Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Tiger vs Leopard, ATA66 vs ATA100, 7200RPM vs 5400RPM Dual Boot MDD

MatthewLTL

MatthewLTL

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 22, 2015
1,684
18
Rochester, MN
Since I have the 200GB SATA HDD i am trying to get working via SATA to IDE adaptor, I have Tiger Installed on the 200GB HDD and have noticed that it is in deed much faster than Leopard. My Leopard Install is on a Hitachi Deskstar 60GB IDE HDD at 7200RPM. Inside the mac I also have a Hitachi Deskstar 40GB IDE 7200RPM HDD. The other two drives Are 80GB 5200RPM HDDs on the ATA66 bus. One is a Maxtor (from another TiVo) and one is a Seagate. The Seagate was inside the eMac until I replaced it with a 80GB WD 7200RPM from a Tivo. I have noticed that there is no difference in speed compared to booting Tiger or Leopard on ATA66 vs ATA100, Nor have i noticed ANY difference whatsoever in preformance running Leopard on a 7200PRM vs 5400RPM on my eMac.

So the point in this post is this:

What difference would it make having Leopard or Tiger on the ATA66 bus? One of the drives i plan to put Tiger and Linux onto one of them (not sure if ill use the 7200RPM 40GB Hitachi on the ATA100 bus or a 80GB HDD on the ATA66 bus.)

Also on a Note of Linux on PowerPC:
Has anyone tested the Mate Desktop? Is it faster/better than LXDE?

I have used Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Lubuntu on the MDD in the past but have yet to try MATE.
I have NEVER had any luck at all Playing YouTube on PowerPC Linux. Does HTML5 work on it? (When i did the forte into PowerPC Linux YouTube didn't HAVE HTML5 yet. I can use VLC if need be with Windows and Mac but never tried PowerPC Linux in that way. Also a problem with Linux on PowerPC with me is that 3 main programs I use do not work on PowerPC Linux. Those programs are: Skype, Spotify and RockBox Utility.

Not having the ability to use Chrome on PowerPC (or Chromium for Linux) doesn't At all bother me I have become more accustomed to Firefox (TFF on PPC of course).

Leaves me to yet another related question that i cannot find a answer too: Mozilla stopped providing Firefox to PowerPC at version 3. Opera stopped providing a PowerPC Broswer at version 10. How come it is that while these two browsers are outdated and unsupported on PowerPC OS X, They are at current version and work COMPLETELY on PowerPC Linux? If They can be made to work on PowerPC Linux, How come Mozilla and Opera won't still make PowerPC bowsers for OS X but they work on PowerPC Linux?
 
In regards to the bus. Any bus speed that is faster is ultimately going to be better. You can't just compare boot speeds.

Leopard is just as fast if not faster than Tiger on systems above 1.0Ghz with 1GB of ram or more.

If it's running slow it's because it's not optimized. There are a number of threads here that can show you how to optimize it. But basically, it's shutting off all the eye candy.

Both Mozilla and Opera stopped development for PowerPC because the share of users using the platform had dropped to levels that did not justify support.

Developers have limited and finite resources – and deadlines. Unlike Cameron Kaiser who can afford to offer a less than frequent or consistent release schedule these are businesses who have to meet schedules. Trying to make a version of the browser that would function both on Intel and PowerPC just wasn't realistic when the percentage of PowerPC users is marginal at best - and non-existant at worst.

If you follow Kaiser's blog you can see the issues he has to deal with just to get the Intel code working on PowerPC. No business is going to devote it's programmers to that for no real gain.

So, both Mozilla and Opera dropped support.
 
Youtube works okay for me with Minitube for me on OpenBSD. You may want to give it a shot on Linux if it's available. Browsers are a disaster for Youtube though in my experience.

LXDE tends to be lighter weight than Mate. XFCE is lighter and faster too. Just about any window manager would be faster than either.
 
Tiger vs Leopard, there really isn't a competition.

I rolled my iBook G4 back to Tiger a month ago. My iBook running Leopard was beginning to get bogged down to the point that repairing permissions would cause disk utility to freeze. I updated Tiger to 10.4.11 and it only took me a few hours to decide that a) it was really outdated, b) Leopard is really a modern OS, and c) performance actually suffered a little with Tiger. Mind you that I'm running a 1.42 GHz G4 and maxed ram at 1.5 GB.

That said I am now comfortably running Leopard on my machine, and even though it is 10 years old it chugs along fine and the software library is still very much there. And with as many Intel mac users still running Snow Leopard, I also don't feel as much a need to plunk down a couple hundred on a used Macbook unibody, let alone a new Macbook Air. Leopard is great OS and I recommend it to every PPC machine that can run it.
 
eyoungren said:
In regards to the bus. Any bus speed that is faster is ultimately going to be better. You can't just compare boot speeds.

