2022 PowerPC Challenge!

wicknix

Tinkerer
Jan 5, 2022
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randommacstuff.blogspot.com
@Action Retro I figured i'd see if i could help with Adelie's lack of sound, so i fired up the Mate version of the live dvd on my G5 to check it out. Here's how i got sound. All of this is done as root user (su)
Code:
modprobe snd_powermac (loading this kernel module may or may not be needed, but i wanted to be safe).
apk add alsa-utils
apk add qastools
In the menu under audio/video select qasmixer. In the qasmixer menu click "view -> show device selection"
Top right corner you should see a box with a few entries. Select "hw".
Now adjust Master and PCM volume slider (70 is good for both).
Once that's done the settings are persistent and will stick between reboots (on an installed system).
You could alternatively run alsamixer from terminal to adjust the volume but i prefer a nice graphical mixer.

Screeny of my live Mate session.
adelie-ppc64-mate-G5.png
 

Staso28

New Tinkerer
Nov 23, 2021
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Interestingly enough, one of the most important pieces of software I use daily is good old Apple Notes. It's just a simple text editor, but the way it synchronises with all of my devices is fantastic. I can edit my notes on my phone, my iPad, my laptop or my desktop computer and they're all immediately synchronised. So simple but so useful. I use Notes for drafting emails, writing scripts, storing ideas and making shopping lists. We even use Notes for sharing the topics of the Mac Yak show. Given that Notes is unavailable in Tiger and Leopard, I was forced to find a way of having a similar functionality using the tools at my disposal. And that's when I decided to write my own web version of Notes. Borrowing very much on the design and functionality of the actual Notes application, my new web Notes allows me to create, edit and delete notes, with an autosave feature running in the background using Javascript and AJAX. And it works beautifully in the old Safari version 4.

Hi. This is a great idea! I was looking for a note taking web app usable for both old and new systems - but could'nt find any. Right now I'm using Simplenote, but it barely runs on TenFourFox... Your project looks exactly like what I'm looking for.
So please if you could expand it and make it public, it would be a great thing!!! Thanks.
 
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Certificate of Excellence

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Nov 1, 2021
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Since Discord seems to be a popular topic on this thread, I figured I'd make an account to keep you all updated on the latest changes to my completely custom, ultra-lightweight Discord client, which can run on PPC and Intel systems under Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and later. Just recently, I added support for viewing and sending replies, which should make the program a whole lot more usable. I am slowly working on the project in my free time, and my end goal is to create a fully-featured client, that supports voice chat and maybe even video. Next thing on the list for right now is to get 2-factor authentication working. Please let me know what features you would like implemented sooner, and I'll work on those first. Hopefully you all enjoy a nice, smooth Discord experience with Discord Lite! All info and prebuilt binaries can be found on the GitHub repo.

Wow, your app flies on PowerPC. Great work. Messaging individual people would be an awesome feature. I like to curse at those TD discord moderators privately :)

Today's PowerPC fun -
A1117 DC 2Ghz PMG5 Desktop PPC 2022.jpg


Playing last weeks MacYak in Tenfivetube - surprising how smooth (no slide show) it is with such an old YT app. I have Adelie & Void PPC64 downloaded and will have some fun with that on this box this week. Fun times.
 
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Action Retro

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Oct 19, 2021
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Now I'm posting from my Grape G3 iMac Rev D 333, with a whopping 256mb memory, running OpenBSD 7.0 (the latest release!) and IceWM. I think I'm going to try and do all of my browsing from here for the challenge!

Look how pretty it is!
 

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Mac84

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Sep 4, 2021
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I've been playing around with a few Power Mac G5 systems. I did a (very, very) long live stream on reminding myself which G5 systems I had. And with the help of Sean of Action Retro, Lauren and a few folks, I got Adélie Linux (64-bit) installed on my Dual 2.0 GHz G5. Sadly the Quad G5 didn't want to work properly with it.

I must say, it's quite impressive that such a modern OS can run (even if slowly) on this system. However, even though I got YouTube to load, it wasn't going to beat any speed tests or beat a modern system. I'll be doing some more testing... including two identical Dual 2.0 G5 systems, with one running Leopard and one running Sorbet Leopard. It should be fun! 🤓

1642122052397.png
 

wicknix

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Jan 5, 2022
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randommacstuff.blogspot.com
GDrive does not work with either WebKit or InterWeb.
It does, but you have to use a mobile user agent override. This works for me with InterwebPPC:
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 11; SM-A426U) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/89.0.4389.105 Mobile Safari/537.36
Either use a user agent switcher extension, or create the override in about:config for drive.google.com

How do you do it, wicknix. Is the iMac G5/1.8 really just not up to speed for XFCE?
My G5 with Void installed has the nvidia geforce fx5200 in it, and is very fluid and snappy with various desktop environments. My other G5 has the radeon 9600 which works fine with ubuntu and lxde. Xfce uses a compositor (enables shadows, transparency and other effects) by default. I'd suggest turning that off in xfce's settings. It will greatly increase the speed of the UI.

