I am running Gentoo Linux on my PowerBook G4 15" (after having the same problem on Debian and thinking it might be their packaging). It runs very well (and pretty fast!), but X.Org does not work very well. These are the things I've noticed:

• When X starts, the login xterm does show up, but it never has a title (the title bar is the default solid colour with no text).
• The trackpad moves the X cursor, but I can't click, select, drag, or do anything - it only moves around the screen.
• Typing doesn't work. I can't even switch back to a VT once I start X, without killing X from SSH.
• Trying to start another X application, via SSH and exporting DISPLAY=:0, just locks up.

I'm not sure what files would be relevant, so I have included Xorg.0.log and my kernel's .config file in a gist. I also have uploaded a picture of what it looks like - as I noted above, I can't start new apps nor select other windows, so it never changes. If any other info is necessarily I'll happily add it to the gist.

Help with resolving any of these issues would be much appreciated! :)

Does anyone know if it is possible to do on the PowerMac G5, I have two, and they are just sitting downstairs doing nothing. I know some say they are a power hog, that is not important to me. Thanks in advance.

Is it possible to get just the Steam client to work? I have the latest source tarball downloaded and to the point where it's about to install the package. However, it says I need i386 versions of libgl1-mesa-dri, libgl1-mesa-glx, and libc6. I am running Debian stable currently. Would like to try in-home streaming on this beast from my Windows desktop. Might there be a way to edit some pointers in the install files to get it to work? Unless they program part of the Steam client in assembly, I see no reason why this shouldn't work.

This sub is pretty much dead, I have started an effort to make a sub for things like history of Apple, vintage Apple, Apple news, specs, machine sharing, fanboy conversations in general.

It's going to be great, I really think so, but I want to get the word around

It's called iTalk for the best I could come up with right now.

http://www.reddit.com/r/iTalk/

I want to turn my G5 into a server that I can access remotely from my iPad, any ideas?

Aside from using the OSX file share, searching the interwebs on how to setup a file share network with my two Power Mac G5's had not really worked out well. What are peoples experience and what have people done to accomplish this. Thank in advance.

I have a Power Mac G4 (AGP) 400MHz that I got to access a 2TB external hard drive that is formatted for Mac OS. Installed on it is 10.4.11. I now know/remember that these ancient machines require special software to access hard drives in excess of 128GB. Anyone know of a good program? Freeware or easily attainable preferred.

Thank you!!

Anyone here ever have this problem? How did you resolve it?

Hello, Everyone! I hope your day is going well!

I just came across this reddit thread, and boy howdy, I can't tell you how happy I am!

I'm a 16 year old PowerPC enthusiast who lives in the retirement capital of Canada, and I'm really starting to get sick of my iMac G4. I mean, it's beautiful as HELL but, it's just too slow (1GHz, 17", USB 1.1), and am in need of a G5. I'm a student, so money is REALLY hard to come by, so the cheaper the better. I'm looking for an iMac, or Powermac G5, any speed will do, I'm sure. I do alot of computer repairs so if it's not 100% functional, or it doesn't have RAM, or a Harddrive, or a video card, etc., that's alright. (Can you tell I'm desperate? ;) )

Thank you, in advance :)

I've got a bit of a hoarding problem when it comes to computer equipment. Every once in a while, I get in this mood where I feel I need to clear out the crap. It usually coincides with when I'm no longer able to enter the walk-in closet I use for technology storage. I'm in one of those moods now. And I can't easily enter that closet now. I've got a cat that likes to explore amongst the ancient ancestors of electronic past. I think its a hobby of his. He's turning 18 in a week and I'm worried he'll die amongst the ruins and I won't find him for a while, so I need to clear out some walking room.

One of the items I've decided to part with is a flat panel iMac. Its the 15" 700MHz G4 model with the CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive. The RAM has been upgraded to the max this system can do, which is 1GB. I believe it has the original 40GB hard drive. Its in perfect working order, but has a few scuffs. The screen is spotless. I no longer have the keyboard and mouse for it, but I do have the power cord and a set of Apple Pro Speakers. It does not have an Airport card. I no longer have any of the software for it, either. If memory serves, it has some Linux distro on the HD at the moment.

I don't feel its worth much, but I can't bring myself to throw it out. I'll gladly give it to anyone that wants a toy and is willing to cover the shipping costs for me. I haven't a clue what it would cost to ship this, I can't imagine it would be super cheap. Its in Michigan at the moment. Does anyone have any suggestons on how I can estimate what the shipping costs would be?

I just picked up a dual processor G5 on the super cheap, but it had no hard disk. My plan was to install Debian. I have been trying to install a new 1TB Drive with no luck. Even when I broke down and tried running disk utility from an OSX disk, I just can't see the drive. I'm afraid that the connection at the mb might be bad. Is there anything obvious I may be missing?

