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What have you done with a PowerPC today?

Today was "G5 Quad Day". I managed to acquire two additional G5 Quad CPU cards (not an easy task these days!) and used the first one to upgrade my Air Quad back to full Quad status and the second one to do the same to my LCS Quad.

Air Quad (Air Cooled Quad): Prior to today, only one CPU card was in use because the other was damaged and I had disabled it via an Open Firmware command. Today I installed one of the two "new" CPU cards into it and I am happy to report that the operation was a success. The second card even idles a degree or two cooler (38C to 39C) than the first one, which is a good result.

LCS Quad (LCS Cooled Quad): Prior to today, only one CPU card was physically installed, because the other one was quite dead and the machine would not boot with it physically present in the box. Today I installed the second of the two "new" CPU cards into it and this operation was initially a success. Like the Air Quad result, the second card even idled cooler than its running mate (36C to 39C) - a good result. Regrettably, an old bug-a-boo raised its head shortly thereafter: the cooling loop suddenly sprang a nasty leak. I noticed CPU B shooting up into the 90C area, followed by thermal shutdown. I found and repaired the leak and am letting the silicon sealant used for the repair to set overnight before firing the Quad up again. This episode simply reminds me that Air Cooling is far superior to LCS Cooling! Air coolers don't spring leaks!

So... I'll call it one and half out of two, or a 75% success rate for the day.

I am responsible for the new LCS leak of course - after discovering an air gap in the cooling loop while installing the second CPU card, I added more cooling fluid to the loop via needle insertion. I sealed the two holes (one to insert the coolant, the other to let air escape as the coolant took its place) as well as I knew how to, and then resealed them again half an hour later. Nonetheless, the new leak was at the exact spot where I added the coolant. Clearly, one has to let the silicon sealant set for more than one hour!

The loss of coolant does not appear to have been significant, so I will try it out again tomorrow after the sealant has set overnight and see if it runs. If not, I will have to tear it down again, refill, reseal and let it sit for another day. No worries either way however. This is a set back, not a fatal blow. The LCS Quad will ride again!
 
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I am happy to report that "Quad Day" was more successful than I thought. After my repair of the leak cured overnight, the machine booted right up and ran nicely. So, I'll call it 2 out of 2, or 100% success...

...except for one curiosity. The newly added CPU was CPU B. Core B1 idles at about 38C, but Core B0 idles at about 48C, a full 10C hotter, even though both cores are on the same physical die. Also, when I start up any "heavy" application (Aquafox, Photoshop, etc.), Core B0 spikes into the 80C range, while B1 remains in the 50C range. I have even had the machine put itself to sleep due to CPU B overheating - no checkstop, just sleep.

It is very curious that one of the two cores on a single physical die has such different thermal performance than its adjacent peer.

Since one of the two CPU B cores is nicely cooled, I have to conclude that the cooling loop itself is doing its job. I am wondering therefore if uneven thermal paste (part of the chip less covered than the rest) might be the culprit? Or perhaps a blockage in one part of the micro channels of the CPU B cooling pad?

Other thoughts?
 
I would guess that the copper block is not making flat/even contact with the silicon. Like it's at an angle or a small spec of dust/debris is lifting one edge. Copper conducts heat better than almost anything, so you want the silicon flat and tight against the copper. If you remove a heatsink and look at the residue of thermal compound, you can tell how good the contact is by the way it was squeezed out of the joint.
 
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Fixed a modern Cocoa terminal with true color support:

mlterm.png


It still relies on X11 for settings (apparently for any macOS, not just legacy ones), but terminal emulator itself uses native backend.
 
Thanks @ervus, much appreciated. I have been thinking along the lines of inadequate pasting of the CPU, but you take that one step further... simply an uneven contact with the copper. I will have to check that out. Thanks again. Of course that does mean extracting the LCS from the Quad case and then disconnecting CPU B, ultimately necessitating a repaste of it as it is all put back together.

