setting up a G4 Tower Quicksilver 933 MHz

[Phipli]

I wish there were a video card with dual DVI or dual VGA though. Both of the cards I have now are ADC plus a second connector (VGA or DVI). Although the Apple Studio Display has some historical interest to me, I don't really want to keep around a single-use 17-inch LCD.

The best way of doing this would be to buy a PC card that's suitable for flashing, easy to find one with a VGA and a DVI connector. Perhaps something like a Radeon 9000?

Not really my era, I skipped over G4 towers too. I only had a Mac Mini from that era.

 

[bigmessowires]

Hmm, I got this when starting up the Quicksilver today, after installing a new USB 2.0 card:



But after rebooting, it started up normally. Is this a hardware problem, or some kind of normal auto-config for new hardware? The newly-installed card seems to be working OK.

 

[Phipli]

Hmm, I got this when starting up the Quicksilver today, after installing a new USB 2.0 card:

View attachment 65340

But after rebooting, it started up normally. Is this a hardware problem, or some kind of normal auto-config for new hardware? The newly-installed card seems to be working OK.

Do you have a photo of the card?

 

[bigmessowires]

It's this one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07S29C1S6 It has an NEC chipset, which I'd read should be plug-and-play with this generation of Macs. It seems to be working OK after the reboot.

 

[bigmessowires]

I've now had that same "You need to restart your computer" once more, but it didn't repeat after rebooting. It might be related to the SCSI controller or ZuluSCSI. At one point after rebooting, none of my ZuluSCSI volumes were showing up in OSX and the ZuluSCSI's activity light was permanently on, while Activity Monitor showed 99% CPU usage by System. I'll keep watching for some consistent pattern.

 

[Phipli]

It's this one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07S29C1S6 It has an NEC chipset, which I'd read should be plug-and-play with this generation of Macs. It seems to be working OK after the reboot.

Yeah, its generally best to go with NEC

ZuluSCSI's activity light was permanently on, while Activity Monitor showed 99% CPU usage by System.

Oh, this is normal, but bad, you'll wear the SD card out - why do you have the ZuluSCSI in the G4? I'd take that out - there are much better options for the G4.
To stop it doing it, go to the Control Panel, and... the spotlight options, whatever it is called. One of the tabs lets you add locations that you don't want the system to index. Add the ZuluSCSI... and also, if you're me, everything else. Indexing just using all of the processor for hours after a new install. I wish they'd have throttled it and made it do it much slower.

 

[bigmessowires]

I don't think it was Spotlight indexing, none of the SCSI volumes were even mounted or appearing in Disk Utility, and those volumes only have a single digit number of files to index anyway. It seemed like some type of SCSI fault condition that was completely tying up the processor. Upon rebooting it went back to normal.

 

[bigmessowires]

Believe it or not, QuickSilver is blessed with 1000 Base-T, so I’d check your connections and router, etc.

I'm still unsure what's going on here. I unplugged the Ethernet cable from my main desktop, which gets internet download speeds of hundreds of megabits/sec, and plugged it into the Quicksilver. Downloading a 55 MB file from the Garden with InterWebPPC took about 3-4 minutes, which implies a download speed of about 2 megabits/sec. This was an http connection, so not encrypted. I then tried about ten different speed testing web sites. Most would not run, but one reported 26 mbsec and the other 15 mbsec. I'm not sure if these numbers are accurate or if they might be skewed by the slow processing time of the Javascript used to run the test and animate the page.

Using file sharing, I then copied that same 55 MB file from the Quicksilver to my MacBook Air, and it only took 6 seconds. So I think the network connection is OK, and the slowdown is somewhere with Macintosh Garden or InterWebPPC's http-based download behavior. I tried downloading the same file again via FTP (via InterWebPPC) and it was similarly slow. Same with downloading large test files from other web sites, so it's not anything specific to the Garden.

You'd think it must be my internet connection that's slow, but it's not. I just tried downloading the same file again from another computer and it only took a few seconds.

 

[Phipli]

I don't think it was Spotlight indexing, none of the SCSI volumes were even mounted or appearing in Disk Utility, and those volumes only have a single digit number of files to index anyway. It seemed like some type of SCSI fault condition that was completely tying up the processor. Upon rebooting it went back to normal.

Ah fair enough.

To be honest, I wouldn't run a SCSI SD adapters on a PCI card in a G4. It's a bit of an edge case. Nice if it works, but not surprising if it doesn't. It's being developed by a small number of people to work with classic computers, and the G4 isn't one of the target machines that it will have got much testing on, or the card you're using.

Does everything behave if the ZuluSCSI isn't plugged in?

 

[bigmessowires]

Everything seems to be behaving with ZuluSCSI disconnected. I'm only planning to use it for transferring files back and forth with older machines, not for regular use.

While I'm dribbling stream of consciousness thoughts, here's another: Tetris Max basically doesn't work under Classic Mode. This is the first time I've ever seen it run in that environment. It runs, yes, and everything seems OK for the first piece or two, but then it develops horrible keyboard lag, or some keys just plain don't work. It feels glitchy and unusable. I tried toggling full-screen on and off, and setting the video to 256 colors, but that didn't make much difference. Another of my old games (Dr. Max) had similar problems.

Then I tried Jewelbox, another early 1990s falling blocks game that was one of my favorites. It showed very similar problems as Tetris Max, but since it's a slower-paced game the problem wasn't quite as much of an obstacle. But I still ended up dropping pieces in the wrong spot fairly frequently, and fighting with the keyboard.

