OS9 on PPC 540C!!!

Finally!! After tinkering with an external hard drive, I was able to get OS 9 installed. I copied the System Folder from a PowerMac 7500, modified the System file, changed the Gestalt in WishIWere to 5xx/PPC. Super crazy! Looking to change the physical hard drive to SCSI2SD or BlueSCSI and if I’m really lucky, get a Rev C Card Cage for Wi-Fi access later. Would also be cool to replace PRAM battery and rebuild the actual battery. It’s the 603 187Mhz NuPowr board and it has 32 Mb ram. OS9 likes more than that, so I have to use virtual memory. Can we run iTunes on this??

I ran iTunes on my PowerBook 1400 166, so I would say "yes". Versions for classic Mac OS weren't the unwieldy behemoths that it turned into on X.

I have both SCSI2SD and BlueSCSI and I prefer BlueSCSI because it's so much easier to set up and manage, but SCSI2SD was designed to work with more than just Macs, so there's that.

I've been wanting that processor for a while but they're so hard to come by! I've got a 550 with an Apple 603e 100MHz, which is in the FPGA format, and none of those go up higher than 133mhz if i replaced the chip. Does 9 run any different than 8.6 on 187MHz? I had to stay with 8.6. I do have an SCSI2SD v5.5-Internal edition and it seems to help.

I set up my SCSI2SD by installing the Mac OS 8.6 CD on it through my PB1400c attached to the external SCSI Port and then swapped it into the 550.

WORD OF WISDOM: Neither the PB1400c or PB500 series external SCSI ports supply power, so for the SCSI2SD v5.5 YOU MUST SUPPLY POWER by an external USB cable. Once you put it internal in the PB500 series, the internal cable automatically supplies power.

One thing I wish was possible would be to somehow increase the VRAM even if that meant a desoldering project.

codyNC90 said:

One thing I wish was possible would be to somehow increase the VRAM even if that meant a desoldering project.

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I doubt that's possible from both available footprint and addressing issues alongside ROM limitations. Why would you need more VRAM, to support a larger external display?

For the 550c when you go to the highest colors the full screen area isn’t used

nottomhanks said:

Finally!! After tinkering with an external hard drive, I was able to get OS 9 installed. I copied the System Folder from a PowerMac 7500, modified the System file, changed the Gestalt in WishIWere to 5xx/PPC. Super crazy! Looking to change the physical hard drive to SCSI2SD or BlueSCSI and if I’m really lucky, get a Rev C Card Cage for Wi-Fi access later. Would also be cool to replace PRAM battery and rebuild the actual battery. It’s the 603 187Mhz NuPowr board and it has 32 Mb ram. OS9 likes more than that, so I have to use virtual memory. Can we run iTunes on this??

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To be fair, you have Mac OS 9 running on a 187MHz PPC 603e NuPowr board within a PM 540c, rather than the 33MHz 68LC040.
And?
How is the performance in comparison to say, Mac OS 7.6 or 8.1? With 32MB RAM, I imagine that the system takes up most of that. And does the 32MHz bus noticeably slow it down?

@codyNC90 Re: VRAM for the 5xx, start a new thread in Hacks to avoid tangential overload in this thread.

LCD resolution seems a much stickier wicket than external output. Same deal with the 2300c and everything in between.

I've always suspected a firmware limitation, but it might be possible if only a control panel hack is possible. IIRC the ASICs involved, someone transplanted SCSC(?) from the 1400 into the 2300c replacing CSC(?) heading toward a solution to this limitation.

Check the 5xx DevNote against 2300c and 1400 docs to see if the Video Controller ASIC, matches. That'd be where I'd start. If that matches, then determine the VRAM IC package and look for a higher capacity IC in the same footprint. If that's no go, they're is always the chip stacking gambit as a last resort, cubic and signal allowing of course.

I haven't looked at this in many, many years, but it may be worth taking a shot at it again. Look into the 190, 5500c/(ce) and 2300c at the same time. The prospect of pulling this off across those generations might catch the attention of the amazing enlistment of current generation hacking magicians.

Again, start a dedicated thread in hacks and link to this one, it's a bit off topic here.

ArmorAlley said:

How is the performance in comparison to say, Mac OS 7.6 or 8.1? With 32MB RAM, I imagine that the system takes up most of that. And does the 32MHz bus noticeably slow it down?

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I'm going to second Cory here and hazard a guess that a machine like this should perform about as well as a similarly configured PowerBook 1400, or the earlier 5300. They all share an architecture which essentially boils down to "PPC-upgraded 68040". (Actually what's really depressing is it's almost more accurate to describe them as PPC-upgraded 68030s, because of some obscure details of how the bus is set up.) RAM is really going to be the big limiter here.