2026 PowerPC Challenge, is it happening?
- Thread starter phunguss
- Start date
I'm ready to do mine which is called Man vs. PowerPC Macs. The title itself is a parody of Man vs. Food and I settled on using my Power Mac G5. This thing is one of my best purchases at $60 and it still works!
If this is about setting up a PPC Machine, I'm in. MDD '03 OS9 special edition is on the bench yet again with a couple of cards on the way in for the project. Been working on it since the QS pooped out a couple of years ago with much frustration involved.
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This year i'm ready to play PWB G4 2GO/80GO for my company . This month is dry internet , we rediscover local solutions and local software . It was hig quality ; perhaps i will open Blog for these stories
Day 1: I started editing a video on my Power Mac G5 and have brought out the PowerBook G4 to use whenever the G5 is unavailable. So yeah, the PowerBook G4 is a reserve computer.
Day 1 : configuration with google gmail and Apple mail .
Has everebody knows its impossible keep apple mail on G4 due of TLS version , it is the same with Gmail .
After hours of test Mail Module of retrozilla is work direct !!!
for syncho of calendar and adress you can use
https://www.memotoo.com/ excellent solution for transfert
next day : less internet more performance
Has everebody knows its impossible keep apple mail on G4 due of TLS version , it is the same with Gmail .
After hours of test Mail Module of retrozilla is work direct !!!
for syncho of calendar and adress you can use
https://www.memotoo.com/ excellent solution for transfert
next day : less internet more performance
Day 2 : try internet for current use
You know, now we do everything on web servers; pages have become more robust, but we actually did just as well before. So yes, digital frugality is a new paradigm, but it raises a real question about doing things with a 20-year-old computer. Nobody questions the car... we keep driving it, but we send computers to the junkyard. Reliable and dependable, the old Macs are robust, and with a little thought, you can work on them every day.
For browsers, only two seem useful to me. Mozilla and Safari (unfortunately) must be avoided to focus on just two:
Aquafox : the most complete
in 2026 dark web do not work web , google test down , youtube down . Interweb too old school .
teenfour : Swiss army knife
Fast , efficient , powerfull its my first choice
How can we do without artificial intelligence? None of the browsers properly support AI.
I found solution with legacy AI . https://manticore.nz/legacyai . This software works from 7.0 to PPC . I try its work for textual prompt . no graphics of course , but for me its good
Tomorrow day 3 : music video , the limit power , how do the best with this G4
You know, now we do everything on web servers; pages have become more robust, but we actually did just as well before. So yes, digital frugality is a new paradigm, but it raises a real question about doing things with a 20-year-old computer. Nobody questions the car... we keep driving it, but we send computers to the junkyard. Reliable and dependable, the old Macs are robust, and with a little thought, you can work on them every day.
For browsers, only two seem useful to me. Mozilla and Safari (unfortunately) must be avoided to focus on just two:
Aquafox : the most complete
in 2026 dark web do not work web , google test down , youtube down . Interweb too old school .
teenfour : Swiss army knife
Fast , efficient , powerfull its my first choice
How can we do without artificial intelligence? None of the browsers properly support AI.
I found solution with legacy AI . https://manticore.nz/legacyai . This software works from 7.0 to PPC . I try its work for textual prompt . no graphics of course , but for me its good
Tomorrow day 3 : music video , the limit power , how do the best with this G4
Day 1: I was working on my iPad panel for an Apple //c.
Day 2: I have collected 5x G5 towers in different configs (3 from previous year's Challenge and 2 for this year). Hopefully this weekend I can sort out at least 2 or 3 good working ones.
Day 2: I have collected 5x G5 towers in different configs (3 from previous year's Challenge and 2 for this year). Hopefully this weekend I can sort out at least 2 or 3 good working ones.
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Day 2: The first clip for my LEGO Gameboy Let's Build is done. I started working on the 2nd clip. Aside from that, I was chilling on discord with my PowerBook G4.
With the start of PowerPC Challenge 2026, I decided to install an OWC Excelsior pcie card with a fresh Orico 128gb msata I picked up months back into my dual core 2ghz A1117 Powermac G5/Sorbet. I am already quite happy with how it performs now but was curious what the increase would look like.
