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What have you done with a PowerPC today?

Can you list of those general signs of instability please? Perhaps this community can help with insights...

BTW, I would recommend Apple Service Diagnostics (ASD) 2.6.3 for your RAM testing; it has a very comprehensive, if excessively time consuming, set of RAM diagnostics.
 
DisraeliGears said:
Question for the thread again... I've got an Apple Mighty Mouse with scroll ball, but for the life of me I can't get it scrolling on 9.2.2. I've also tried with a generic Logi wired optical and that scroll wheel doesn't work either. Is there a driver I need to install to get scrolling working?
Click to expand...
USB Overdrive? You probably won't get horizontal scrolling but vertical might work.
 
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mac57mac57 said:
Can you list of those general signs of instability please? Perhaps this community can help with insights...

BTW, I would recommend Apple Service Diagnostics (ASD) 2.6.3 for your RAM testing; it has a very comprehensive, if excessively time consuming, set of RAM diagnostics.
Click to expand...
It seems to happen at complete random, but every now and then, audio won't play at all, although iTunes or a video player will show signs that it's trying to play. Adjusting the volume does absolutely nothing whenever this happens; not even the little on-screen prompt or sound effect will come up. The offending program will then start to hang and give me the spinning beach ball.

There were times where I got false hope after changing or deleting some software or old config files that I thought caused it. For the record, iit felt like all of my issues started a few days ago after I tried to install an old version of LaunchBar and went into the settings to "Hide dock icon." It gave me a big warning about problems that it might cause with system stability, but I ignored it and didn't even read all of them. After I thought the program was the cause, I tried disabling the option to hide the dock icon, but no dice. After that, I surgically removed it and deleted all of the old preference files, yet my system still acts unstable at random points.

I've been troubleshooting this whole thing for a few days, and I was so convinced that my RAM was the cause because Rember would start failing a few times depending on what sticks of RAM were inserted.

I didn't even know about ASD, but I've already spent a mountain of time testing RAM. I wanted to try a reinstall once my new SSD comes tomorrow from Amazon.
 
The "no sound" problem is an old one @JackAHyde, and it plagues releases all the way from Leopard through Sonoma. I find that sound will suddenly stop, and no amount of tinkering with the Sound system preference (or any other) seems to solve it. I have never deduced any triggering event(s) that causes sound to stop.

A reboot always solves the problem however! ... for a time anyway!

One other thing that works most of the time, on Monterey at least, is to use the Sound Preference pane to change the sound output device to anything other than the actual intended value. Then exit System Preferences, restart it and use the Sound Preference pane again, this time to reset the output device to the intended value. This sequence of steps restores sound MOST of the time on my Monterey Mac Studio.
 
It's funny you posted about this now of all times. I reinstalled Sorbet on my new 1TB SSD earlier today, and I still got the issues. However, I'm starting to think my sound problems might be tangentially related to what you described. I notice I only get these issues when playing audio, and I have USB speakers that might be a bit too modern for this Power Mac G5. I decided to order a male-to-male audio jack (they're compatible with these speakers) in case this was the issue. After relying on the internal speaker so far, I haven't had issues with some of the usual things that crash and freeze up like DVD playback. I'm copying my iTunes library right now, so I'll report on that once it finishes.

I'm surprised to know that you have such persistent issues with audio on the Mac. I never had these audio issues in general when I ran Mavericks on my first MacBook Air, my black MacBook on Lion and Mountain Lion, my M1 MacBook Air, or the Mac Mini on whatever it has installed. The Power Mac G5 is the first Apple system I've had that gave me these issues, although I still think having full USB-powered speakers is the smoking gun here.
 
Well @JackAHyde, don't be too hopeful about the USB angle. I use hard wired speakers on my Mac Studio, but the problem persists.

In the final analysis, these are complex machines, and if they occasionally "hiccup" in a non-critical way, I tend to let it pass. "Perfection" is an impossible task master - I allow for glitches without having them make me crazy.
 
I get that glitches can happen, @mac57mac57, but I'm talking how music would flat out stop playing if I dared to pause and unpause while drafting a novel, or simply trying to play an old DVD on my system.

I started to wonder if my system was being kneecapped with bad RAM as well, although the sticks in my system seem to be the confirmed "good" ones. I also had issues starting an actual test on Rember with them until I tried dusting out the RAM slots with a toothbrush and trying to use a dummy RAM stick with isopropyl alcohol on its contacts to insert and remove repeatedly in order to "clean" the slots. To an extent, this actually did work, although I'm not 100% sure if the RAM had something to do with it or if it was just a coincidence.
 
Well @JackAHyde, you have one up on me... I have never cleaned the RAM slots on any machine before!

I'm not one to listen to music via iTunes directly from my Mac, so there is another one you have on me. The next time sound stops on a machine I am working with, I will fire up iTunes and see if it plays.

This feels like a software conflict to me, but I have never wanted to spend the time to go back to basics, start with Safe mode and then slowly add things back in until the problem occurrs.

The problem with this problem is that it is intermittent, and until I (and you) can isolate a repeatable trigger that causes it, any attempt to debug it will be fruitless.

So... I live with it for now... bigger fish to fry!
 
Yeah, I thought it was a software conflict too. I kept troubleshooting, but it might have been a wild goose chase the entire time, especially considering I just did a clean install of Sorbet Leopard, so who knows at this point.

Anyway, the system is almost done copying over my iTunes library. I wouldn't have cared all that much except that I spent a good two or three days last week slowly trying to organize everything that was out of place (missing album art, misspelled song titles, incorrect artist names, etc.), so this iTunes collection in particular is my definitive music library right now at over 6,000 songs.
 
