What have you done with a PowerPC today?

[wm2]

… i found it snappy and certainly Wayfarer was amazing… but that was about it for usability.

A single core system with less than 2 GB ram support. But really impressive what they do with it. I mostly use it to listen to music (from my own folders and web radio). Very rarely IRC, movies (BDRip) and browsing (lightweight sites).

The best solution is dual boot I think. If you want Ableton: OSX. If you want a good browser and mail: MorphOS.

Pic: I just tested it in the summer heat. It's completely fine.

 

[Andrew-R]

Try x264

I tried to compile x264 from git with C set to gcc-mp-16 and -mcpu=G5 in CFLAGS, but resulting binary was ppc, not ppc64.

Do you mean I should try

'sudo port install x264 +G5' ?

At least in mainstream x264 old-style altivec seems to broken, it does not compile for me, so I added --no-asm switch to configure.

Speed is ... not great, 1.7 fps for 720p vp9 encoded test file (both input and output 8bpc, it will be worse for 10bpc I think)

I hope it will finish before next power interruption arrive 😉

 

[barracuda156]

I tried to compile x264 from git with C set to gcc-mp-16 and -mcpu=G5 in CFLAGS, but resulting binary was ppc, not ppc64.

-mcpu is optimization flag, not build arch flag. Also, there was no problem with ppc64 build. What was/is broken was/is ppc (32-bit) build with `-mcpu=G5` (unless `-mno-powerpc64` is also added).

At least in mainstream x264 old-style altivec seems to broken, it does not compile for me, so I added --no-asm switch to configure.

Yeah, as usual, everything is broken lol
We have a fix in ppcports though (I think borrowed from Linux).

 

[Aggedor]

Apologies if this is the wrong thread, but I didn't want to clutter the forum with simple questions - what do folks here use as a robust and reliable text editor or word processor for a PPC mac?

I've acquired a MDD G4 (not entirely sure which model yet), and was going to use it for some writing. I'm after something very simple but more interesting that Text Edit, or whatever the Apple text editor is - maybe even a Mac OS 9 word processor or something. However, I am concerned with stability.

Back in the day I remember a friend swore by Nisus Writer, and for work I used to have to lay out pages in an ancient version of Word Perfect that was nothing but a blue screen and white text.

Happy to take recommendations for what folks use - I don't need any particular formatting or anything, in fact, the simpler the better.

 

[Doq]

I've never really used anything but Word 2001. Probably too heavy for your desires, but it'll do the do.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

I install MS Office 2004 (word) and iWorks 06/09 (Pages) on all of my PPC Macs.

 

[Andrew-R]

-mcpu is optimization flag, not build arch flag. Also, there was no problem with ppc64 build. What was/is broken was/is ppc (32-bit) build with `-mcpu=G5` (unless `-mno-powerpc64` is also added).

I think I compiled x264 git with two port patches and additional patch

(attached), also send to x264 devel list with link to ppcports on github.

and edited -mcpu to be G5, but speed is nearly the same, 5.08 fps vs 4.95 fps (altivec on, 720p24 8bit vp9 source).

But no obvious artefacts!

I wonder if there some other tunables for gcc16 on g5 specifically?

Yeah, as usual, everything is broken lol
We have a fix in ppcports though (I think borrowed from Linux).

I discovered there is --disable-vsx tunable, not documented in configure script itself, so it will make auto-configuring cinelerra-gg on ppc Linux easier!

 

[barracuda156]

Apologies if this is the wrong thread, but I didn't want to clutter the forum with simple questions - what do folks here use as a robust and reliable text editor or word processor for a PPC mac?

I've acquired a MDD G4 (not entirely sure which model yet), and was going to use it for some writing. I'm after something very simple but more interesting that Text Edit, or whatever the Apple text editor is - maybe even a Mac OS 9 word processor or something. However, I am concerned with stability.

Back in the day I remember a friend swore by Nisus Writer, and for work I used to have to lay out pages in an ancient version of Word Perfect that was nothing but a blue screen and white text.

