What have you done with a PowerPC today?

[DisraeliGears]

Realized this evening that my eMac adventures are just beginning 🫠

Boots pretty alright, but after messing with it a bit (I want to reinstall a fresh OSX instance) realized that the CD drive is probably dying as it doesn't recognize any of my burnt discs (even as other devices do). It will read a professionally produced audio CD but tried all my data CDs to no avail. Meanwhile as I'm testing several times I got image pops on the CRT, so something is going wrong with the CRT.

Meanwhile I need to set up my 80% working blueberry tray loader G3 for sale, as I promised the wife one in, one out. It boots but has a bad CD drive as well and was giving me some CRT issues when I initially tested it. I dropped a HD I pulled from elsewhere with a 10.2 install on it and it boots, but I need to do a fresh install to wipe it and of course it has a similarly bum CD drive. I have a fully functional G3 that I can borrow the drive from, but I've got to disassemble it to temp transplant drives... oy vey

 

[mac57mac57]

My weapon of choice is Krusader.

Agreed 100%! Krusader is an old favorite of mine, and one of the first apps I tried to install when I installed Debian 12 PPC64.

Regrettably, while Krusader installs just fine, it won't run, complaining that it can't initialize GLX 😓. This is the case with every KDE app I have tried, except for Kate, which happily, runs well.

Does this "ring any bells" with anyone? I would love to hear from anyone who knows a way around this. Krusader is just KDEs take on a dual pane "commander" file manager, but it is particularly well done... and I like it!

By the way, I have Debian 12 PPC64 installed on a G5 Quad, equipped with the nVidia Quadro FX 4500 video card. Same result however on my other Quad, which has an nVidia GeForce 6600 card. Both are supported by the "nouveau" open source driver - is it responsible for the problem?

 

[barracuda156]

Regrettably, while Krusader installs just fine, it won't run, complaining that it can't initialize GLX 😓.

You can try opening a ticket: https://trac.macports.org/newticket

This is the case with every KDE app I have tried, except for Kate, which happily, runs well.

Did you get Kate from MacPorts working (i.e. not Katana X11 one)?

 

[Nightphase]

I installed mlterm (x11) and Links 2.30 on Tiger, nothing special.

 

[barracuda156]

I installed mlterm (x11) and Links 2.30 on Tiger, nothing special.

I don’t think Links will be something special on any platform

 

[mac57mac57]

You can try opening a ticket: https://trac.macports.org/newticket

Well, my issue is on Debian 12 PPC64, not Mac OS X, so MacPorts doesn't seem the right place to open a ticket.

I have been told that OpenGL is broken right now in Debian 12 Unstable, so I may have to wait for the fix to arrive.

Thanks for trying to help however; much appreciated!

 

[barracuda156]

Well, my issue is on Debian 12 PPC64, not Mac OS X, so MacPorts doesn't seem the right place to open a ticket.

I have been told that OpenGL is broken right now in Debian 12 Unstable, so I may have to wait for the fix to arrive.

Thanks for trying to help however; much appreciated!

Oh lawd, how bad KDE code should be if it fails to work on the second (first?) most popular Linux distro…

 

[Matias_]

It's likely a problem with Mesa. I'm guessing glxgears won't work either.

 

[Andrew-R]

It's likely a problem with Mesa. I'm guessing glxgears won't work either.

I wonder if you can run another (older) distro in chroot? On x86 I have Rosa linux x86-64 chroot with components dating mostly back to 2016, alongside my normal up to date 32bit user on 64bit kernel Slackware 15.0

 

[mac57mac57]

Oh lawd, how bad KDE code should be if it fails to work on the second (first?) most popular Linux distro…

Agreed! OpenGL is sort of fundamental to have it broken for any length of time! On the other hand, the PPC64 port of Debian 12 is an unofficial port, not part of the main stream, so things likely move a little slower on that branch.

As for Kate, I got it from the same place (just an apt-get install from the usual Debian 12 PPC64 and MintPPC64 repositories).

Whenever OpenGL gets fixed, perhaps KDE itself will work. Right now, if I select KDE as the session type, it just goes away and never comes back. My guess is it is the same OpenGL problem here too. I have (successfully) done a full KDE install - the install works, but the installed product does not.

Back in the day, when I first started working as a young software engineer, my colleagues used to refer to such behavior as "going for a spacewalk"! For example, "that is bad code - start it up and it goes for a spacewalk"!

@Jeroen Diederen has provided me with a "downgrade script" that (I am guessing) reinstalls the last known working version of OpenGL, or some component of it. I haven't had a chance to test the script yet. Hopefully in the next day or so.

