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Living the dreamm~ PowerMac G5

Link4Electronics

Link4Electronics

6502
Screenshot_2025-10-08_19-23-58.pngScreenshot_2025-10-08_20-43-00.pngGPU: Radeon R5 230 2GB
I had youtube working with yt-dlp, but unfortunate there's a fight going on between google youtube and the maintainer of the lua script, but others streaming websites they do work. Can play the native Myth II Linux PPC32 port too.
Compiled and uploaded them at: https://archive.org/details/linuxppc64compiled

Best regards,
Link.
 
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Let's go deeper, Plan9 for ppc, anyone? 😂
Never used NetBSD, most closely that I tried is FreeBSD...
Messed with haiku, beos, amigaos many years ago. Good stuff.

Best regards,
Link.
 
Screenshot_2025-10-29_07-15-41.png
Clownmdemu works now, which I helped to make it work on big-endian linux: https://github.com/Clownacy/clownmdemu-frontend
Put a bluray drive too from a laptop, looks ghetto for now
Screenshot_20251030_082301.png
Colheita Maldita (Children of the corn 1984) in time for halloween (despite we don't celebrate it in my country, but anyway)
Screenshot_20251030_082322.png
Had to make and adapter for the slimline sata to normal sata power, and unfortunately GPU doesn't have hardware acceleration for H.264, playing on vlc or mpv was like a slideshow presentation, if I had an Radeon 6950 or 6970 which do have hardware acceleartion for H.264 probably would play without issues. Guess gonna play Scooby-doo for sega genesis or snes on emulator
Screenshot_20251030_082331.png
Happy halloween!

Best regards,
Link.
 
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Nice, thanks for posting! How much of this could/would work on a G4? Does "hello world" need at least 64 bits now?
 
Well you would be surprised then, most of them still supports 32-bit. There's talk at mailing list of debian-powerpc about firefox for ppc32 (still has some issues).
Gamed on an Apple TV Gen1, which is x86 32-bit (unfortunately some games ran very slow due swap on hard drive and less than 256MB ram)
I understand it's not the same thing as G4. Don't have a Power Mac G4, only Mac Mini G4, tried linux once but felt very limited with OpenGL 1.3 or 1.4 expposed from Radeon 9200 (iirc dhewm3 doom 3 port is GL 1.3 could run this one), most projects require OpenGL 2.x minimal, then returned to dualboot setup (OX X Tiger + macOS 9). Now the PM G4 my theory is, maxing to 2GB ram, get the dual cpu model, I think there's CPU swap or OC 2GHz for PM G4, and adding one of these AGP cards: Radeon HD 2500 PRO, Radeon HD 2600 PRO/XT, Radeon HD 3450, Radeon HD 3650, Radeon HD 3850, Radeon HD 3870, Radeon HD 4350, Radeon HD 4650 or Radeon HD 4670, should have OpenGL 3.2 on linux (as long running Mesa 24.1.6, after this version mesa 24.2.x they broke something).
PowerPC still a thing in Europe due Amiga, some of these ports are being able to run on big-endian devices thanks to some people from amiga scene, amiga x1000 and x5000 they're powerpc64 but 32-bit userland due to the U-boot bios, so they run 32-bit version of the applications.

Best regards,
Link.
 
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Link4Electronics said:
Radeon HD 2500 PRO, Radeon HD 2600 PRO/XT, Radeon HD 3450, Radeon HD 3650, Radeon HD 3850, Radeon HD 3870, Radeon HD 4350, Radeon HD 4650 or Radeon HD 4670,
Click to expand...
I highly doubt any of those would work on a Power Mac G4 due to a lack of Open Firmware support. Unless I'm mistaken?

I'm not sure if a Power Mac G4, with either an unsupported graphics card installed or no card installed, could boot with a blank screen and begin working when the OS drivers take over, as Intel Macs and PCs usually can.

c
 
CC_333 said:
I highly doubt any of those would work on a Power Mac G4 due to a lack of Open Firmware support. Unless I'm mistaken?

I'm not sure if a Power Mac G4, with either an unsupported graphics card installed or no card installed, could boot with a blank screen and begin working when the OS drivers take over, as Intel Macs and PCs usually can.

c
Click to expand...
For Linux, no need for Open Firmware support. My R5 230 doesn't have Open Firmware support, have a black screen until linux kernel boots, then I have a screen. For the G4 situation I then remember that there's AGP voltage key, 4x vs 8x, don't know if they made them universal key to accept both slots. I think I saw someone developped some adapters to put pci-e card slot(it was a forum, not really this site). I installed Debian linux with geforce 6600 first to be able to see Open Firmware and type boot ud,:\\:tbxi. After the installation was complete, removed geforce and put the radeon card.

Best regards,
Link.
 
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Mini vMac worksScreenshot_2025-11-13_14-58-59.png
Screenshot_2025-11-13_15-12-15.png
Mua-hua-ha-ha-ha - evil laugh from cinematic Grand Vizier Jaffar

BasiliskII crashes when initializes OpenGL.

I started to compile and provide the packages at https://github.com/Link4Electronics/archpower-packages
You're just a sudo pacman -Syu away of using some of these packages.

@herd maybe in the future I start providing some packages for G4, for the ones that at least have altivec, don't have any G3 unfortunate, unless someone test them and tell me they still work regardless of having atltivec or not (not all programs require or take advantage of altivec).

Regards,
Link
 
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Link4Electronics said:
maybe in the future I start providing some packages for G4, for the ones that at least have altivec, don't have any G3 unfortunate, unless someone test them and tell me they still work regardless of having atltivec or not (not all programs require or take advantage of altivec).
Click to expand...
The G4 is basically a faster G3 with altivec tacked on, isn't it?

c
 
Link4Electronics said:
Yes, I thought there were some G4 without it, but all MPC74xx do have altivec.
Click to expand...
That's pretty much true, but I think other than altivec and proper SMP (multi CPU) support, the core G4 instruction set is quite similar to the G3's.

But, I'm neither a CPU expert nor a coder, so I can't say for certain.

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable about such matters will chime in....

c
 
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