fails with missing image in framework )
4. Booting with Leopard mach_kernel and kexts goes until finding boot volume
5. Booting with Snow Leopard mach_kernel fails with the personality error ( maybe simulating another machine like
hackintoshes do when they boot will make it boot and kernel patching like for atom cpus and intel haswell cpus)
6. Using the standard install method will not be possible out of the box because the Install OSX.app complains
the architecture is not supported but the app is PPC too. ( I think a binary patch to skip this validation
is possible as it was done to be able to install on mackintoshes with mbr ).
7. It won't be possible to install a full Snow Leopard because many apps are intel only ( it will need leopard apps and
maybe the leopard frameworks too ).
8. Running Snow Leopard might give access to newer apps which may have been compiled with PPC support but
only run on Snow Leopard.
9. With Snow Leopard we might also be able to get SSD TRIM support and EXFAT filesystem access and maybe
other...
9. Strange things have been done previously which we're thought impossible for instance:

I'm running Lion on a CoreDUO ( 32 bit intel ) machine. Lion is not supported on apple 32 bit machines.
I'm using dosdude1's lion 10.7.2 disk image with everything working ( Speedstep and Firewire ) using
IntelEnhancedSpeedstep.kext and IOFirewireFamily.kext from Lion DP1.
This also requires an Lion DP1 Finder because the Finder in th release version is 64bits.
Dosdude1 wasn't able to go up to 10.7.5 but I think it may be possible with some extra work ( trial and error and
a lot of patience ).
My CoreDUO is a 17 inch macbookpro mid 2006 running inside a 2007 santarosa 17 inch case.
It's also running with usb3 provided by an expresscard usb3 card ( not full usb3 speed but it is 1.5 Gbit much
better than usb 2.0 )

I'll keep you posted on progress.

Best regards,
voidRunner

Is Snow Leopard's Finder a PPC app ?

 

[tevion5]

Is Snow Leopard's Finder a PPC app ?

Psht, who needs that sort of bloatware anyway!

 

[MagicBoy]

You're seeing 2+2 and making 974 as the answer.

There's some universal binaries that weren't fully cleaned out. That's it.

 

[Project Alice]

I sure wish SL was supported on PPCs. In my opinion they killed them off too early. SL would've been perfect for the last release. Especially since it was a small update over leopard.

 

[MagicBoy]

Kinda missing the point there, sure you've not accidentally put your rose tinted glasses on? No major new features, just thorough maintenance of 90% of the bundled apps, performance optimisation and some new under the cover plumbing with OpenCL etc. That includes removing a good chunk of the PowerPC baggage from the previous releases. Not doing that would negate most of the work!

 

[vddrnnr]

Hi all,

Just to let you know about my OSX Lion 10.7.5 endeavours.
Finally found time to mess arround with trying to get 10.7.5 running on my macbook pro 2006 coreduo.
It took some time ( had to get 10.7.5 installed on a proper supported mac ) but it paid of, right now
i'm running 10.7.5 with all the hardware/software working properly.

First some news about my customacbook pro

It's now running with a replaced screen from a 2008 17 inch mbp ( 1920x1200 LED glossy ).

Now for the 10.7.5 details.

Problem:

- Would not boot with the 10.7.5 kexts doing all the necessary hacking that
worked with 10.7.2. Boot would stall at "still waiting for root...."

Steps:

- dosdude1 lion pack ( not using appleacpi )
- using the same kernel as for 10.7.2
- using the kexts from 10.7.2 with the lion pack
- replace ATI kexts with 10.7.5 ( 10.7.2 don't get qe )
- replace System.kext with 10.7.5
- replace IO8211Family with 10.7.5
- replace IONetworking with 10.7.5
- replaced /usr/libexec/xpchelper with the one from roaring core 10.7.0
- Added XPCHelper.framework also from roaring
- replaced Finder with the 32bit DP version
- using intelenhancedspeedstep kext
- using voodoomonitor kext
- everything else is stock

TODO:

- apply latests security update
- update safari to latest version
- replace other kexts with the 10.7.5 versions
- Try to get CPU recognized as a CoreDUO

Best regards,
voidRunner