You can always try Mate or IceWm, etc which might fare better than xfce. My 12" Powerbook G4 1.33ghz runs void with icewm flawlessly as well. I may do a video on that machine yet for the challenge to show how quick it is.
 
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lepidotós

New Tinkerer
Jan 16, 2022
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I've been using my iBook G4 for the last few months as my main PC and the other computers I've used have also been PPC Macs (a PowerBook G3 Lombard, an iBook G3 900MHz, and a G4 Sawtooth), so this should be pretty easy since I have to do literally nothing to participate. I guess it's a little late to officially join in considering it's less than a week away to being over, but next year I think I'll challenge myself with switching to the Lombard for the whole challenge, and using X DP2 at that.
I also have an iMac G5 that really, really chugs on Void Linux even with IceWM, I think something might actually just be faulty with it. Still, should decently emulate a Bondi iMac in terms of performance.
Obligatory desktop screenshot:
Picture 1.png
 
Oct 18, 2021
108
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Ohio, USA
thehouseofmoth.com
Not much of a challenge, per se, but I gave all of my PPC Macs some love with a thorough cleaning this past week. Dust out the innards, fresh thermal pads and paste where needed, etc. Even the machines I haven't used in a while got a full internal/external cleaning. This was on a whim one day when I was in the basement so didn't think of taking photos but here's the G4 Mac mini I did last:
IMG_1910.jpeg

Glad I checked! This mini was purchased a week or so ago and it looks like it has never been opened in its life.
Since it's open... might as well overclock it :)
 

Kai Robinson

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Not much of a challenge, per se, but I gave all of my PPC Macs some love with a thorough cleaning this past week. Dust out the innards, fresh thermal pads and paste where needed, etc. Even the machines I haven't used in a while got a full internal/external cleaning. This was on a whim one day when I was in the basement so didn't think of taking photos but here's the G4 Mac mini I did last:
View attachment 2453
Glad I checked! This mini was purchased a week or so ago and it looks like it has never been opened in its life.
Since it's open... might as well overclock it :)
Bloody hell, that's practically carpet! 😂
 

Certificate of Excellence

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Nov 1, 2021
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I had a weird thing happen this evening. I made a PPCC 2022 ibook vid in Snapz X2 and exported to quicktime 7.7. No problem, the vid & all audio plays fine. I then upload this to YT and the mic audio is absent - ibook screen cap audio is there but mic audio is not. Very weird - anyhow, I decide to push it through imovie and export in .m4v and it uploads just fine this way. No idea why previous .mov vids uploaded without issue but this one borked - the only difference I can come up with is the first two are screenflow exports and the ibook vid was Snapz. Whatevs all part of the challenge I suppose.
 

Branchus

Tinker Different Public Relations Liaison 2023
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Sep 2, 2021
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I had a weird thing happen this evening. I made a PPCC 2022 ibook vid in Snapz X2 and exported to quicktime 7.7. No problem, the vid & all audio plays fine. I then upload this to YT and the mic audio is absent - ibook screen cap audio is there but mic audio is not. Very weird - anyhow, I decide to push it through imovie and export in .m4v and it uploads just fine this way. No idea why previous .mov vids uploaded without issue but this one borked - the only difference I can come up with is the first two are screenflow exports and the ibook vid was Snapz. Whatevs all part of the challenge I suppose.
There's probably a separate audio channel in there (Window > Show Movie Properties) that's being ignored by YT. Exporting it from Quicktime in another format would probably fix that.
 

PowerRCP-G3

New Tinkerer
Jan 31, 2022
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Hi there, I was late to the party. But, I still managed to use two of my PowerPC Macs for my daily tasks last week. I learned to tinker a bit and, I even managed to upload a few videos on my iMac G5. Here is the link to the video itself. If I enter this challenge next year, I'll be ready and I might get Linux on one of these Macs.

Here is the link to the video itself.

Surfing the web on an iBook G4 with InterwebPPC - YouTube

And, here is the full daily log.