Looks like QMPlay2 19.x is more or less good to go. Now with ffmpeg5.
YouTube works.

qmplay2_19x.png
 
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What did I do with a PowerPC today? I moved it (!), as part of reorganizing my work space. I am doing more and more work on my G5 AirQuad (I am porting the latest version my VE text editor to (n)curses, using the AirQuad as the development environment), and it was in a space in the room that made it quite an eye and neck strain to use for any extended period of time.

SO... I moved it into my main desk area and used the opportunity to swap my 30" Apple Cinema HD display from my G5 Dual 2.3 to my AirQuad. I then swapped another set of monitors, so that my G5 Dual 2.3 GHz uses my next best DVI monitor, a LaCie 324.

Here is what the work area looks like from the user (me!) perspective:

2025-07-12.1639, My Reorganized Study Workspace, with Mac Studio AND Power Mac G5 Quad Monitor...jpg


The two paired monitors are connected to my Mac Studio. The 30" Cinema HD display is connected to the AirQuad. The AirQuad keyboard and mouse are a vintage Logitech S530 set, wireless, and with wonderful key press feedback (for the keyboard) and hand feel (for the mouse, which has a satisfying heft to it). The Mac Studio keyboard is standard Apple stuff; its mouse is a recent Logi offer which is quite good.

You can also see the iSight camera that I have posted about to the lower right of the Cinema display, and the wonderfully large wired remote volume control for the system's speaker set.

Finally, just under the point where the two paired monitors meet in the middle, you can see a USB Zip drive, which is connected to my Mac Studio, and which provides the Mac end of the "SneakerNet" I often use to transfer files from my DOS machine to my Mac Studio (for archiving).

... and here is what it looks like from the back, as you walk into the room:

2025-07-12.1640, My Reorganized Study Workspace, with Mac Studio AND Power Mac G5 Quad Monitor...jpg


You can see the AirQuad to the left, and the Mac Studio to the right. The Mac Studio is sitting on its own box, which itself is sitting on a 1990s vintage Logitech subwoofer. It's speakers can be seen to the left and the right on the desk above the machine.

In the very foreground of the above photo you can see my 2008 Mac Pro, an 8 core Intel Xeon machine. It runs Snow Leopard, which it was delivered with, and High Sierra, which I slowly and painfully upgraded it to.

It is a "busy" space, but it works well.
 
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mac57mac57 said:
Finally, just under the point where the two paired monitors meet in the middle, you can see a USB Zip drive, which is connected to my Mac Studio, and which provides the Mac end of the "SneakerNet" I often use to transfer files from my DOS machine to my Mac Studio (for archiving).
Click to expand...
Nice….😊
This brings back memories, I still have my Zip drive and a load of zip250 disks with data on.
However my drive is a parallel port version, so doubt there is a way to connect to a modern (old) Mac.…. 🤪
 
@JackAHyde, if you are referring to the onscreen "widget" to the far left and near the top of the display, that is the XRG app, displaying CPU temps and fan speeds in real time. Rather like iStatMenus, but able to show ALL the relevant info on one real-time updating window.

XRG seems to be a Leopard+ app, and can't be run on Panther or Tiger (so I am told).

If you are referring to a physical thing on the desk to the left of the display, you will see a recent model Logi mouse and a USB floppy drive, both black in color.
 
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KC600 SSD + Delock works well! Now learning the MorphOS. It's a bit strange world. :)
 

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What have I done with a PPC Mac?
I turned a G4 iMac into a lectern/stand for documents or my iPad.

Screenshot.png
 
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That's good, because I think a lot of us would cringe at the thought of the computer being salvageable and still making the decision to gut it and repurpose the whole thing for something else. I usually feel more like that when I see all those YouTube video thumbnails of people claiming they gutted out a Power Mac G5 to turn it into a modern ATI PC.

As for what I've done with a PowerPC system recently, I used the old HDD my G5 came with and put it into a FireWire 400 enclosure just for the system.
 
@barracuda156, I hate to keep asking the same question, but has anyone done this for Leopard or Sorbet Leopard?

I am guessing that this is available via the PPCPorts mechanism? Also MacPorts?

Do you know of any reason right now why it would not build under 10.5.9? If it will, I would be happy to take a crack at it.

Thanks!
 
Alright, I had an old Mac mini (2015) lying around. My friend (the same one who gave me an M1 MacBook Air) found the Mac mini way too slow for his taste and didn't want to bother selling it. It even got to the point where I upgraded the storage (Thanks, OWC!) to run the OS from solid state and to use the 1TB HDD as storage inside.

I know this is an Intel system, but I dug up the Mac mini again recently, which can only go up to Monterey at latest, and set it up with Jellyfin to be a media server. It was a bit of a project, but now I can access my music, TV shows, and videos anywhere.

That's when I decided to see if the Power Mac G5 could stream from it. Of course, there's no PPC Jellyfin app, but I got around this by setting up DLNA on Jellyfin, opening VLC on the G5, browsing DLNA servers on my network (it took some time to see the media directory), and playing whatever I wanted.
 
mac57mac57 said:
@barracuda156, I hate to keep asking the same question, but has anyone done this for Leopard or Sorbet Leopard?

I am guessing that this is available via the PPCPorts mechanism? Also MacPorts?

Do you know of any reason right now why it would not build under 10.5.9? If it will, I would be happy to take a crack at it.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

You could try installing it via PPCPorts.

rawtherapee installs 5.10
rawtherapee-devel installs 5.12

P. S. On the first launch a modular dialog window opens behind the main one, remember that, otherwise it may seem that app is frozen. (This is a bug in RT which upstream will fix.)
 
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