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Mac Os X For Powerpc G4

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Blog 2020/5/7

  1. Powerpc Download For Mac
  2. Powerpc For Mac Os X

TenFourFox is an adaptation of Firefox 17 for PowerPC Macs, with two different G4 versions (if you're running Leopard on a G4, you'll probably end up using the 7450/G4e version) and a G5 version, so any PPC Mac running Leopard can run it. The current version of TenFourFox is 17.0.7. Support for pre-OS X Mac applications. Unlike the Intel models, a G4 Mac mini running Mac OS X 10.4 can run Mac OS 9 'Classic' applications, as long as a bootable copy of the OS 9 System Folder is installed from which to run the Classic environment. As of Mac OS X 10.5, the ability to run the Classic Environment was removed.

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For that we can thank MorphOS 3.5, a free-to-try Amigalike operating system developed by Amiga and PowerPC aficionados. With a simple download and a CD-burn, you can turn an aging G4-era Macintosh. Quite a few people still have Power Mac G5s kicking around, and quite a few people have iMac G3s around as well. That's our guess of what still has the most ground in the PowerPC World. The PPC Archive team ourselves has a variety of machines, ranging from iMac G3s, Blue and Whites, iBooks, PowerBooks, and G5 systems! What operating system does the iMac G4 run on? The original iMac included either a Mac OS X 10.4.11 operating system or the Mac OS 9.2.2. Later models were released with the improved Mac OS X 10.5.8 operating system. Content provided for informational purposes only. EBay is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple.

Here are some notes on how I set up an installation of OS X Tiger (10.4)on an emulated PowerPC G4 using QEMU,on a modern x86_64 Mac.

This setup was performed using QEMU 5.0.0 (obtained via brew install qemu).

Note: at some point during this process -cdrom /dev/cdrom seems to have stopped working, but -cdrom /dev/disk2 works.

Step 1: Initial installation

In this step we will format the disk and perform the initial OS X installation.

Download a copy of the2Z691-5305-A OS X Tiger installation DVDand burn it to a physical DVD.

Note: for some reason qemu does not seem to be able to boot .iso files of the OS X installation DVD (using -cdrom tiger.iso),but if you burn that .iso to a physical DVD and then use -cdrom /dev/disk2, it works.

Mac

Boot the DVD to verify it works:

If you see the grey Apple logo, the DVD is working correctly with QEMU:

Quit QEMU and create a 127GB QEMU disk:

Boot the install DVD with the disk attached and being the installation. QEMU will exit when the installer reboots.

When the installer reaches the disk selection screen, there will be no disks to choose from, because the disk has not been partitioned yet:

Start up Disk Utility:

'Erase' the disk to partition and format it:

Quit Disk Utility and the installer should now see the newly formatted partition:

The install will take quite some time (over an hour). When it completes, it will reboot, which will cause QEMU to exit (due to the -no-reboot flag).

At this point you may (physically) eject the installation DVD (from your host Mac).

Mark the disk as read-only to prevent any accidental writes to it (which would cause any snapshots based on this disk to become corrupt):

Step 2: User account creation, system updates

In this step we will create a user account and install all of the system updates.

Create a snapshot of the disk (think of this as forking the hard drive):

The system updates can either be installed using the Software Update utility (iteratively repeated across many reboots),or you can download and install them manually.

The manual route is quicker because some of the updates are bundled, and you don't have to wait on Software Update to detect which updates have / haven't been installed yet.

To install the updates manually,download (on your host Mac) item #29 (Tiger_Updates.dmg_.zip)from the 'Mac OS X for PPC' pageof macintoshgarden.org.

Unzip that file and convert the dmg to a DVD image:

We can now use tiger-updates.cdr as a virtual DVD with QEMU.

Boot the G4 and create a user account:

Note: if you plan on using Software Update rather than tiger-updates.cdr, you man omit the -cdrom tiger-updates.cdr line from the above command.

Note: this boot may take several minutes to get started.

This install was set up with user macuser and password macuser:

Mac

This installation was set up with the Central timezone:

Powerpc

Disable the screen saver and power-saving features:

Open up System Preferences and:

  • Display & Screen Saver -> Screensaver -> Start screen saver -> Never
  • Energy Saver
    • Put the computer to sleep when it is inactive for -> Never
    • Put the display to sleep when the computer is inactive for -> Never

If you did not use Software Update, open up the Tiger_Updates 'DVD' and install all of the updates:

If you go with the updates DVD route, make sure you run Software Update at the end just to be sure you've covered everything. Chess for free mac.

Mark the snapshot read-only to prevent accidental writes to it:

I've got a Dell Laptop for doing 1 x 5 minute job a week!Mitch.

Step 3: Web browser, video player, text editor

In this step we will install TenFourFox, VLC and TextWrangler.

Create a snapshot of the disk:

TenFourFox is a fork of the Firefox web browser which is currently supported on Tiger/PPC.Their website links to the latest version,FPR22.

Trapcode torrent for mac osx. The latest version of VLCfor Tiger/PPC is 0.9.10,which is still available from their downloads page.