Day 1

After unsuccessfully installing Linux on the PowerBook G4, I have decided to re-install Mac OS X 10.4.11 on it and I decided to tinker around with it. I have also used my iMac G5 as a file server bridge, a video editing machine and, a computer to upload my YouTube videos. I was able to use Facebook and talk to my bestie, Chris. But, I was not able to use Google Drive tho.

Day 2

This was when I transferred Part 3 of my Sega CD review onto my iMac G5 after some tinkering had to be done. I also downloaded FoxPEP and I still could not get Google Drive to work on it. I also got the other video which was a review of the Dairy Queen Buffalo Dipped chicken strips onto my iMac G5. Aside from that, nor much else has happened on that day.

Day 3

Part 3 of the Sega CD review got uploaded onto my iMac G5. In order to prevent the computer from cooking itself to death, I have plugged in one of my two desk fans that I got from Costco. Even without my M1 MacBook Pro, I was still able to make a title card for my videos. And yes, I made a title card using only AppleWorks 6 on my iBook G4. The MollyBook showed what PowerPC laptops can still do well in the modern age. Granted, the fonts looked messy on the old AppleWorks drawing program. But, I was still able to make a good YouTube thumbnail even with the limitations of the software itself.

Day 4

This was when I uploaded yet another video on the iMac G5. I uploaded the third video in the Otaku Bandito's Fast Food Reviews series. I have also played Lego Star Wars on the iBook G4 and did a review on it. I successfully transferred all of the files from my SD card to the flash drive itself. It was a blast from the past. While I did have some problems with iMovie on the iMac G5, I was still able to edit a whole entire video on it. Also, the video is downscaled to 720p for better performance.

Day 5 Even though there was a storm, I was still able to edit my video on the iMac G5 itself. The storm itself will present even more challenges in the PowerPC challenge itself later this week. While the videos took long to load onto iMovie 09, I was still able to import them with no trouble at all. This version of iMovie was vastly different from what I'm used to using. However, I wouldn't get the video finished until Sunday.

Day 6

On iMovie 09 and, it took awhile for the clips to appear on the computer itself. I had continued to edit LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game and was met with the hardest level in the game. I had to go to sleep before being able to beat it again. Although, I was able to film more footage of the game itself. Luckily, the power didn't go out. On an unrelated side note, I had also watched Ice Age: The Adventures of Buck Wild on Disney Plus for movie night that day.

Day 7

The video about my experiences with the two computers got uploaded didn't get uploaded until tomorrow due to the phone forcing itself to update last night without my consent even after I set it to only update itself tomorrow. It was a quick video explaining about what I did on the PowerPC Macs for a week as the original vid had to get delayed. So, I needed something to upload. I finally got LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game finished after beating the hardest level in the game. It was impossible to beat it with a keyboard. So, I had to unlearn what I have learned and plug in a controller. Surprisingly, it was easier with a controller plugged in and I was able to beat it with less problems. Sometime, I'll consider getting a Power Mac G5 or Mac Mini G4 to run a Minecraft Java Edition server. My experiences with the two Macs were different. But, I learned to appreciate what they can accomplish even with their limitations. I got used to using them and I even said my farewell message to my iBook G4. This proves that PowerPC Macs can still be useful in the modern age. Since this was the last day, I have used the PowerPC Macs as much as I can and I even wrote a couple of comic scripts on the iBook G4 itself.
 

wicknix

Tinkerer
Jan 5, 2022
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randommacstuff.blogspot.com
@Action Retro You might be interested in this when you do another void64 install. I created an xbps package that will install 4 good mozilla based browsers. (the ones with mostly correct colors) No more manual install trickery.

void64-browsers.png

Cheers
 
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PowerRCP-G3

New Tinkerer
Jan 31, 2022
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A couple of weeks ago, I finished editing my video that I edited on the iMac G5. And yes, I had to transfer all of the files to the iMac itself and I had a lot of fun editing a video iMovie 09 for PPC. I started editing this video on January when I decided to use an iBook G4 and iMac G5 for a whole week. It also took a long time for video to load. But, it was worth it when the video appeared on the computer itself. The video itself was downscaled to 720p so it could perform better on the PowerPC macs. The iMac tried to shut down a few times when the video was still loading. But, the video itself still managed to load and it even manage to play when I opened the file in Quicktime. Watching the vid itself is like going back to the old days in YouTube.

Here is the link to the video itself.
Otaku Bandito Reviews: Lego Star Wars (Mac OS X) - YouTube