Happy to take recommendations for what folks use - I don't need any particular formatting or anything, in fact, the simpler the better.

Is TUI an option?

PNANA is a very cool editor, though it is meant to be used as a code editor. Can be used for any text, but won’t have some features to customize layouts.

If you need an MS Word-compatible editor, perhaps Word is the choice. The last one was 2011. From Apple side there were Pages and Apple Works.

There are a number of open-source alternatives: Abiword etc. May be somewhat of a hassle to install and set-up though.

 

[christlinah]

I just ordered my new MacBook Neo right on my 12" iBook G4 😄

 

[Andrew-R]

Trying various ffmpeg (8.1.2) codecs on 2.0 GHz DC G5 ..

mp3 fails 😉

  Stream #0:0(eng): Audio: mp3, 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp (default)
      Metadata:
        DURATION        : 00:04:55.021000000
        encoder         : Lavc61.19.101 libmp3lame
Assertion failed: (cod_info->part2_3_length <= MAX_BITS_PER_CHANNEL), function CBR_iteration_loop, file quantize.c, line 2228.
Abort trap

edit: it was lame /libmp3lame.
it fails with cbr/abr, but works with vbr:

lame --preset extreme 1.wav 1.mp3 (12x realtime)

Encoding same 720p vp9 24 fps 8bpc source (AMV, aka Anime Music Video, somewhat easier on encoders, esp at Nth round!) into various video codecs and containers:

svtav1 - bus error 😉
libaom-av1 - less than frame per minute, aborted
libvpx-vp9 - 0.3 fps
x265 - 0.7 fps
x264 - 5.08 fps (altivec!)
mpeg2video - 24 fps (!) with g=15, b=8M
mpeg1 and mpeg4 mostly the same as mpeg2
mjpeg - 17 fps
xvid - 14 fps
asv1 - 30 fps (at g=1 and b=80M so extremely big files)
magicyuv - 24 fps but mplayer does not play it (70Mbit/s)

there are others, but some know to be slow at encode (cinepack, openjpeg2000) some for really old systems (svq1, rpza, msvideo1), some just Microsoft (wmv8).

So, in practice my powermac can encode HD in realtime , just it will be mpeg2 720p24 , not avc (while my 5 fps were with default medium preset, may be faster ones can speed it up? Encoding 8bpc source into 10bit h264 dropped fps to 1.9 on same file.)

 

[barracuda156]

Trying various ffmpeg (8.1.2) codecs on 2.0 GHz DC G5 ..

mp3 fails 😉

  Stream #0:0(eng): Audio: mp3, 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp (default)
      Metadata:
        DURATION        : 00:04:55.021000000
        encoder         : Lavc61.19.101 libmp3lame
Assertion failed: (cod_info->part2_3_length <= MAX_BITS_PER_CHANNEL), function CBR_iteration_loop, file quantize.c, line 2228.
Abort trap

edit: it was lame /libmp3lame.
it fails with cbr/abr, but works with vbr:

lame --preset extreme 1.wav 1.mp3 (12x realtime)

Encoding same 720p vp9 24 fps 8bpc source (AMV, aka Anime Music Video, somewhat easier on encoders, esp at Nth round!) into various video codecs and containers:

svtav1 - bus error 😉
libaom-av1 - less than frame per minute, aborted
libvpx-vp9 - 0.3 fps
x265 - 0.7 fps
x264 - 5.08 fps (altivec!)
mpeg2video - 24 fps (!) with g=15, b=8M
mpeg1 and mpeg4 mostly the same as mpeg2
mjpeg - 17 fps
xvid - 14 fps
asv1 - 30 fps (at g=1 and b=80M so extremely big files)
magicyuv - 24 fps but mplayer does not play it (70Mbit/s)

there are others, but some know to be slow at encode (cinepack, openjpeg2000) some for really old systems (svq1, rpza, msvideo1), some just Microsoft (wmv8).