Leopard is just as fast if not faster than Tiger on systems above 1.0Ghz with 1GB of ram or more.

If it's running slow it's because it's not optimized. There are a number of threads here that can show you how to optimize it. But basically, it's shutting off all the eye candy.

Both Mozilla and Opera stopped development for PowerPC because the share of users using the platform had dropped to levels that did not justify support.

Developers have limited and finite resources – and deadlines. Unlike Cameron Kaiser who can afford to offer a less than frequent or consistent release schedule these are businesses who have to meet schedules. Trying to make a version of the browser that would function both on Intel and PowerPC just wasn't realistic when the percentage of PowerPC users is marginal at best - and non-existant at worst.

If you follow Kaiser's blog you can see the issues he has to deal with just to get the Intel code working on PowerPC. No business is going to devote it's programmers to that for no real gain.

So, both Mozilla and Opera dropped support.
Click to expand...

I have read than when making a program for mac its as simple as checking the box for PowerPC hence making it a universal program how would mozilla or opera know how big or small the userbase is? These and many other companies continue to make software for Linux which has a smaller userbase than PowerPC Mac users

----------
556fmjoe said:
Youtube works okay for me with Minitube for me on OpenBSD. You may want to give it a shot on Linux if it's available. Browsers are a disaster for Youtube though in my experience.

LXDE tends to be lighter weight than Mate. XFCE is lighter and faster too. Just about any window manager would be faster than either.
Click to expand...

MiniTube hasn't Worked in YEARS i 1st tried it on a old PC 4 years ago. And i have tried it on PowerPC Linux didnt work then either other than loading it doesnt do a thing

----------
76ShovelHead said:
Tiger vs Leopard, there really isn't a competition.

I rolled my iBook G4 back to Tiger a month ago. My iBook running Leopard was beginning to get bogged down to the point that repairing permissions would cause disk utility to freeze. I updated Tiger to 10.4.11 and it only took me a few hours to decide that a) it was really outdated, b) Leopard is really a modern OS, and c) performance actually suffered a little with Tiger. Mind you that I'm running a 1.42 GHz G4 and maxed ram at 1.5 GB.

That said I am now comfortably running Leopard on my machine, and even though it is 10 years old it chugs along fine and the software library is still very much there. And with as many Intel mac users still running Snow Leopard, I also don't feel as much a need to plunk down a couple hundred on a used Macbook unibody, let alone a new Macbook Air. Leopard is great OS and I recommend it to every PPC machine that can run it.
Click to expand...

I, Unlike you, Simply do not have the resources like you to run my Macs at maxed out status. Both my macs are 1GHz one has 1GB the other has 512MB. I don't get where you think Tiger is outdated. When I have used it it ran every single program i use on Leopard including Skype, Spotify, MacTubes, YouView and VoiceMac.

If i could get snow leopard on my DELL laptop as a "Hackintosh" I would do it. There is enough Software Intel Only that i would use. All of which need 10.6 or later. If i could get my hands on a 1st gen Intel Mac or Hackintosh my DELL id be perfectly set on Snow Leopard it is still supported by all 3rd party programs AFAIK.
 
Last edited:
I have always preferred Leopard. And even with the eyecandy turned off, I really didn't see any speed or preformance increase. Just like I dont SEE any preformance increases going from the original Seagate 40GB Apple HDD in my eMac (a 5200RPM) to a 40GB 7200RPPM down to a 80GB 5400 RPM back up to a 7200RPM 80GB, no differences at all that i can tell.
 
Comparing drives on capacity and rpm is too much of a general yardstick.

Actual data transfer rates vary with the data density on the platter. For example an older top of the range 80GB 7200rpm drive might have four platters of 20GB. A later 80GB 5400rpm drive will have a single platter (and other drives in the family would go up to 250GB using three platters). With more data crammed into the same amount of space the 5400rpm drive would provide better overall performance - much quicker with sustained transfers, the 7200rpm drive would claw some of the performance deficit back with faster access times for smaller files but not enough overall.
 
MatthewLTL said:
I have read than when making a program for mac its as simple as checking the box for PowerPC hence making it a universal program how would mozilla or opera know how big or small the userbase is?
Click to expand...
It was almost as simple as checking a box when Xcode did support PowerPC and if you were using Xcode (which Mozilla wasn't AFAIK) and you chose to ignore newer OS X APIs. But there could be some bugs introduced because of the architecture difference which need to be found and fixed (so you have to run tests on unsupported hardware, hardware which can fail etc).