The latest version of TextWranglerfor Tiger/PPC is 3.1,available via Bare Bonesor macintoshgarden.org.

Strangely, no combination of using Disk Utility and hdiutil to create .dmg or .cdr images of TenFourFox.app seemed to work with Tiger:

Note: in retrospect, perhaps this was an APFS vs. HFS+ issue?

I resorted to burning TenFourFox, VLC, and TextWrangler to a physical DVD and passing it through to QEMU.

Note: even burning to a physical CD-ROM didn't work -- it had to be a DVD.

Drag the applications into /Applications.

Shutdown the G4 and mark the disk read-only:

Step 4: Xcode, Tigerbrew

In this step we will set up a development environment for building modern Unix software.

Create a snapshot of the disk:

The latest version of Xcode Tools for Tiger/PPC is 2.5,which is still available via Apple (search for 'xcode 2.5' at https://developer.apple.com/download/more/, requires login),or via macintoshgarden.orgfrom their Xcode page.

Again, I had to burn this to a physical DVD in order to use it with QEMU.

Boot the G4 and install the Xcode Tools:

Tigerbrewis a fork of Homebrewfor PowerPC Macs running Tiger or Leopard.

Open up a terminal on the emulated G4 and use the following commands to install Tigerbrew:

Also, change Terminal.app to spawn a 'login' bash shell:

  • Terminal -> Preferences -> Execute this command -> /bin/bash -l

Don't forget to mark the disk image read-only:

Mac Os X For Powerpc G4

Boot the DVD to verify it works:

If you see the grey Apple logo, the DVD is working correctly with QEMU:

Quit QEMU and create a 127GB QEMU disk:

Boot the install DVD with the disk attached and being the installation. QEMU will exit when the installer reboots.

When the installer reaches the disk selection screen, there will be no disks to choose from, because the disk has not been partitioned yet:

Start up Disk Utility:

'Erase' the disk to partition and format it:

Quit Disk Utility and the installer should now see the newly formatted partition:

The install will take quite some time (over an hour). When it completes, it will reboot, which will cause QEMU to exit (due to the -no-reboot flag).

At this point you may (physically) eject the installation DVD (from your host Mac).

Mark the disk as read-only to prevent any accidental writes to it (which would cause any snapshots based on this disk to become corrupt):

Step 2: User account creation, system updates

In this step we will create a user account and install all of the system updates.

Create a snapshot of the disk (think of this as forking the hard drive):

The system updates can either be installed using the Software Update utility (iteratively repeated across many reboots),or you can download and install them manually.

The manual route is quicker because some of the updates are bundled, and you don't have to wait on Software Update to detect which updates have / haven't been installed yet.

To install the updates manually,download (on your host Mac) item #29 (Tiger_Updates.dmg_.zip)from the 'Mac OS X for PPC' pageof macintoshgarden.org.

Unzip that file and convert the dmg to a DVD image:

We can now use tiger-updates.cdr as a virtual DVD with QEMU.

Boot the G4 and create a user account:

Note: if you plan on using Software Update rather than tiger-updates.cdr, you man omit the -cdrom tiger-updates.cdr line from the above command.

Note: this boot may take several minutes to get started.

This install was set up with user macuser and password macuser:

This installation was set up with the Central timezone:

Disable the screen saver and power-saving features:

Open up System Preferences and:

  • Display & Screen Saver -> Screensaver -> Start screen saver -> Never
  • Energy Saver
    • Put the computer to sleep when it is inactive for -> Never
    • Put the display to sleep when the computer is inactive for -> Never

If you did not use Software Update, open up the Tiger_Updates 'DVD' and install all of the updates:

If you go with the updates DVD route, make sure you run Software Update at the end just to be sure you've covered everything. Chess for free mac.

Mark the snapshot read-only to prevent accidental writes to it:

I've got a Dell Laptop for doing 1 x 5 minute job a week!Mitch.

Step 3: Web browser, video player, text editor

In this step we will install TenFourFox, VLC and TextWrangler.

Create a snapshot of the disk:

TenFourFox is a fork of the Firefox web browser which is currently supported on Tiger/PPC.Their website links to the latest version,FPR22.

Trapcode torrent for mac osx. The latest version of VLCfor Tiger/PPC is 0.9.10,which is still available from their downloads page.

The latest version of TextWranglerfor Tiger/PPC is 3.1,available via Bare Bonesor macintoshgarden.org.

Strangely, no combination of using Disk Utility and hdiutil to create .dmg or .cdr images of TenFourFox.app seemed to work with Tiger:

Note: in retrospect, perhaps this was an APFS vs. HFS+ issue?

I resorted to burning TenFourFox, VLC, and TextWrangler to a physical DVD and passing it through to QEMU.

Note: even burning to a physical CD-ROM didn't work -- it had to be a DVD.

Drag the applications into /Applications.

Shutdown the G4 and mark the disk read-only:

Step 4: Xcode, Tigerbrew

In this step we will set up a development environment for building modern Unix software.

