Windows NT PPC on Macs

[3lectr1cPPC]

Hah, I thought that was a slot loader for a second before I clicked on the image.

 

[croissantking]

Good Lord

 

[cheesestraws]

There is something deeply and hilariously perverse about that image.

 

[joshc]

It's so wrong but so right.

 

[croissantking]

It's so wrong but so right.

Actually it's just wrong

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

I will genuinely dual-boot this on my PDQ if they get old world support working. Would be hilarious.

 

[croissantking]

I got this running on my G4/400 PCI Graphics with all beige accessories.



Of course, I firstly had to make an opening in the backplate and install an ADB port on the logic board, since USB support is absent. I love it! It's like the exact opposite scenario of the USB port I fitted to the Beige G3. And booting up the Yikes with an Apple Extended Keyboard I is almost as wrong as running NT4 on this thing. Almost.



It's such a bizarre experience to run NT on this machine. It takes me back to my secondary school in 1999/2000 which was full of P200s with NT4 in the computer room.

I'd love to have sound and networking support, hope that comes in a future version It seems to be running stable with no graphical glitches. And it is fast!

Also, hah. This is just like my SE/30:



Couple of tips for the installation on this machine:

- You do need to do the ADB port mod, sorry, it is a fiddle.
- The hard drive has to be connected to the 16.6MB/s CD-ROM IDE bus. I installed it in the Zip drive bay.
- Set the hard drive to Master, and the CD-ROM drive to Slave. Changing Master/Slave setting later on breaks the installation.
- You may get a lot of errors trying to start the installation off the NT4 CD-ROM from the ARC firmware menu. It does eventually work, it almost seems like the CD-ROM drive needs to settle. Once you get past a certain point it does run smoothly. When I got repeated read errors, shutting down the machine and then cold starting seemed to help.

 

[croissantking]

NT3.51 support has been added with release v0.05, so I had to give that a shot View attachment 76056

Any pics of your ADB mod on the iMac? Would like to see

 

[Daniël]

Any pics of your ADB mod on the iMac? Would like to see

I'll try to get some, but be warned, it's fairly ugly at the moment

The problem is that the port is located behind the right screwpost for the side panel, outside of the I/O opening.
So installing the port there means you physically cannot insert ADB devices, it doesn't fit behind the screwpost and you have no access to it regardless.

My current solution is to have the MiniDIN-4 port hang off four wires, and have the side panel off so it can hang out freely, but it's not what I'd want as a final solution.
Ideally I'd add a hole for the ADB port in the sidepanel, so I can fit a panelmount connector that I'd connect with DuPont connectors on the logicboard.

I could use the mezzanine slot cover, but I want to keep that open for a DB-19 connector for a floppy drive (but that's another project )

 

[croissantking]

I'll try to get some, but be warned, it's fairly ugly at the moment

The problem is that the port is located behind the right screwpost for the side panel, outside of the I/O opening.
So installing the port there means you physically cannot insert ADB devices, it doesn't fit behind the screwpost and you have no access to it regardless.

My current solution is to have the MiniDIN-4 port hang off four wires, and have the side panel off so it can hang out freely, but it's not what I'd want as a final solution.
Ideally I'd add a hole for the ADB port in the sidepanel, so I can fit a panelmount connector that I'd connect with DuPont connectors on the logicboard.

I could use the mezzanine slot cover, but I want to keep that open for a DB-19 connector for a floppy drive (but that's another project )

Damn those guys at Apple for putting it behind a screwpost! It was definitely just meant for prototyping then.

 

[Rairii]

NT3.51 support has been added with release v0.05, so I had to give that a shot View attachment 76056

Not only is this the first NT 3.51 installation on real hardware at all to my knowledge (wanted to do it on my lombard but had issues with the new SSD i put in, waiting for a used industrial SSD to arrive from ebay), this is also the checked build which I had issues with under emulation (would always fail trying to write to HD for some reason).

You should be able to just install NT 4 to the same partition and have a dualboot, it worked for me under emulation

 

[croissantking]

I could use the mezzanine slot cover, but I want to keep that open for a DB-19 connector for a floppy drive (but that's another project )

Is the slot cover wide enough to accomodate a DB-19 connector and a mini-DIN?

You should be able to just install NT 4 to the same partition and have a dualboot, it worked for me under emulation

Later I will try to install 3.51 alongside my working installation of 4.0.