MatthewLTL said:
These and many other companies continue to make software for Linux which has a smaller userbase than PowerPC Mac users
Click to expand...
According to this table (from here):
OS_201408_FR_31.png

There were 6.3% of Mac OS X users on surveyed sites in August 2014, of which:
- 3.5% were using 10.9
- 1.1% were using 10.6
- 0.8% were using 10.7
- 0.6% were using 10.8

So approximately 0.3% were using 10.5-, which represents less than the 1.0% who were using GNU/Linux. And Android (on which a Firefox port exists) is Linux based too and has an 11.4% market share.
 
val1984 said:
It was almost as simple as checking a box when Xcode did support PowerPC and if you were using Xcode (which Mozilla wasn't AFAIK) and you chose to ignore newer OS X APIs. But there could be some bugs introduced because of the architecture difference which need to be found and fixed (so you have to run tests on unsupported hardware, hardware which can fail etc).


According to this table (from here):
Image
There were 6.3% of Mac OS X users on surveyed sites in August 2014, of which:
- 3.5% were using 10.9
- 1.1% were using 10.6
- 0.8% were using 10.7
- 0.6% were using 10.8

So approximately 0.3% were using 10.5-, which represents less than the 1.0% who were using GNU/Linux. And Android (on which a Firefox port exists) is Linux based too and has an 11.4% market share.
Click to expand...

I tend to always take surveys with a grain of salt. They are simply too Vague.

For instance, in that chart, the Userbase of Linux is more than the userbase of 10.7 and only a fraction less than the userbase of 10.6 yet Companies continue to make Software current and fully supported on 10.6 and 10.7. and currently make software for Linux.

With that being said they can still support PowerPC they simply just dont want to because of the vicious upgrade cycle of Apple where every 6 months your OS and hardware is virtually obsolete so they dont think that any one using PowerPC exists anymore. The latest Version of Yahoo! Messenger works on PowerPC however Yahoo! refuses to make a USEFUL messenger for Linux or DROID? where is the logic in that?!

Trillian for Mac used to work on PowerPC but they updated and now you cannot connect to Trillian on PowerPC the company CLAIMED they would provide backports for it to work and that was THREE years ago still nothing.

The percentage of those using Linux may only be 1% but that also varies greatly on how many people are surveyed. It was simply 1% of surveyers NOT overall or accurate numbers. Hence why i take surveys with a grain of salt.
 
MatthewLTL said:
Every single hard drive that i have owned has always had 16 heads and i have had drives ranging in 500MB to 500GB
Click to expand...

The last drives that used the physical properties were MFM/RLL drives using ST-506/ESDI interfaces IIRC. They were obsolete by the early 90s. Not sure about SCSI, I mostly used it on old Macs where it just worked.

IDE drives moved the disk controller from an expansion card onto the drive itself, the IDE controller on the board was basically a bridge. The cylinders/heads/sectors (CHS) reported back to the host system have no correlation to the physical drive specifications, the control logic on the drive translate CHS values between the host system and the physical layout. The manufacturers used to suggest values that were the correct capacity and print them on the top of sub 500MB drives for BIOS that didn't have autodetect. Anything over 500MB uses LBA and invariably reports back 1024 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors.

LOL, I'm showing my age now.
 
MagicBoy said:
The last drives that used the physical properties were MFM/RLL drives using ST-506/ESDI interfaces IIRC. They were obsolete by the early 90s. Not sure about SCSI, I mostly used it on old Macs where it just worked.

IDE drives moved the disk controller from an expansion card onto the drive itself, the IDE controller on the board was basically a bridge. The cylinders/heads/sectors (CHS) reported back to the host system have no correlation to the physical drive specifications, the control logic on the drive translate CHS values between the host system and the physical layout. The manufacturers used to suggest values that were the correct capacity and print them on the top of sub 500MB drives for BIOS that didn't have autodetect. Anything over 500MB uses LBA and invariably reports back 1024 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors.

LOL, I'm showing my age now.
Click to expand...

what you said pretty much went right over my head. No clue what any of that meant.
 
MatthewLTL said:
what you said pretty much went right over my head. No clue what any of that meant.
Click to expand...

OK, the short version. The 16 heads value you stated above means nothing. The number of cylinders, head and sectors reported back or printed on the label of an IDE hard drive has no relation to the physical characteristics of the drive.

Google cylinders heads sectors. I'm sure it'll direct you to an article on how a hard drive is constructed and operates if you wish to further your knowledge.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back