So, in practice my powermac can encode HD in realtime , just it will be mpeg2 720p24 , not avc (while my 5 fps were with default medium preset, may be faster ones can speed it up? Encoding 8bpc source into 10bit h264 dropped fps to 1.9 on same file.)

I am interested to know more about lame and svtav1 errors. Could you please share logs? If you can run svtav1 with GDB, that will be helpful.

 

[Andrew-R]

I am interested to know more about lame and svtav1 errors. Could you please share logs? If you can run svtav1 with GDB, that will be helpful.

Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
Svt[info]: -------------------------------------------
Svt[info]: SVT [version]:       SVT-AV1 Encoder Lib v4.1.0
Svt[info]: SVT [build]  :       GCC 14.3.0       32 bit
Svt[info]: LIB Build date: Apr  3 2026 16:49:34
Svt[info]: -------------------------------------------
Svt[info]: Level of Parallelism: 2
Svt[info]: Number of PPCS 74
Svt[info]: [asm level on system : up to c]
Svt[info]: [asm level selected : up to c]
Svt[info]: -------------------------------------------
Svt[info]: SVT [config]: main profile   tier (auto)     level (auto)
Svt[info]: SVT [config]: width / height / fps numerator / fps denominator               : 200 / 240 / 15 / 1
Svt[info]: SVT [config]: bit-depth / color format                                       : 10 / YUV420
Svt[info]: SVT [config]: preset / tune / pred struct                                    : 8 / PSNR / random access
Svt[info]: SVT [config]: gop size / mini-gop size / key-frame type                      : 161 / 32 / key frame
Svt[info]: SVT [config]: BRC mode / rate factor                                         : CRF / 35.00
Svt[info]: SVT [config]: AQ mode / Variance Boost                                       : 2 / 0
Svt[info]: SVT [config]: sharpness / luminance-based QP bias                            : 0 / 0
Svt[info]: SVT [config]: QP scale compress strength                                     : 0
Svt[info]: -------------------------------------------
Bus error

not sure how to compile it with debug info?

lame just says:

LAME 3.100.1 32bits (+VMX http://www.floodgap.com/software/lamevmx/)
Using polyphase lowpass filter, transition band: 16452 Hz - 17032 Hz
Encoding 1.wav to 1.mp3                                                                            Encoding as 48 kHz j-stereo MPEG-1 Layer III (12x) 128 kbps qval=3                                     Frame          |  CPU time/estim | REAL time/estim | play/CPU |    ETA                              0/12294  ( 0%)|    0:00/    0:00|    0:00/    0:00|   0.0000x|    0:00                        04:55---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------    kbps      %     %                                                                                   0.0           Assertion failed: (cod_info->part2_3_length <= MAX_BITS_PER_CHANNEL), function CBR_iteration_loop, file quantize.c, line 2228.                                                      Abort trap

 

[Andrew-R]

Program received signal EXC_BAD_ACCESS, Could not access memory.                                  
Reason: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE at address: 0x00000018   
  [Switching to process 43675 thread 0x4403]                                   
 0x045c2734 in svt_get_full_object.lto_priv.0 ()                                
 (gdb) bt full                                                                                     
#0  0x045c2734 in svt_get_full_object.lto_priv.0 ()                            
  No symbol table info available.                                                                  
  #1  0x04586c14 in svt_aom_picture_decision_kernel.lto_priv.0 () 
  No symbol table info available.                                                           
#2  0x912ddf74 in _pthread_start ()                                    
  No symbol table info available.

edit: formatting

 

[barracuda156]

@Andrew-R Thank you. Can you outline a procedure to reproduce these? I will try locally then and see if these issues can be fixed.
lame one looks like upstream bug, no idea about svt yet.

 

[Aggedor]

Is TUI an option?

PNANA is a very cool editor, though it is meant to be used as a code editor. Can be used for any text, but won’t have some features to customize layouts.