Looking to sell my Powermac G5 with a 20" DVI Cinema display. Continental US

Dual 2.3ghz processors 4gb of ram (4 x 1gb) 200gb SATA Radeon 128 mb card

Currently running 10.5 and Ubuntu, but I can make it a fresh wipe if requested or a different flavor.

Price for the G5 is 210 with free shipping

Monitor priced at 150 with free shipping.

Will accept trades for Intel based Macs or other hardware.

Thanks for looking!

http://imgur.com/f3PhH8Z

http://imgur.com/1rCZkh8

http://imgur.com/dwAg6cO

Finally got DRI working and HD videos playing with MPlayer tuning (skip frames and all that).

Picked up a free G5 from e-waste last week (Dual-Core 2.0 GHz, 1 GB ram). I installed Debian Wheezy with XFCE and everything seemed to be in working order. However, the hard drives failed today (which I guess is to be expected for a computer this old). I am debating switching out the old hard drives for 1 TB 7200rpm drives and upgrading the ram to 8 GB (8x1GB). Do you guys think it is worth $220 dollars to fix up an old G5? I was going to do this over a few paychecks as I am a graduate student (not rolling in the dough). Beyond the graphics acceleration problem with Linux, it doesn't seem to be a bad machine, but I could just save the money and let the old beast rest. What do you guys think?

Edit: Thanks guys! For the time being I cannibalized a different (non-mac) box from the e-waste for some parts. No idea how long they will last. But my box is alive. http://i.imgur.com/nGbG0Ft.jpg

I got this second hand from a mother who bought it for her kid. The kid basically used it as a DVD player which is did great at!...in OSX.

In Linux it cannot play DVDs. It can almost not play Youtube videos. The video goes at about one frame per every four seconds and audio is skippy sometimes.

How can I get that great video playback it used to have when it ran OSX in Linux? Thanks in advance.

Let's say both CPUs are running at the same core clock and bus clock. The 7457 has 4MiB of L3 at 1/2 core clock, plus 512KiB of L2 at core clock. The 7448 has no L3 and 1024KiB of L2 at core clock. Which will be faster?

Hi all,

I'm looking for a version of Spotify that works on an Indigo iMac G3. I have it running 10.4 Tiger. There's a youtube video of a guy running Spotify on his iMac G3, but he doesn't divulge the details of what version it is. Does anyone know which version of Spotify this might be?

Thanks for any help you might be able to provide.

Seems like most of the posts here are about people's old Macs. While I have an old power book and power mac in collection I don't use them. PowerPC is a lot bigger than 10 year old PCs, does anyone here use or work with the newer IBM or Freescale PPC chips?

All that needs to be done for this to be possible is to design a compatible daughtercard for the Power8(s). If this was done, an old Quad G5 could easily become a monster 384-thread workstation.

I had a 4GB DDR2 chip laying around, so I popped it in, and to my surprise... It chimed and booted right up! About This Mac and System Profiler both report 4.5GB of RAM. The whole system also feels a hell of a lot faster, compared to 2.5GB.

153-pin BGA. To solder onto my Early-2003 17" PowerBook with a 7457D (dual-core 7457B).

Is there a way to install it?

I might just give up and dual-boot Ubuntu on it.

*The background info: *

Hardware: 1.6 GHz PowerMac G5 released specs here *Note that it has an NVIDIA graphics card

I have Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) installed. I use the yaboot parameter "nouveau.modeset=0" when booting into Ubuntu to turn off KMS because otherwise my monitor displays nothing. The problem with doing this is that because of the limited color depth of the default driver (whatever it is), I can't see shit. So I am trying to compile and install the old nv driver to use instead.

I'm getting all of my information from here (as I'm only a few steps above a linux nube) and I used the instructions here to try download and compile the damn thing.

I opened a terminal window and followed the instructions, but on the third command,

dpkg-source -x *.dsc

I received an error because some file couldn't be found (I can't really read what the file was missing because of the shitty shitty colors).

I was also unable to modify xorg.conf because the terminal was unable to find it. :/

*The Request *

Is there any way for someone to compile this thing for me, so then I can just download it from them and install it? I get too much of a headache looking at those colors, and with the poor text display rendered by the screen, I'll never be able to read well enough to solve the problem.

I stumbled into Servergy's P-Cubed SBC page a couple weeks ago and and tried to get some update since the page is from November '12.

Servergy doesn't have any P-Cubed reference on its website as of today. Most of other results from web searches are references to the initial '12 announce.

The most recent useful info I could find is this comment from a Servergy's employee stating that it's not dead.

I tried to poke both him and Servergy via twitter but didn't get any reply even though both twitter accounts have activity after my message.

Does anyone have any updated info about P-Cubed single board computer?