What have you done with a PowerPC today?

[travsG5]

My first post on MacRumors, here it goes: A few things (over the weekend and yesterday) I did on PowerPC actually:

1. I registered for MacRumors after lurking for almost 20 years!
2. I cleaned the single pump LCS on my G5 Quad (still no leaks), repasted the CPUs, cloned my old 1TB Hitachi to a Patriot 1TB SSD I had sitting around. Temps idle in the 40's,but browsing kicks the fans up still. Maybe I'll convert to air cooling in the future...
3. Installed Aquafox and Powerfox
4. Installed MacPorts and upgraded Python to 3.6
5. Fixed one of the 30" Cinema Display DVI connector screws. I need to find another one so both sides screw in again.

I had this thing pretty pimped out back in the day. 16GB Ram, Geforce 7800GT and a 1TB HDD. I had Debian 8 running on it pretty well back in the mid-late 2010's, but have since just stuck with Leopard.

It mainly lives on as my legacy iTunes repository. Before A.I. tools really changed Photoshop for me (Nowadays, I just do part time, photo cleanup for an old school funeral home as a side gig-it pays for the subscription lol), it used to be my main photo editing system.

 

[jktwice]

My first post on MacRumors, here it goes: A few things (over the weekend and yesterday) I did on PowerPC actually:

1. I registered for MacRumors after lurking for almost 20 years!
2. I cleaned the single pump LCS on my G5 Quad (still no leaks), repasted the CPUs, cloned my old 1TB Hitachi to a Patriot 1TB SSD I had sitting around. Temps idle in the 40's,but browsing kicks the fans up still. Maybe I'll convert to air cooling in the future...
3. Installed Aquafox and Powerfox
4. Installed MacPorts and upgraded Python to 3.6
5. Fixed one of the 30" Cinema Display DVI connector screws. I need to find another one so both sides screw in again.

I had this thing pretty pimped out back in the day. 16GB Ram, Geforce 7800GT and a 1TB HDD. I had Debian 8 running on it pretty well back in the mid-late 2010's, but have since just stuck with Leopard.

It mainly lives on as my legacy iTunes repository. Before A.I. tools really changed Photoshop for me (Nowadays, I just do part time, photo cleanup for an old school funeral home as a side gig-it pays for the subscription lol), it used to be my main photo editing system.

I keep hearing how a lot of later G5 machines went to photo editors. Is this because you could just order them with the 30” display or were Windows machines not as preferred as Macs for photo editing back then?

The Late 2005 G5 was nice tho cause any of the gpus that came with it could drive the 30 inch

 

[travsG5]

Yeah, for sure, the 30" Cinema Display was a game changer back then. The G5 Quad + 30" Display was not cheap new, so you're right, you'd want it to be making you money either as a freelancer or having your employer buy it for you.

The art department where I worked was originally stocked with Turquoise Powermac G3s which were so cool to me back in the day. Then we got AGP G4s. There were no PC's at all. Firewire was the killer app back then for digital photography and design. Being able to move large files around at FW400/800 speed was amazing. I hated using Photoshop on PCs back then: hardware-wise this was the peak of Apple Macintosh design and the worst of PC--the G3, G4, G5 systems all still look amazing here in 2026..the Dell and HP systems back then? Dreadful. OS wise, OS X just felt and looked leagues better than Windows 2000 and XP.

Reminds me of us during down times playing Unreal Tournament on the LAN. Even had people working remotely then jumping in from across town in Redmond and Issaquah. Good times lol! Now that I think about it, it was so long ago we had it running over the old Novell network we still had...it was IPX/SPX I think? Maybe that was Quake actually? Ah, no matter.

I've used this setup forever and I still think the 30" is a nice looking display considering when it came out. My key to its longevity is to make sure the power brick is sitting on the edge on a hard surface to maximize cooling. It gets pretty warm.

I am foolishly sentimental about this old thing...crazy to think, I was in my 20's back then! A lot of great memories are stored on it.

 

[srp]

Here is `mono` running an FNA3D demo which was also built with SDL3! Working mono unlocks a bunch of .NET applications.

This clears all of the dependencies needed to build an old console version of Terraria: https://github.com/PPrism/TerrariaOGC

which I'm going to try doing next!

I also just released an early version of OpenMW to try out: https://macintoshgarden.org/games/the-elder-scrolls-iii-morrowind-openmw-ppc

 

[DisraeliGears]

Dude, Morrowind on PPC, you are truly a legend.