 

[Nixontheknight]

I got this running on my G4/400 PCI Graphics with all beige accessories.

View attachment 76151

Of course, I firstly had to make an opening in the backplate and install an ADB port on the logic board, since USB support is absent. I love it! It's like the exact opposite scenario of the USB port I fitted to the Beige G3. And booting up the Yikes with an Apple Extended Keyboard I is almost as wrong as running NT4 on this thing. Almost.

View attachment 76152

It's such a bizarre experience to run NT on this machine. It takes me back to my secondary school in 1999/2000 which was full of P200s with NT4 in the computer room.

I'd love to have sound and networking support, hope that comes in a future version It seems to be running stable with no graphical glitches. And it is fast!

Also, hah. This is just like my SE/30:

View attachment 76155

Couple of tips for the installation on this machine:

- You do need to do the ADB port mod, sorry, it is a fiddle.
- The hard drive has to be connected to the 16.6MB/s CD-ROM IDE bus. I installed it in the Zip drive bay.
- Set the hard drive to Master, and the CD-ROM drive to Slave. Changing Master/Slave setting later on breaks the installation.
- You may get a lot of errors trying to start the installation off the NT4 CD-ROM from the ARC firmware menu. It does eventually work, it almost seems like the CD-ROM drive needs to settle. Once you get past a certain point it does run smoothly. When I got repeated read errors, shutting down the machine and then cold starting seemed to help.

I wonder if the ADK would work

 

[croissantking]

I wonder if the ADK would work

AppleDesign Keyboard? Yes, it would. I started using a M0487 but got stuck during WinNT setup when it said to press page down to read the rest of the end user agreement

 

[Rairii]

yeah I saw the page down thing in michael mjd's video, it's hilarious

the funny thing is NT 4 beta 2 would probably work fine, as it shows the (placeholder) EULA in graphical setup rather than text setup!

I can probably figure out a binary patch for setupdd to bypass the EULA showing too, or just change the keys to arrow keys rather than pageup/pagedown...

 

[croissantking]

I just got my first BSOD. Went to restart, and my hard drive failed (click, click, click…). Have to start again now.

 

[Daniël]

Any pics of your ADB mod on the iMac? Would like to see

To make it a bit easy to see, here's the components outlined on a non-modded Trayloader board. On top go the inductors, on the bottom the fuse. You can use the Yikes! guide's component list for this mod (minus the capacitors of course).




You can see where the port would face, toward the upper right of the modem hole port (looking at the I/O shield at the side of the machine), behind the screwpost. The left and right pair of pins do perfectly fit two 2.54mm pin headers, so that could be a way of having connectors on board to go to a separate MiniDIN-4 port.

It wouldn't fit on the mezzanine slot cover alongside a floppy connector, as seen here, but there is enough "dead space" on the shield to potentially drill some holes for other connectors, such as besides or underneath the audio I/O.

 

[croissantking]

Interesting, @Daniël

 

[KGLlewellyn]

Not only is this the first NT 3.51 installation on real hardware at all to my knowledge (wanted to do it on my lombard but had issues with the new SSD i put in, waiting for a used industrial SSD to arrive from ebay), this is also the checked build which I had issues with under emulation (would always fail trying to write to HD for some reason).

You should be able to just install NT 4 to the same partition and have a dualboot, it worked for me under emulation

Dualboot with 3.51 works great on my G4 upgraded B&W, a G4 on such an old OS is ridiculous haha.

By the way, I note that there is driver support for the Grackle PCI bus? Does that mean theoretically we could install PCI cards that have NT driver support in our G3/G4 towers and have them work? It'd be nice to add a PCI NIC and Soundcard. That'd make the OS feel very usable.

 

[croissantking]

By the way, I note that there is driver support for the Grackle PCI bus? Does that mean theoretically we could install PCI cards that have NT driver support in our G3/G4 towers and have them work? It'd be nice to add a PCI NIC and Soundcard. That'd make the OS feel very usable.

@Rairii said this on the MacRumors forums:

The HAL can enumerate the PCI bus fine, the main issue is that I'm not sure if the PCI interrupts are working. I tried to implement them but haven't actually checked if the implementation works yet; if it does, then the PCI IDE controller on Yosemite should work under NT (not ARC firmware), but I don't think anybody's checked yet.