BTW, I love your avatar... the iconic "Think Different" phrasing, coupled with the original Macintosh logo colors superimposed on a Windows logo... brilliant, just brilliant!
 
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I’ve recently installed the MINT PPC64/Deb12 iso on a Mac G5 “cheese grater” with4GB RAM on its own 250GB hard drive. The Mac uses a Radeon 9600XT GPU. Many thanks to the assistance from @Jeroen Diederen .

I have two monitors attached to the Radeon card. One is a Samsung 32” hooked up to the DVI port, the other is a 20” Apple Cinema Display attached to the Apple Cinema Display port (VGA).

It will not boot successfully with both monitors attached when powering up the G5. It only boots successfully with the DVI monitor attached.

Once the desktop is loaded, I can attach the Apple Cinema Display, and after setting the resolution to 1680X1050 on the Samsung, the Apple Monitor will show a “mirrored” desktop. I cannot get the displays set to show an extended desktop.

The Monitors preference, and ARandR both see and recognize the two monitors but neither has the ability to extend the desktop.

I am able to boot up in XFCE as well as MintPPC64. When booting in XFCE, the Displays preference actually has a check box to display the desktop as mirrored. Unchecking that box kills the Apple Display (goes black).

I have run Xorg -configure and the xorg.conf shows the existence of both monitors. I’m just not sure how to change the file to do the following:

1) start up properly with both monitors attached
2) show an extended desktop

If anyone has done this successfully, I’d love to know what was done to get this configuration to work.

Thanks in advance,
MacMaverick855

@z970, @wicknix
 
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MacMaverick855 said:
I’ve recently installed the MINT PPC64/Deb12 iso on a Mac G5 “cheese grater” with4GB RAM on its own 250GB hard drive. The Mac uses a Radeon 9600XT GPU. Many thanks to the assistance from @Jeroen Diederen .

I have two monitors attached to the Radeon card. One is a Samsung 32” hooked up to the DVI port, the other is a 20” Apple Cinema Display attached to the Apple Cinema Display port (VGA).

It will not boot successfully with both monitors attached when powering up the G5. It only boots successfully with the DVI monitor attached.

Once the desktop is loaded, I can attach the Apple Cinema Display, and after setting the resolution to 1680X1050 on the Samsung, the Apple Monitor will show a “mirrored” desktop. I cannot get the displays set to show an extended desktop.

The Monitors preference, and ARandR both see and recognize the two monitors but neither has the ability to extend the desktop.

I am able to boot up in XFCE as well as MintPPC64. When booting in XFCE, the Displays preference actually has a check box to display the desktop as mirrored. Unchecking that box kills the Apple Display (goes black).

I have run Xorg -configure and the xorg.conf shows the existence of both monitors. I’m just not sure how to change the file to do the following:

1) start up properly with both monitors attached
2) show an extended desktop

If anyone has done this successfully, I’d love to know what was done to get this configuration to work.

Thanks in advance,
MacMaverick855

@z970, @wicknix
Click to expand...
I know you were pinging others, but have you tried xrandr in the terminal instead of arandr? Back when I ran Awesome WM, I had an xrandr command all set up to run on startup. It would detect both my monitors, set their resolutions, and set their coordinates so that they would always appear in the same place relative to one another, enabling me to start it up and have it extend my desktop each time.

I would check to see if you're able to install xrandr on your MintPPC64 distro. If you install it, just look into the documentation on it. You could ask ChatGPT to help you with the individual steps in case you aren't well-versed on using xrandr. Just describe your monitor input names, resolutions, and what kind of arrangement you want, and it should be able to generate an ideal command to run on startup. Copy and paste this command into your XFCE autostart settings and you should be good to go.
 
JackAHyde said:
I know you were pinging others, but have you tried xrandr in the terminal instead of arandr? Back when I ran Awesome WM, I had an xrandr command all set up to run on startup. It would detect both my monitors, set their resolutions, and set their coordinates so that they would always appear in the same place relative to one another, enabling me to start it up and have it extend my desktop each time.