Create a snapshot of the disk:

The latest version of Xcode Tools for Tiger/PPC is 2.5,which is still available via Apple (search for 'xcode 2.5' at https://developer.apple.com/download/more/, requires login),or via macintoshgarden.orgfrom their Xcode page.

Again, I had to burn this to a physical DVD in order to use it with QEMU.

Boot the G4 and install the Xcode Tools:

Tigerbrewis a fork of Homebrewfor PowerPC Macs running Tiger or Leopard.

Open up a terminal on the emulated G4 and use the following commands to install Tigerbrew:

Also, change Terminal.app to spawn a 'login' bash shell:

  • Terminal -> Preferences -> Execute this command -> /bin/bash -l

Don't forget to mark the disk image read-only:

Using these QEMU hard drive images

At this point we've created a series of four chained hard drive images:

We can squash these images into a single, combined, stand-alone hard drive image:

We can then boot using that combined image directly, without the use of any snapshots.This is analogous to having a real Mac with a physical hard drive:

Or, we could treat combined.qcow2 as a 'golden master'and create snapshots based off of it, perhaps to try out some experimental tigerbrew packages:

Perhaps in experiment-1.qcow2 we try out gcc-7, and in experiment-2.qcow2 we try out llvm, etc.

Each of these snapshots can be used with the above command line as the -hda argument:

  • qemu-system-ppc .. -hda experiment-2.qcow2

We could even create further branches off of e.g. experiment-2.qcow2:

Perhaps we decide that experiment-2B.qcow2 was the keeper and the rest can be gotten rid of?

combined.qcow2 now contains the changes from experiment-2.qcow2 and experiment-2B.qcow2.

Thus far we've been branching off of the 'tip',but we could just as easily branch off several points in the snapshot tree.For example, if we hadn't merged the images into combined.qcow2,we could make a 'daily driver' snapshot for web browsing based off of 3-browser.qcow2,and a 'dev box' for doing development work based off of 4-tigerbrew.qcow2:

Let's say we accidentally hosed our dev box with a careless rm -rf /. Starting over with a new dev box is trivial:

Powerpc Download For Mac

Etc :)

Powerpc For Mac Os X

Resources:

PowerPC Software

Take a look at what's available. We are sure you'll
find something to make your OS X experience better!
Just click on the title of the page you would like to visit ;)
Welcome to the PowerPC Archive, we hope you enjoy your stay!

Essentials

Here is where you find our recommended applications that are used on a day-to-day basis.

Utilities

Need some cool tools to do a bit more out of your Mac such as an alarm clock or benchmarks?

Productivity

Need a Word processor,
or get the full rundown on your stocks? Or sync files between computers?

Multimedia

So you want to watch that DVD you have next to you. Not a problem with a PPC! Still great for 720p!

Gaming

Have some downtime? Make the most of it and spend hours upon hours with these games.

Apple Downloads

Find updates for OS X. Such as Combo Updates (10.4.11, 10.5.8), QuickTime, iTunes, Java, iLife, iWork, and everything Apple!

Server Downloads

PowerPC Macs can still serve well as servers! File Sharing, Backups and NetBooting, we've found some software for you!

Customization

Want to make your Mac look like
a brand new Intel one with
themes, or screensavers?
We have a page just for that!

Shareware Apps

We tested shareware apps, however they can't be downloaded here. Don't worry, you can still find
some info out on them!
Companies no longer carry firmware downloads for CPU upgrades from companies such as Sonnet, PowerLogix, and GigaDesign.
Many requested a separate page specific to Tiger, since most of our selection here is for OS X Leopard. Coming Summer 2016

OS 9 Software COMING SOON

To support the old classic machines, we will soon have a
selection of software that will work with these OS9 Macs.
Coming Fall 2016

What Macs do you Own?

We posted a poll to see what computer has the most votes. While a G5 may be a decent day-to-day computer, the G3's are vintage and still can do some amazing things such as being the jukebox at a party or a kitchen computer, or go to extreme lengths and use them as your daily machine!
The list is a bit long, so why not fill the text here! Quite a few people still have Power Mac G5s kicking around, and quite a few people have iMac G3s around as well. That's our guess of what still has the most ground in the PowerPC World. The PPC Archive team ourselves has a variety of machines, ranging from iMac G3s, Blue and Whites, iBooks, PowerBooks, and G5 systems!
Some, still have Xserve computers that they use! Crazy thought, a rack server as a main PPC mac, but hey it's still a Mac! All the computers on the list to the right are cool, and each one pushed Apple further and further into the modern world. No other PC was designed like the early 2000 Apple computers. Today, there is a boatload of all in one computers like the current iMac. All the laptops out there are out to beat the 'ultrabook' MacBook Air. Companies such as Dell and HP attempt to steal the design that makes the MacBook Pro what it is. People look at the Mac mini as a excellent home computer or to make a super cool TV Media Center Setup, or even go to the extreme and use one as a server for 30+ iMacs! All of these design terms were the same during the PowerPC era of time!
At the end of the day, Apple is still the one to beat!




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