Now my only follow up is... how's performance lol? I don't have a quad core G5 tower, only a mere 1.8 iMac G5. Regardless I'm out of my lab atm but should be able to test it this weekend and I'm definitely spending Saturday night getting this set up.

 

[srp]

Now my only follow up is... how's performance lol?

It'll most likely depend on whether your 1.8 iMac G5 has the Radeon 9600 or the GeForce FX 5200. ATI cards are very poorly supported currently - it will likely run well at first and then fall apart when you leave an interior.

I wrote a launcher just for PPC that I think is pretty decent and lets you tweak a bunch of different video options. Not promising a perfect 60 FPS out of the box but I think it should run pretty well for you. At the very least, your setup efforts won't be in vain - a future update should keep all of your saved settings and mods.


Got Terraria booting with mono/FNA.. even I think this is kinda nuts.

 

[srp]

Semi-working Terraria and Stardew Valley too.. Mono is incredible! These are both based on older versions - Stardew Valley is based on version 1.2.something.. and Terraria is based on the OG console edition for PS3.

Terraria needs more work with the input system. Stardew Valley pretty much completely works and once I fix the text coloring I'll upload it on Macintosh Garden!

 

[nightshadeee]

Semi-working Terraria and Stardew Valley too.. Mono is incredible! These are both based on older versions - Stardew Valley is based on version 1.2.something.. and Terraria is based on the OG console edition for PS3.

View attachment 2623965
View attachment 2623968


Terraria needs more work with the input system. Stardew Valley pretty much completely works and once I fix the text coloring I'll upload it on Macintosh Garden!

That's impressive, do you do every code/porting by hand ? Or do you use LLMs ?

Good job !

 

[boswald]

Semi-working Terraria and Stardew Valley too.. Mono is incredible! These are both based on older versions - Stardew Valley is based on version 1.2.something.. and Terraria is based on the OG console edition for PS3.

View attachment 2623965
View attachment 2623968


Terraria needs more work with the input system. Stardew Valley pretty much completely works and once I fix the text coloring I'll upload it on Macintosh Garden!

SDV is one of the best games ever, in my opinion, so you're doing God's work!

 

[barracuda156]

Wayland on PowerPC. Not very usable right now, but a few demos from Weston work.

 

[cellularmitosis]

Wayland on PowerPC. Not very usable right now, but a few demos from Weston work.

View attachment 2624768

Incredible!

Hey barracuda, I saw you had some patched for LLVM 11, what is the status with that? I have recently started using claude code to try to continue iain's llvm 7/8 port on darwin8/ppc.

 

[barracuda156]

Hey barracuda, I saw you had some patched for LLVM 11, what is the status with that?

I never had LLVM 11 itself, I used its repo, because it is shared across multiple projects, to try fixing a few libs (libomp, compiler-rt). I do not recall at what point those were dropped; probably they could be buildable with some extra effort, but I decided not to proceed, since Iain had LLVM 11 release in plans, and sure enough I rather have Iain’s LLVM than mine )

I have recently started using claude code to try to continue iain's llvm 7/8 port on darwin8/ppc.

I am not sure it is a good idea for the critical codegen, TBH. We can probably tolerate some non-sense chunks of code in secondary user apps, as long as they do what they are intended to, but compiler is a different story, especially C/C++ codegen.

 

[cellularmitosis]

I never had LLVM 11 itself, I used its repo, because it is shared across multiple projects, to try fixing a few libs (libomp, compiler-rt). I do not recall at what point those were dropped; probably they could be buildable with some extra effort, but I decided not to proceed, since Iain had LLVM 11 release in plans, and sure enough I rather have Iain’s LLVM than mine )



I am not sure it is a good idea for the critical codegen, TBH. We can probably tolerate some non-sense chunks of code in secondary user apps, as long as they do what they are intended to, but compiler is a different story, especially C/C++ codegen.

Has iain ever publicly shared his LLVM 11 WIP?

 

[srp]

Wayland on PowerPC. Not very usable right now, but a few demos from Weston work.

View attachment 2624768

Neat! What’s the long term goal here? Can you run x11 apps through Xwayland?

 

[barracuda156]

Has iain ever publicly shared his LLVM 11 WIP?

AFAIK no. It was discussed, but not yet happened.

 

[barracuda156]

Neat! What’s the long term goal here?

Terminal emulator, video output. Dunno if feasible though.

Can you run x11 apps through Xwayland?

Is there anything to gain from this?