If you need an MS Word-compatible editor, perhaps Word is the choice. The last one was 2011. From Apple side there were Pages and Apple Works.

There are a number of open-source alternatives: Abiword etc. May be somewhat of a hassle to install and set-up though.

TUI as in text user interface for terminal? Now that’s an interesting idea… PNANA looks interesting too.

Do I need PPC-specific installs of those? I had a quick look online but I’ve not used terminal for anything other than terminal stuff in the past.

 

[Aggedor]

I install MS Office 2004 (word) and iWorks 06/09 (Pages) on all of my PPC Macs.

This MDD G4 has Office 2004 on it already, but it is WEIRDLY slow - like, quite a lag with typing, which is not present when I use, say, Text Edit.

I’m going to do a disk wipe and fresh install of Tiger anyway but wondered if Office 2001 might be better.

I would like to look at Mac OS 9 text editors too, if anyone has a recommendation. I used BBEdit back in the day.

 

[Aggedor]

I've never really used anything but Word 2001. Probably too heavy for your desires, but it'll do the do.

I’ll take a look - as I said above, Word 2004 is sluggish for some reason. This is a dual 1.25GHz model with 1GB RAM, so it should be pretty nippy on age-appropriate software!

 

[barracuda156]

TUI as in text user interface for terminal? Now that’s an interesting idea… PNANA looks interesting too.

Do I need PPC-specific installs of those? I had a quick look online but I’ve not used terminal for anything other than terminal stuff in the past.

To install the full version you will need my PPCPorts and, assuming you are on 10.5 and not 10.6 ppc, quite some time spent on compilation (on 10.6 everything exists pre-compiled, so it is like using standard MacPorts).

However, this will likely work as-is, without installing or compiling anything at all: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread....2233788/page-201?post=34375389#post-34375389

There is also a version for 10.5 on G5 machines: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...c.2421891/page-15?post=34517588#post-34517588 (this binary will not work on any G4, since it is 64-bit).

 

[Forest Expertise]

This MDD G4 has Office 2004 on it already, but it is WEIRDLY slow - like, quite a lag with typing, which is not present when I use, say, Text Edit.

I’m going to do a disk wipe and fresh install of Tiger anyway but wondered if Office 2001 might be better.

I would like to look at Mac OS 9 text editors too, if anyone has a recommendation. I used BBEdit back in the day.

Bbedit 7.1 is very good and stable on OS X if you are open to that style text editor.
Bbedit 8.6 is even nicer, but crashes occasionally in my experience, so 7.1 is preferred is stability is the priority.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Bbedit 7.1 is very good and stable on OS X if you are open to that style text editor.
Bbedit 8.6 is even nicer, but crashes occasionally in my experience, so 7.1 is preferred is stability is the priority.

You also have access to Pacifist.

This MDD G4 has Office 2004 on it already, but it is WEIRDLY slow - like, quite a lag with typing, which is not present when I use, say, Text Edit.

I’m going to do a disk wipe and fresh install of Tiger anyway but wondered if Office 2001 might be better.

I would like to look at Mac OS 9 text editors too, if anyone has a recommendation. I used BBEdit back in the day.

That is weird that office2004 is sluggish for you. That hasn’t been my experience. A fresh install definitely makes sense. If 2001 is what ends up working for you then that is the answer and best path forward imo. I have an affinity for word2000 myself on my old window boxes. Use what works for you 🙂

 

[Andrew-R]

@Andrew-R Thank you. Can you outline a procedure to reproduce these? I will try locally then and see if these issues can be fixed.
lame one looks like upstream bug, no idea about svt yet.

For svt-av1 I just used this line

ffmpeg -i x264.mov -c:v libsvtav1 -f mov /dev/null

x264 mov was created by encoding Quicktime sample movie into v210 (10 bit yuv) in FCP, then encoding with ffmpeg -c:v libx264

But same issue exist with normal 8bpc input files, too. I just thought my 720p vid may be too big, and tried something smaller.