I would check to see if you're able to install xrandr on your MintPPC64 distro. If you install it, just look into the documentation on it. You could ask ChatGPT to help you with the individual steps in case you aren't well-versed on using xrandr. Just describe your monitor input names, resolutions, and what kind of arrangement you want, and it should be able to generate an ideal command to run on startup. Copy and paste this command into your XFCE autostart settings and you should be good to go.
Click to expand...
Thanks for your reply. I’ll take input from anyone who can help.

Xrandr is installed and xrandr -q shows both monitors, and the correct relative positions. I’ll look into xrandr instructions to see what kind of guidance it provides for dual monitor, extended desktop operation.

Keep in mind, I currently can’t start up with both monitors connected. I have to wait until the LXDM login screen appears and the monitor resolutions are matched up at 1680X1050. The XFCE thing was just an experiment. I want to operate in Mint-LXDE.

Thanks again,
MacMaverick855
 
Well, that was a bust, in short, I found it humorous that there is an xrandr command “—same-as” you can use to mirror your monitors but no command to extend. In fact from what I’ve read xrandr supposedly extends the desktop automagically, but not in my case.

xrandr in my case knows there is a desktop to it’s right because the -q output shows that the screen 0
is 3360x1050 double the width of the primary desktop at a resolution 1680x1050 on both monitors.

I also don’t think this is the kind of solution I would want. Even if the desktop is “extended”, the second monitor would not be independent of the primary. Think Mac OS, two monitors, two distinct but accessible desktops.

In conclusion, I have a feeling the solution lies in xorg.conf by generating a “Screen 1” with all of the appropriate drivers, ports, resolutions etc. associated with the secondary monitor.

Thanks for the suggestion though,
MM855
 
Wait, were you looking for a command to "--extend" or something? Because I never used that when I used xrandr the way you're trying to.

The tough part was always the offset parts for me; I recalled having both displays partially overlaid on top of one another if I wasn't careful, so you end up needing to use "--pos" to set coordinates so that they could be independent of one another.

Digging up my old "rc.lua" file (the file that would always run when I started up Awesome WM) shows that I would run this command on startup every time I started Awesome back in the day:

xrandr --output DisplayPort-0 --primary --mode 2560x1440 --pos 0x487 --rotate normal --output DisplayPort-1 --mode 2560x1440 --pos 2560x0 --rotate left

This command would set up both of my primary Linux displays to be side by side with my secondary display rotated vertically for specific apps and applications. Keep in mind that I had to experiment with the "--pos" variables repeatedly until I had them in the correct places relative to one another, so this might require trial and error depending on your monitors and setup. I'm pretty sure you can plug what you got from the "-q" output and plug your resolutions and positions in to get what you want. All it would require after that is having LXDE run the command on startup, which I imagine isn't that difficult.
 
According to Lecorbeau's website, you can try the following if you want to have an extended view. Here is a simple line that will setup DP-1 as primary, and HDMI-1 (with a different resolution) as a secondary monitor to the left: you could do something similar like this:

Code: 
xrandr --output DP-1 --primary --mode 1920x1080 --output HDMI-1 --mode 1360x768 --left-of DP-1
 
I keep reading these posts, but they are waaaaay over my head… 🥴
Some great things being done though 👍
 
Jeroen Diederen said:
According to Lecorbeau's website, you can try the following if you want to have an extended view. Here is a simple line that will setup DP-1 as primary, and HDMI-1 (with a different resolution) as a secondary monitor to the left: you could do something similar like this:

Code: 
xrandr --output DP-1 --primary --mode 1920x1080 --output HDMI-1 --mode 1360x768 --left-of DP-1
Click to expand...
There are some serious road blocks to making this work. Here is the situation:

I start up the G5 with ONLY the DVI-0 monitor attached. The G5 WILL NOT start up into a desktop environment with ONLY the Apple Cinema Display (ACD) attached, nor with BOTH the DVI and ACD attached.