The xbenchmark scores certainly illustrate the speed increase of 4lane pcie (32gb theoretical max) vs Sata3 (6gb theorietical max).
The percentage lift from 6gbps to 32gbps is 433% lol however the lift in xbench score is only 40.52%. of course I wont even pretend to understand how that theoretical maximum translates to realworld performance and how xbench interprets that barf and asigns a value to it. So yeah, it's faster. Good enough for who its for anyways. Fun times
Interestingly, on the app front. Everything is working pretty much as it did in 2025. Aside from gmail being slow AF (buttheads killed html webmail in 2025) in its box and invidious not working (no big deal really) everything has been pretty easy.
Youtoobie is handled by Wicknix's Ten five tube - still works great.
Browsing is handled by TheWireless's Aquafox (although Safari 11 works remarkably well for being 8 years old now too & you can always compile fresh TFF/AF with the Unofficial TFF Dev toolkit.
Gmail works with Wicknix's In the box.
AI ChatGPT interaction works with GreyStash/Manticore's Legacy AI.
and that's most of what I DD on this machine. There's other stuff I touch from time to time but not too much on this box.
The xbenchmark scores certainly illustrate the speed increase of 4lane pcie (32gb theoretical max) vs Sata3 (6gb theorietical max).
The percentage lift from 6gbps to 32gbps is 433% lol however the lift in xbench score is only 40.52%. of course I wont even pretend to understand how that theoretical maximum translates to realworld performance and how xbench interprets that barf and asigns a value to it. So yeah, it's faster. Good enough for who its for anyways. Fun times
Interestingly, on the app front. Everything is working pretty much as it did in 2025. Aside from gmail being slow AF (buttheads killed html webmail in 2025) in its box and invidious not working (no big deal really) everything has been pretty easy.
Youtoobie is handled by Wicknix's Ten five tube - still works great.
Browsing is handled by TheWireless's Aquafox (although Safari 11 works remarkably well for being 8 years old now too & you can always compile fresh TFF/AF with the Unofficial TFF Dev toolkit.
Gmail works with Wicknix's In the box.
AI ChatGPT interaction works with GreyStash/Manticore's Legacy AI.
and that's most of what I DD on this machine. There's other stuff I touch from time to time but not too much on this box.
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I'm in! BUT! As I tried to boot my iBook G4, I received the gift of magic smoke from my power adapter. So it's off to Ebay and a replacement adapter is being delivered next week for 40 USD. Not bad, I guess. I'm choosing that one because I upgraded the memory last year. I did boot the iBook G3 up to see what its deal was, but the hard drive rattled around so much it scared me off. Next year on that one.
Day3:
I confirmed that I have FIVE PowerMac G5s of various configs. The three from 2025 were converted to air cooled.
The Quad machine has no processors in it. The top two have no video card. One is missing the clear panel inside. The top new one has two processors that are air cooled, while the bottom new one I have to remove the G5 cover plate to see if it is water or air cooled (likely air). The bottom one has an extra ethernet card in it and a USB/FW combo card.
I do have a few macintosh AGP and PCI video cards laying around, so I will see what all works tomorrow.
Dug through my shelves and found 5 other processor cards (two single and 3 dual - for quads).
And three different styles of Liquid Cooling Systems.
Let's see what we can get working!
I confirmed that I have FIVE PowerMac G5s of various configs. The three from 2025 were converted to air cooled.
The Quad machine has no processors in it. The top two have no video card. One is missing the clear panel inside. The top new one has two processors that are air cooled, while the bottom new one I have to remove the G5 cover plate to see if it is water or air cooled (likely air). The bottom one has an extra ethernet card in it and a USB/FW combo card.
I do have a few macintosh AGP and PCI video cards laying around, so I will see what all works tomorrow.
Dug through my shelves and found 5 other processor cards (two single and 3 dual - for quads).
And three different styles of Liquid Cooling Systems.
Let's see what we can get working!
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Here's what happened yesterday.
Day 3: Got another clip processed, went on discord some more and, played some Zuma.
Day 3: Got another clip processed, went on discord some more and, played some Zuma.