For lame

 lame 1.wav 1.mp3

where 1.wav was created by running

ffmpeg8 -i AMV\ -\ Ghost\ in\ the\ Shell\ \(1995\)\ -\ ＂Inner\ Universe＂\ \[Bd2LThO0PcQ\].webm -vn 1.wav

 

[Andrew-R]

libaom-av1 also seems to segfault if I use -g 1 for some speedup, -threads 1 also makes no difference:

frame=    0 fps=0.0 q=0.0 size=       1KiB time=N/A bitrate=N/A speed=N/A elapsed=0:00:00.50       Program received signal EXC_BAD_ACCESS, Could not access memory.                               
  Reason: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at address: 0x120f6ce0                                            
  [Switching to process 46768 thread 0x2403]                                                         0xffff8c9c in ?? ()                                                                                (gdb) bt full                                                                                   
 #0  0xffff8c9c in ?? ()                                                                            No symbol table info available.                                                                  
#1  0x03ffc38c in update_firstpass_stats ()                                                        No symbol table info available.                                                                 
 #2  0x03ffca4c in av1_first_pass ()                                                                No symbol table info available.                                                                 
 #3  0x03feaf9c in av1_encode ()                                                                    No symbol table info available.                                                                
  #4  0x03fdae9c in av1_encode_strategy ()                                                           No symbol table info available.                                                               
   #5  0x03fecba4 in av1_get_compressed_data ()                                                       No symbol table info available.                                                                
  #6  0x03fa5040 in encoder_encode ()                                                                No symbol table info available.                                                                  
#7  0x03f2ac2c in aom_codec_encode ()                                                              No symbol table info available.                                                                
  #8  0x01a2eb68 in av_jni_get_java_vm ()                                                            No symbol table info available.                                                               
   #9  0x0170cad0 in avcodec_encode_subtitle ()                                                       No symbol table info available.                                                                  
#10 0x0170cf00 in avcodec_encode_subtitle ()                                                       No symbol table info available.                                                                  
#11 0x0170d1a8 in avcodec_send_frame ()                                                            No symbol table info available.                                                                  
#12 0x0001f16c in enc_stats_write ()                                                               No symbol table info available.                                                                  
#13 0x0001fc78 in encoder_thread ()                                                                No symbol table info available.                                                                 
 #14 0x00039ad0 in ffmpeg_parse_options ()                                                          No symbol table info available.                                                              
    #15 0x912ddf74 in _pthread_start ()                                                          
    No symbol table info available.                                                                    (gdb) quit

using

ffmpeg -i ~/x264.mov -c:v libaom-av1 -g 1 av1.webm

edit:

but -g 10 works!

ffmpeg -i ~/x264.mov -c:v libaom-av1 -g 10 av1.webm

at 0.1 fps but at least mpv/mplayer can play this file!

Tried more normal yuv420p test vid, same segfault.

 

[barracuda156]

libaom-av1 also seems to segfault if I use -g 1 for some speedup, -threads 1 also makes no difference:

frame=    0 fps=0.0 q=0.0 size=       1KiB time=N/A bitrate=N/A speed=N/A elapsed=0:00:00.50       Program received signal EXC_BAD_ACCESS, Could not access memory.                              
  Reason: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at address: 0x120f6ce0                                           
  [Switching to process 46768 thread 0x2403]                                                         0xffff8c9c in ?? ()                                                                                (gdb) bt full                                                                                  
 #0  0xffff8c9c in ?? ()                                                                            No symbol table info available.                                                                 
#1  0x03ffc38c in update_firstpass_stats ()                                                        No symbol table info available.                                                                
 #2  0x03ffca4c in av1_first_pass ()                                                                No symbol table info available.                                                                
 #3  0x03feaf9c in av1_encode ()                                                                    No symbol table info available.                                                               
  #4  0x03fdae9c in av1_encode_strategy ()                                                           No symbol table info available.                                                              
   #5  0x03fecba4 in av1_get_compressed_data ()                                                       No symbol table info available.                                                               
  #6  0x03fa5040 in encoder_encode ()                                                                No symbol table info available.                                                                 
#7  0x03f2ac2c in aom_codec_encode ()                                                              No symbol table info available.                                                               
  #8  0x01a2eb68 in av_jni_get_java_vm ()                                                            No symbol table info available.                                                              
   #9  0x0170cad0 in avcodec_encode_subtitle ()                                                       No symbol table info available.                                                                 
#10 0x0170cf00 in avcodec_encode_subtitle ()                                                       No symbol table info available.                                                                 
#11 0x0170d1a8 in avcodec_send_frame ()                                                            No symbol table info available.                                                                 
#12 0x0001f16c in enc_stats_write ()                                                               No symbol table info available.                                                                 
#13 0x0001fc78 in encoder_thread ()                                                                No symbol table info available.                                                                
 #14 0x00039ad0 in ffmpeg_parse_options ()                                                          No symbol table info available.                                                             
    #15 0x912ddf74 in _pthread_start ()                                                         
    No symbol table info available.                                                                    (gdb) quit

using

ffmpeg -i ~/x264.mov -c:v libaom-av1 -g 1 av1.webm

edit:

but -g 10 works!

ffmpeg -i ~/x264.mov -c:v libaom-av1 -g 10 av1.webm

at 0.1 fps but at least mpv/mplayer can play this file!

Tried more normal yuv420p test vid, same segfault.

That’s pretty odd, tbh. Nothing segfaults with decoding (otherwise playback would crash, I guess), but encoding is largely broken? And not just in a sense of being suboptimal, but literally defunct?
It also looks strange if a lot of codecs fail with bus error.

For the record, could you show the output of `ffmpeg -v`?

 

[Andrew-R]

That’s pretty odd, tbh. Nothing segfaults with decoding (otherwise playback would crash, I guess), but encoding is largely broken? And not just in a sense of being suboptimal, but literally defunct?
It also looks strange if a lot of codecs fail with bus error.

For the record, could you show the output of `ffmpeg -v`?

it crashes on Termux/aarch64 too with libaom-av1 and -g 1 specifically.

-g 10 or default (250?) works ....

Anyway, at literally 1 frame per minute or less (there was 3min initial delay!) for real 720p sized frame I do not think av1 is all that interesting outside some experiments here.

A lot of codecs works, it just svtav1/libaom-av1 giving me this 😉

Also, for some reason alac_at (ALAC via AudioToolbox) produces broken file, and aac_at (try ffmpeg -i music.wav -c:a aac_at 1.aac) produces noisy output.

 

[barracuda156]

it crashes on Termux/aarch64 too with libaom-av1 and -g 1 specifically.

Interesting. Is the issue known to upstream? Unlikely they will bother with macOS on powerpc, but if it is more general, it may be addressed.

-g 10 or default (250?) works ....

Anyway, at literally 1 frame per minute or less (there was 3min initial delay!) for real 720p sized frame I do not think av1 is all that interesting outside some experiments here.

Well, perhaps encoding on a relatively slow hardware (given no SIMD implementation, it shall be slow) is of academic interest rather than practical, but runtime crashes is something to fix nevertheless.

A lot of codecs works, it just svtav1/libaom-av1 giving me this 😉

I will try on my end, but not today and perhaps not in coming few days. Busy with unrelated stuff, and when I do get time, there are still issues to address after gcc update (to be clear, the toolchain is fine, just some ports need updates and rebuilds).

@Matias_ When you get a chance, could you check if Linux ppc (BE) exhibits the same issue?

Also, for some reason alac_at (ALAC via AudioToolbox) produces broken file, and aac_at (try ffmpeg -i music.wav -c:a aac_at 1.aac) produces noisy output.

It will be useful to know if the outcome is the same regardless of endianness, or only BE appears to be broken (in a sense of not working under the given procedure).