Once I have reached the login screen for Mint-LXDE using only the DVI monitor, I can plug the ACD into the second port of the Radeon 9600 card but the ACD remains black, no desktop. I then have to change the resolution on the DVI monitor to match the maximum resolution of the ACD (1680X1050). I do this with the Monitors preference but I have also done it using xrandr. The OS and xrandr KNOW there is a second monitor attached. Once the resolution is reset to match the max resolution of the ACD, the ACD presents a mirrored image of the desktop shown on th DVI monitor.

xrandr, nor the Monitors preference show a way to extend the desktop. By "extend" I mean, two different screens on two independent monitors where one is the primary and the other is just added real estate. Windows can be dragged from one screen to another, monitor desktop backgrounds can be independently placed. In short: just like a Mac G5 running OS X (or a G4 running OS 9 or OS X) with two monitors.

xrandr cannot do this. Prove me wrong. I'm of the opinion the only way to do this is to create an xorg.conf file directing the OS to understand there are, in essence, 2 screens, 2 monitors, maybe even 2 displays. I haven't found (yet) an xorg.conf file that will result in the type of desktop I want.

I will review some of your latest links to see if I'm completely off my rocker.

Finally, if I find the solution, my next attempt will be to get my G4 MDD with 3 monitors attached to display in a similar manner when running Ubuntu 16.04!

Will keep you posted and likely start a new thread soon as this one is no longer applicable to my current issue(s).

Thanks again! I absolutely love Mint-LXDE!
MacMaverick855
@JackAHyde
 
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JackAHyde said:
Wait, were you looking for a command to "--extend" or something? Because I never used that when I used xrandr the way you're trying to.

The tough part was always the offset parts for me; I recalled having both displays partially overlaid on top of one another if I wasn't careful, so you end up needing to use "--pos" to set coordinates so that they could be independent of one another.

Digging up my old "rc.lua" file (the file that would always run when I started up Awesome WM) shows that I would run this command on startup every time I started Awesome back in the day:

xrandr --output DisplayPort-0 --primary --mode 2560x1440 --pos 0x487 --rotate normal --output DisplayPort-1 --mode 2560x1440 --pos 2560x0 --rotate left

This command would set up both of my primary Linux displays to be side by side with my secondary display rotated vertically for specific apps and applications. Keep in mind that I had to experiment with the "--pos" variables repeatedly until I had them in the correct places relative to one another, so this might require trial and error depending on your monitors and setup. I'm pretty sure you can plug what you got from the "-q" output and plug your resolutions and positions in to get what you want. All it would require after that is having LXDE run the command on startup, which I imagine isn't that difficult.
Click to expand...
This does show promise in that I have NOT tried to mess with a DispalyPort setting.
To the Bat Cave!
MM855
Update: The version of xrandr on my G5 Mint-LXDE does not recognize --DisplayPort
:(
 
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On R300 and two (I assume big, in number of pixels) displays I vaguely recall there was 3d engine limitation and at least for puny R200 it was just 2048 in horizontal dimension, so under Linux/X two 1024*768 displays side by side were impossible. 2D limit might be higher (I saw 8192 figure in old man page) but modern 2D driver uses some 3d engine features anyway ..

I found this potentially interesting remark in more modern man page:

Ubuntu Manpage: radeon - ATI/AMD RADEON video driver

manpages.ubuntu.com manpages.ubuntu.com

Option "ShadowPrimary" "boolean"
This option enables a so-called "shadow primary" buffer for fast CPU access to pixel data, and
separate scanout buffers for each display controller (CRTC). This may improve performance for
some 2D workloads, potentially at the expense of other (e.g. 3D, video) workloads. Note in
particular that enabling this option currently disables page flipping. The default is off.
Click to expand...

So, try this option and see if it helps?

Old manpage (from version of X.org where 3d accel for R300 class GPU was new)


EDIT:

I Wwondered how Apple possibly handled limitation of R300 engine back in the day? They used 3d heavily, so just having it disabled at bigger dual head configs probably was not their idea of fun?

