2022 PowerPC Challenge!

Action Retro

Action Retro

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wicknix said:
@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.

Random Mac Stuff

A blog about Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and PowerPC Linux.
randommacstuff.blogspot.com randommacstuff.blogspot.com

View attachment 2836
Cheers
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Just installed this, and it works a treat!
 
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VCSMaster

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I'm new to the forum, but not to vintage Macs. Asking out of curiosity, is this event planned to happen next year as well? I would love to participate. Does anyone know if 68k Macs are allowed or will be allowed, or do I need to track down an unobtanium upgrade card to participate properly.
 
JDW

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VCSMaster said:
Does anyone know if 68k Macs are allowed or will be allowed, or do I need to track down an unobtanium upgrade card to participate properly.
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I don't see how 68k Macs would be allowed in anything that is deliberately restricted by name like "PowerPC" unless one has the said PPC upgrade card. It is a "PPC Challenge" and not a "68K Challenge," after all. If 68K Macs are allowed, then the name should change. If it doesn't, it would be rather confusing.
 
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VCSMaster

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I suppose that makes sense. To me, the "spirit" of the challenge was in doing daily tasks on outdated machines, but if the focus is more on PowerPC I don't really have anything interesting to enter, sadly.

Maybe I'll track down a Daystar board for my Quadra 700 that won't cost double what I paid for my car.
 
JDW

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VCSMaster said:
I suppose that makes sense. To me, the "spirit" of the challenge was in doing daily tasks on outdated machines, but if the focus is more on PowerPC I don't really have anything interesting to enter, sadly.

Maybe I'll track down a Daystar board for my Quadra 700 that won't cost double what I paid for my car.
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My 1.3GHz G4 Cube is the only PPC Mac, other than my Wallstreet, that I consider a fun/useful machine. But I am far more into 68k Macs than I am PPC.
 
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VCSMaster

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In terms of usefulness, I do own a PowerMac G5 dual 2.0 that I saved from the crusher several years ago, and a PowerBook G3 Kanga. Oh, and a couple iMac G3 trays. I would not consider the Kanga a "useful" machine, although it is very entertaining, same as the iMacs. The G5 despite working is in such appalling shape that is is actually a health hazard - The front of the case is shredded. When it was under my desk I actually had it facing backwards to lower the likelihood of cutting my legs into ribbons on what's left of the front grill.

I'm a huge fan of Mac OS 8 and 9, and I've actually been doing a lot of my writing and image editing on a Quadra 700 with a Photoshop accelerator, as well as updating my personal website via it. In my mind this was a reasonable claim to usefulness for a "lowly" 68040.
Would I prefer it be a PPC601? Of course, do I want to pay $1000 for one, not really.
 
Branchus

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VCSMaster said:
I'm new to the forum, but not to vintage Macs. Asking out of curiosity, is this event planned to happen next year as well? I would love to participate. Does anyone know if 68k Macs are allowed or will be allowed, or do I need to track down an unobtanium upgrade card to participate properly.
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Even though we call it the PowerPC challenge, we do welcome earlier Macs as well. In 2021 we actually called it the "68k & PPC Challenge" but decided it was too much of a mouthful and returned to the original name.

We welcome your participation in the 2023 event.
 
wicknix

wicknix

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I agree that anything pre-intel should count. Altough i'm not sure how any 68k machine could handle "modern day" tasks. They don't call it a challenge for no reason i guess. ;-)

Posted from a 12" PowerBook G4.

void95.png
 
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VCSMaster

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Modern day isn't a big deal for me. Microsoft Word and Excel both work just fine, almost no different from their modern counterparts for almost all usage. Netscape will happily render my own website while I edit it, and it's not awful at playing music in the background while I work. It struggles badly with PhotoShop, but the DSP card helped tremendously. At least a 5x improvement but just barely useful! Luckily I handle a lot of pixel art.

Maybe someday I will "cheat" and set up one of those proxies that renders a website as a JPEG you can interact with on a weak or outdated client to read my email or something on it, but that's for another time.
 
Action Retro

Action Retro

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Idea to include both sides: what if we do a contest?

68K vs. PPC Challenge.

You choose which side you want to be on, then use either a 68K machine or PPC machine for a full week. Winning side will be the side that has the most fun, determined by fully scientific means of course :)
 
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Certificate of Excellence

Certificate of Excellence

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VCSMaster said:
If that turns out to be the case maybe I will have to start looking for a Radius VideoVision Studio and do the editing for my YouTube channel on the 68k machine too, just to show off!

This is a fun challenge. I don't think I've seen anything like it in the DOS/Windows community, nobody really challenges themselves to "Use a 286 for a week" haha
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Joshing aside, I thoroughly enjoy the PowerPC challenges/Marchintosh each year. I first ran into these years back on the MacRumors PPC forum. Between all the fantastic content that is put out there, celebrating all the enthusiasts who maintain/update and create current software for these elderly systems and just pushing my 15-20+ year hardware, it is just fun as heck and I keep coming back for more. Surfing the web, catching up on email and checking out some vids on Apple silicon and then turning around and doing the same things (albeit a bit slower) on its great great grand daddy - well, thats cool.

I get the idea to lump in 68k with the PPC challenge as it's an easy lift (and I could care less personally - I say the more the merrier) but I also perceive this forum as having a primarily beige mac 68k centric driven member base, so having a separate 68k challenge also makes complete sense as it would celebrate specifically what so many here are definitely into instead of getting tacked onto the venerable coat tails of PowerPC.
 
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MacMaverick855

MacMaverick855

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Mac84 said:
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! 🤓

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I am struggling trying to get Adelie 1.0-RC2 onto my ppc64 2.0Ghz G5. I’m trying to load it onto it’s own hd, and have used manual installation guidance from a number of sources and forums. I’m pretty sure it get’s installed properly but when I get to the sddm log in screen, I enter my password and after a fade to black, returns to the sddm log in. The same thing happens if I go to a tty, it loops back to a login request.

Many of the manual instructions are vague about creating a user, using “useradd”. I am installing a text only system, reboot to the text only system and try to load sddm, plasma desktop using @Action Retro’s guidance when he installed it on a Lamp Shade mac. I really believe the method used to create a user is failing me. I have read up on creating users using useradd from a site called linuxize.com. It’s the most in. Depth description of how to do it.

How did you pull it off because it’s kicking my butt!!! But as always, the stuff I’m learning about linux is super interesting.

New to TinkerDifferent, and look forward to hanging out hear as I progress on this project.

MacMaverick855
 
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