Both games play smoothly on this same computer when booted in OS9 directly. I have very little experience with Classic Mode, but are these kinds of problems typical? I'd thought it was a mostly faithful emulation of OS9 on OSX, but perhaps not.

 

[Phipli]

Everything seems to be behaving with ZuluSCSI disconnected. I'm only planning to use it for transferring files back and forth with older machines, not for regular use.

I'd still tend to just pull the SD card out and mount the image files using a card reader. My main Linux tower has a built in card reader for this sort of thing

While I'm dribbling stream of consciousness thoughts, here's another: Tetris Max basically doesn't work under Classic Mode. This is the first time I've ever seen it run in that environment. It runs, yes, and everything seems OK for the first piece or two, but then it develops horrible keyboard lag, or some keys just plain don't work. It feels glitchy and unusable. I tried toggling full-screen on and off, and setting the video to 256 colors, but that didn't make much difference. Another of my old games (Dr. Max) had similar problems.

Then I tried Jewelbox, another early 1990s falling blocks game that was one of my favorites. It showed very similar problems as Tetris Max, but since it's a slower-paced game the problem wasn't quite as much of an obstacle. But I still ended up dropping pieces in the wrong spot fairly frequently, and fighting with the keyboard.

Both games play smoothly on this same computer when booted in OS9 directly. I have very little experience with Classic Mode, but are these kinds of problems typical? I'd thought it was a mostly faithful emulation of OS9 on OSX, but perhaps not.

That... Is a very big topic. During the transition there were lots of descriptions of how Classic mode worked. What was direct access, what was spoofed etc etc.

Hopefully someone here can help you.

Clearly what you really need to do is port Tetris Max to Carbon, then to Coco... Then to 64 bit... Then to Metal!

 

[bigmessowires]

I'd still tend to just pull the SD card out and mount the image files using a card reader. My main Linux tower has a built in card reader for this sort of thing

You mean a card reader on the G4? I don't think USB1.1 is fast enough to make that feasible, but maybe on the USB 2.0 card. That would give access to image files though, not to emulated drives. The goal here is to support easy ferrying of data between something like an SE/30 and the Quicksilver. It's also convenient for sharing with a modern computer, though I can also just do that with network file sharing.

More Gremlins. Under OS9 the computer complains that it can't sleep, because one of the devices does not support sleep. I suspect the USB card. Under OSX if the computer tries to sleep, the screen goes black while the computer stays on, but then it can't be revived. Doh! It just sits there with a black screen and the fan running.

 

[Phipli]

The goal here is to support easy ferrying of data between something like an SE/30 and the Quicksilver. It's also convenient for sharing with a modern computer, though I can also just do that with network file sharing.

Truth is I tend to just use ethernet cards, it's far easier than any kind of messing with SD cards.

 

[treellama]

Games in particular have lots of issues in classic mode, yes. As do USB 2 cards in OS 9.

 

[Phipli]

As do USB 2 cards in OS 9.

The NEC cards usually just fall back to USB1.1 and mostly work. No worse than USB 1.1 cards (neither are perfect unless you spend a lot of time testing different driver versions).

 

[bigmessowires]

I removed the USB 2.0 card, and now the computer goes quiet when I put it to sleep in OSX. So that was at least part of the problem. When I hit a key, the computer fires up again, but the display never turns back on. I'm still stuck with a black screen and the fan running.

Then I removed the SCSI card, so only the SATA card remains. Same problem. It will go to sleep, and it will wake up but the screen remains black.

If I remove the SATA card and return to IDE booting, then sleep works normally.

The SATA card is an Adaptec 1210SA which I believe several other people are using successfully.

Maybe I should just disable sleep? My appetite for debugging sleep issues on multiple cards here is not very large.

 

[bigmessowires]

After further review, the sleep problems are all the SATA card's fault. If I remove that card but reinstall the USB 2.0 and SCSI cards, sleep works OK.

I know there was a sleep-related issue about replacing a voltage regulator in some SATA controllers, but I didn't think that applied to the Adaptec. I'll go check the details in the other thread. In the worst case, I can use the IDE-to-SATA adapter with my SSD, which was still pretty fast even if not as fast as the SATA PCI card.

 

[LaPorta]

I can at least vouch for sleep working properly with my Adaptec USB 2.0 card...and it does run USB 2.0 speed.

As for Classic...yeah...I don't really use it. If I want something running on 9, I just start the QS in 9 and then use things. If you want a fun OS X-based Tetris, get a copy of Quinn. I believe I still have a version that worked under 10.4. After TetrisMax disappeared, that was what I then turned to in the early 2000s.

 

[bigmessowires]

If it turns out that my USB card is a contributing factor to sleep problems, then I'll buy the one you have, @LaPorta. I only bought a different one because I thought having an internal USB 2.0 port might be handy, although now that I've seen the performance, an internal USB port is probably not useful. But I think my sleep problems are SATA-related and not USB.

I wonder what the technical reasons are for Classic doing a poor job for games. It shouldn't be a performance issue, I'd think, since it's doesn't need to emulate a CPU, but it needs to run OS9 in a sandbox. What happens if you run Basilisk II for PowerPC under OSX10.4, emulating OS9.2.2? Or even Sheepshaver for PowerPC, if there is such a thing. I should try it and see if it's any smoother for older games.

 

[LaPorta]

That would be an interesting experiment to see if it works!

I had started typing the comment about the card at the same time you said it was the other card causing your issue and didn't see it...sorry!

As for more to do: I think a pretty enduring and fun game under OS X is Stronghold.