I thought about old (and now broken/removed!) feature called Distributed Multihead X, used in early 2000s for creating great TV walls at enormous resolution.

I digged a bit and there was never-,?merged branch from year 2008, but I wonder if you can compile it in
older Linux chroot and still use in new Linux distro context?

~ajax/xserver - ajax's xserver tree

cgit.freedesktop.org cgit.freedesktop.org

tree

DMX2 Bits For X.Org Server To Move Forward - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com www.phoronix.com
"DMX2 Bits For X.Org Server To Move Forward
Written by Michael Larabel in X.Org on 7 January 2010 at 03:03 PM EST. 2 Comments
X.ORG
Back in 2008, Novell's David Reveman published his own branch of the.
Distributed Multi-head X (DMX) server
which he called dmx-2 as it was close to a complete rewrite of the original DMX implementation..
David's DMX-2 branch was less complex but provided a greater set of features,.
including X-Video, RandR 1.2, and Composite support in a DMX environment, D-Bus configuration,.
and many other changes. This branch was never merged to master, [..]


list announce
 
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MacMaverick855 said:
This does show promise in that I have NOT tried to mess with a DispalyPort setting.
To the Bat Cave!
MM855
Update: The version of xrandr on my G5 Mint-LXDE does not recognize --DisplayPort
:(
Click to expand...
Hold on, I thought you ran "xrandr -q" to get the names of your displays? It tells you the names of your monitors so you can change them in the command wherever it says "--output". Then you change the resolution amounts with whatever came up for your displays on "xrandr -q" so that you get an optimally supported resolution. This way, your MintPPC system knows what displays to work with and how large to make them. The other variables I had in my example were the coordinates relative to one another (otherwise, both displays will appear on top of each other, which is not fun) and if I want to rotate the displays at all.

Anyway, sorry to hear that you're unable to get both monitors working just right on startup. It's starting to sound like either some sort of hardware limitation or perhaps the PPC Linux version of xrandr somehow lacking features that the Intel build has, although I doubt it's the latter. Even if this really is some sort of limitation of the system, there shouldn't (?) be a reason that you can't set this up after successfully booting with one display plugged in at first.
 
What have I done? Finally got my PB G4 17" running off an internal SSD. I'd had it running from an external drive over FW800, but the ATA bus was a dud, seemingly. Turns out the main drive cable was duff. Managed to source one at a reasonable tenner off eBay, and away she went. I'd already cloned the external drive I was using onto the mSATA drive/adaptor I wanted to install, and once I'd replaced the cable, it was a pretty swift boot into Tiger 10.4.11.
Well pleased. Now, which version of Leopard do I need?
:D
 
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DCBassman said:
What have I done? Finally got my PB G4 17" running off an internal SSD. I'd had it running from an external drive over FW800, but the ATA bus was a dud, seemingly. Turns out the main drive cable was duff. Managed to source one at a reasonable tenner off eBay, and away she went. I'd already cloned the external drive I was using onto the mSATA drive/adaptor I wanted to install, and once I'd replaced the cable, it was a pretty swift boot into Tiger 10.4.11.
Well pleased. Now, which version of Leopard do I need?
:D
Click to expand...

10.5.8 (retail one) or 10.6.8 (snow).

The first is stable, the second is more fun.
 
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Looks like I got FastAnime working. Quite likely some functionality is missing, but search, downloading and apparently streaming work. (On G4 you will probably want to download rather than stream, or otherwise tweak settings to pick a lower resolution. On G5 defaults work fine.)

Works even in the ugly Apple terminal LOL:

fastanime.png


`mlterm` is neater, unsurprisingly.

bg.png


Tested on 10.6, but I think on 10.5 it will work fine. (You are welcome to try on Tiger. Notice, all dependencies are runtime and mostly optional, so you may throw away mpv etc., that will just drop streaming support, but downloading will still work.)

Port is installable via PPCPorts, as usual. (If you try to pull that over into a standard MacPorts, make sure to borrow dependencies which are missing there as well.)
 
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