Your benchmarks for the Orico are better than SATA I (150 MB/s) but not SATA II (300 MB/s). Are you sure it's connected as SATA III? What does the PCI and SATA tabs in System Information.app show?With the start of PowerPC Challenge 2026, I decided to install an OWC Excelsior pcie card with a fresh Orico 128gb msata I picked up months back into my dual core 2ghz A1117 Powermac G5/Sorbet. I am already quite happy with how it performs now but was curious what the increase would look like.
The xbenchmark scores certainly illustrate the speed increase of 4lane pcie (32gb theoretical max) vs Sata3 (6gb theorietical max).
The percentage lift from 6gbps to 32gbps is 433% lol however the lift in xbench score is only 40.52%. of course I wont even pretend to understand how that theoretical maximum translates to realworld performance and how xbench interprets that barf and asigns a value to it. So yeah, it's faster. Good enough for who its for anyways. Fun times
Power Mac G5 with PCIe has PCIe 1.0:
2.5 GT/s per lane * 4 lanes * 8b/10T = 8 Gb/s.
8 Gb/s * 1B/8b * 1000 M/G = 1000 MB/s.
But SATA III is limited to 6 GT/s:
6 GT/s * 8b/10T = 4.8 Gb/s.
4.8 Gb/s * 1B/8b * 1000M/G = 600 MB/s.
32 Gbps comes from PCIe 3.0:
8 GT/s per lane * 4 lanes * 128b/130T = 31.5 Gb/s.
31.5 Gb/s * 1B/8b * 1000M/G = 3938 MB/s.
If you want to connect a PCIe 3.0 x4 device and get PCIe 3.0 speed from a PCIe 1.0 slot, then you would need to connect a PCIe 3.0 bridge into a 16x slot.
Day 4:
Spent some time on the lot of G5s. The new-to-me dual 1.8 (lets label them alphabetically from the top down, A through E) seems to have been stripped for parts. Since B was listed from last year as "flaky", I pulled parts to complete A, and was able to install MacOS 10.4 and 10.5. I was able to update to 10.4.11 and 10.5.8.
I was also working on E (dual 2.3GHz) for a few hours then it started to crash a lot. I disassembled and replaced the thermal grease. Upon reassembly, I got no chime, so I have to go back and check my work. It also had 6x1GB and 2x512MB of ram but only showed 5GB, so some slots or sticks are not working. Might just juggle them around to test tomorrow.
The video card from the B->A model was a Rage 128 with only 16MB of ram, and it showed some artifacts in 10.4 and on the boot chooser screen. So since E was not booting any longer, I grabbed the video card and put it into A. Ran some bench tests. I see it is only detecting 1 CPU, so I have to get the Hardware CD out and test that. Maybe swap processors from the B unit.
Pulled 2x1GB and 2x512MB to make 3GB of ram in model A (MB only has 4 slots, not the typical 8).
So Model A is a 2x 1.8GHz and we will call that one fully working (1 of 2 CPUs). My model C dual 2.5GHz has a sticker that says "working" so maybe I will check that one tomorrow as well. I did also find a G4 lamp that does not power on, so I have to investigate whether that is a MB or PSU issue.
Spent some time on the lot of G5s. The new-to-me dual 1.8 (lets label them alphabetically from the top down, A through E) seems to have been stripped for parts. Since B was listed from last year as "flaky", I pulled parts to complete A, and was able to install MacOS 10.4 and 10.5. I was able to update to 10.4.11 and 10.5.8.
I was also working on E (dual 2.3GHz) for a few hours then it started to crash a lot. I disassembled and replaced the thermal grease. Upon reassembly, I got no chime, so I have to go back and check my work. It also had 6x1GB and 2x512MB of ram but only showed 5GB, so some slots or sticks are not working. Might just juggle them around to test tomorrow.
The video card from the B->A model was a Rage 128 with only 16MB of ram, and it showed some artifacts in 10.4 and on the boot chooser screen. So since E was not booting any longer, I grabbed the video card and put it into A. Ran some bench tests. I see it is only detecting 1 CPU, so I have to get the Hardware CD out and test that. Maybe swap processors from the B unit.
Pulled 2x1GB and 2x512MB to make 3GB of ram in model A (MB only has 4 slots, not the typical 8).