Besides, another achievement of questionable utility:

 

[barracuda156]

I got a new terminal emulator working, uterm (uses OpenGL and Skia).

Not everything is rendered neatly, but with some TUIs it is rather pleasant.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Yeah, for sure, the 30" Cinema Display was a game changer back then. The G5 Quad + 30" Display was not cheap new, so you're right, you'd want it to be making you money either as a freelancer or having your employer buy it for you.

The art department where I worked was originally stocked with Turquoise Powermac G3s which were so cool to me back in the day. Then we got AGP G4s. There were no PC's at all. Firewire was the killer app back then for digital photography and design. Being able to move large files around at FW400/800 speed was amazing. I hated using Photoshop on PCs back then: hardware-wise this was the peak of Apple Macintosh design and the worst of PC--the G3, G4, G5 systems all still look amazing here in 2026..the Dell and HP systems back then? Dreadful. OS wise, OS X just felt and looked leagues better than Windows 2000 and XP.

Reminds me of us during down times playing Unreal Tournament on the LAN. Even had people working remotely then jumping in from across town in Redmond and Issaquah. Good times lol! Now that I think about it, it was so long ago we had it running over the old Novell network we still had...it was IPX/SPX I think? Maybe that was Quake actually? Ah, no matter.

I've used this setup forever and I still think the 30" is a nice looking display considering when it came out. My key to its longevity is to make sure the power brick is sitting on the edge on a hard surface to maximize cooling. It gets pretty warm.

I am foolishly sentimental about this old thing...crazy to think, I was in my 20's back then! A lot of great memories are stored on it.

I wonder if something like This 120mm usb fan with feet would help keep these aging psu bricks alive. I have a C64 power brick that gets pretty darn hot. @ $3.99, I’m gonna give this a try - picked one up. 🙂

 

[travsG5]

I wonder if something like This 120mm usb fan with feet would help keep these aging psu bricks alive. I have a C64 power brick that gets pretty darn hot. @ $3.99, I’m gonna give this a try - picked one up. 🙂

Yeah I think that would be a great idea! I think I may have one of those things around here somewhere, but I never thought of using it for that lol!

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

I ended up picking three of those usb fans up at that price to use with my old hi-fi stereo electronics. I figure having a couple behind the poweramps and receivers to keep air moving around them is a good idea as they really do generate alot of heat on their own.

 

[barracuda156]

MPV now works with vo=gpu-next (with libplacebo backend)

 

[srp]

Some more progress with Source engine:

I rewrote the frame presentation path for this renderer and have it working pretty well - hit 60 FPS gameplay for the first time! Right now the performance bottlenecks are tied to the visual issues - there aren't conversions for every part of studio models yet.

Material rendering isn't fully accurate yet, but much more visually correct.

Entities are rendering now but not quite textured or placed correctly. UIs and menus are mostly good to go now:

I also booted up HL2 now that a lot of the generic fixes are in place. It boots but most entities are just errors.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Looks great to me 🙂

 

[z970]

Some more progress with Source engine:

I rewrote the frame presentation path for this renderer and have it working pretty well - hit 60 FPS gameplay for the first time! Right now the performance bottlenecks are tied to the visual issues - there aren't conversions for every part of studio models yet.

Material rendering isn't fully accurate yet, but much more visually correct.
View attachment 2625992

Entities are rendering now but not quite textured or placed correctly. UIs and menus are mostly good to go now:
View attachment 2625995


I also booted up HL2 now that a lot of the generic fixes are in place. It boots but most entities are just errors.
View attachment 2625994

View attachment 2625993
View attachment 2625947
View attachment 2625997
View attachment 2626077

Extraordinary. They look like cinematic teaser images.

Do you suppose they will be playable on G4 systems (besides G5s)? After the base games are complete, this will also open up a world of community mods and derivative projects all built off of them and released years ago; needless to say, the expansion potential will be endless. Can't wait!

 

[srp]

Do you suppose they will be playable on G4 systems (besides G5s)?

Probably, but with some limitations. This is the 2017 version of the Source Engine, so it probably has higher minimum requirements than the launch version. Portal required a 1.7GHz processor when it launched in 2007 afaik.

There is also a hard OpenGL 2.0 requirement so this excludes most early-mid life G4s.

It also depends on what you call playable, for me that's 10 FPS lol but a good and smooth experience will probably be limited to G5 devices.

They look like cinematic teaser images.

Haha, I've got plenty of those, now I just need working voices, props that don't load in completely black, and characters that load and look correct. I want to release a test really soon to see how it runs on other hardware.