 

[barracuda156]

The latest Wireshark

 

[DCBassman]

Taken them home from the house-sit. Will re-install Leopard on the 17" at some point. Still liking the 12", but apart from using it to help with the 17, I don't quite know what to do with it. Or with the 17, come to that...

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

I broke out my Graphite Powermac G4 running Shuriken for a cruise around the interwebs. Posting from it now. It chugs but even in 2025, still getting the job done

 

[mmomega]

Mine is still holding it down in the garage. I need to get it out pretty soon and boot it up.
17" G4 iMac

 

[DisraeliGears]

Was trying out Target Disk mode for the first time today and had some issues... I've got an eMac with a bad CD drive that I want to install a fresh copy of OSX on. Using my graphite G3 I linked up to the eMac in Target mode, wiped the drive, made a partition, and tried to put a 10.4 image on one partition. It wouldn't let me use an .iso though... I converted the end string to .dmg and it wrote it to the drive, but the eMac won't boot from the partition. What am I missing? For reference the G3 is running 10.3.8

 

[doctor_dog]

I don’t think Links will be something special on any platform

Another blow to Links this week, Google has started to block searches from Links/Lynx/[probably more?]. If I try to get to do a Google search in any of those browsers I get a message I have to update. Looks like it's back to duckduck Lite or frogfind.

Google Ends Support for Lynx Browser | Hacker News

news.ycombinator.com

 

[barracuda156]

Another blow to Links this week, Google has started to block searches from Links/Lynx/[probably more?]. If I try to get to do a Google search in any of those browsers I get a message I have to update. Looks like it's back to duckduck Lite or frogfind.

Google Ends Support for Lynx Browser | Hacker News

news.ycombinator.com

From comments it looks like that it just wanna push JS down a user’s throat. Given a garbage that Google search has become in recent years, perhaps just another reason to switch away.

 

[barracuda156]

Was trying out Target Disk mode for the first time today and had some issues... I've got an eMac with a bad CD drive that I want to install a fresh copy of OSX on. Using my graphite G3 I linked up to the eMac in Target mode, wiped the drive, made a partition, and tried to put a 10.4 image on one partition. It wouldn't let me use an .iso though... I converted the end string to .dmg

Why would that work, these are different formats. If you need to convert .iso to .dmg, Disk Utility can do that.

TBH, I am not sure I understand what you try to do, but probably you can just run installer from a working machine, while the second one is connected over FW in TM, and then choose its drive as the destination.

 

[barracuda156]

Another blow to Links this week, Google has started to block searches from Links/Lynx/[probably more?]. If I try to get to do a Google search in any of those browsers I get a message I have to update. Looks like it's back to duckduck Lite or frogfind.

Google Ends Support for Lynx Browser | Hacker News

news.ycombinator.com

BTW, there are some chances that Edbrowse will work, since it has JS support via quickjs.

 

[TheShortTimer]

I've returned one of my iBook G4's to the front lines to burn discs for my Sega Dreamcast using the PPC version of @alex_free's brilliant program DCDIB.

A little while later…

Let's load one up on the Dreamcast:

@swamprock Jetpac is favourite of mine on the ZX Spectrum and I really like this version for the Dreamcast. It's a tremendous tribute to the original. Even on normal setting, things become pretty hectic from level 3 onwards! I'm going to be playing this a lot in the coming weeks and months.

 

[ediflorianus]

I still could not fix my old install of OS X 10.5.8 .... (driving me nuts/into early grave). I got so mad I just pulled(for a different project/alienware) the ssd after I deleted the eDrive with osx files made with TechToolPro (based on 10.5.x 2 or something I think). Nothing hellps.... Now the OS on the 4 tb drive is bootlooping (after I did the fixes , and repairs and refixes and moved over manually system files and so on). I think I also deleted a backup of the sys file that was on the SSD( not realizing at the time that I backed it up there and just pulled the ssd for the laptop upgrade/revival).
Now I put a 250gb with a 10.5.6 on it next to the 4 tb in the PowerMac G5. and I boot from that when I need something.... but it's not good.(lost my upload seeds , even if I try to start the app from the old drive loaded in new os , the app just empty). so it's 0 progress... hopefully one day... will fix everything (dreaming on....)

 

[mac57mac57]

Hello @ediflorianus, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard will not boot from a drive larger than 2 TB... unless you partition it into one 2 TB partition that you will boot from, and others as you wish. I suspect that this may be at least part of the problem you are experiencing.