So Model A is a 2x 1.8GHz and we will call that one fully working (1 of 2 CPUs). My model C dual 2.5GHz has a sticker that says "working" so maybe I will check that one tomorrow as well. I did also find a G4 lamp that does not power on, so I have to investigate whether that is a MB or PSU issue.
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Day 4: Started processing the third clip and after that, I only got one clip to go! Like before, I used discord on my PowerBook G4 while I waited.
Picked up two 1400c 133 PowerBooks
and a performa 405 on local CL for $30 bucks.
While I have a g3 iBook charger, unfortunately it doesn’t fit this old PowerBook so I don’t know if they work at all but in the hopes they do, I figured $30 bucks was a fair gamble. The plastics aside from being very dusty are surprisingly clean with only minor wear, so I hope these experienced reasonably good care. The seller she said the performa was her grandparents, the powerbooks her dads and she was downsizing for a move, so was trying to get rid of stuff.
We’ll see if the performa boots up tonight or tomorrow. I have a lonely 90s beige Apple monitor that I think would be very happy with this 405 as well as era correct Apple KB and mouse. I also have been itching for a retro brite candidate and I think this might be it. We'll see
Does anyone know what goes in those holes in the front of the powerbooks? I assume this is where a battery would have gone? Looks like the floppy drives are there. Wish I had a charger but I guess that’ll be part of the journey with these lol.
and a performa 405 on local CL for $30 bucks.
We’ll see if the performa boots up tonight or tomorrow. I have a lonely 90s beige Apple monitor that I think would be very happy with this 405 as well as era correct Apple KB and mouse. I also have been itching for a retro brite candidate and I think this might be it. We'll see
Does anyone know what goes in those holes in the front of the powerbooks? I assume this is where a battery would have gone? Looks like the floppy drives are there. Wish I had a charger but I guess that’ll be part of the journey with these lol.
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Hi joevt - you are 110% correct - I did not snap that this Powermac is gen1 pcie lol capped at 250mb sec. The scoring makes much more sense knowing that. The msata itself is rated for up to 500mb sec reads, but the OWC Mercury Accelsior pcie card was released in 2012 aimed not at PMG5s so much as cMP 3,1-,5,1s which all had gen2 pcie which also correlates with the Accelsior max speed as noted at 380mb sec. I currently have the card populated in a 4 lane pcie slot but I do have access to an 8 lane slot. Maybe I'll stick it in there this week and see what xbench says. I also noticed the card is advertised as bootable, so I think I'll clone my boot SSD to the Orico msata for giggles and see if it is bootable in this late 2005 powermac.
Interestingly, the card doesnt show up as pcie, rather under PCI>bridge at 2.5Gigabit speed (see above), so with the advertised maximum read speed of the msata at 500mb sec & the advertised OWC accelsior pcie card read speed of 380mb sec, I assume it is saturating the pcie1 4 lane bus at up to 250mb sec per lane. I should see an improvement in throughput using the 8 lane slot vs 4 lane with pcie2 bridge adapter. We'll see!
Fun times
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Day 5:
More G5 stuff. I decided to pull both CPUs from the B unit "flaky" and put them into the A unit. Booted and recognized dual processors!
But... the exit fan was missing a blade and after a CPU swap it was in turbo fan mode. Luckily I have a couple spares I ordered since last year (see lower right fan).
I also found these loose in Unit A, I think there may be more... will have to do a full teardown at some point to replace the hard drive cage anyway, it was severely damaged from whomever tried stripping this Unit A down.
Right now, I am running the AHT and will then run the ASD to thermal calibrate and bring the fan noise down.
More G5 stuff. I decided to pull both CPUs from the B unit "flaky" and put them into the A unit. Booted and recognized dual processors!
But... the exit fan was missing a blade and after a CPU swap it was in turbo fan mode. Luckily I have a couple spares I ordered since last year (see lower right fan).
I also found these loose in Unit A, I think there may be more... will have to do a full teardown at some point to replace the hard drive cage anyway, it was severely damaged from whomever tried stripping this Unit A down.
Right now, I am running the AHT and will then run the ASD to thermal calibrate and bring the fan noise down.
Day 5: After all that time, I finally got to the final clip of my first video project on this computer.