Discussion:
[rescue] revived: TiBook G4 867 (DVI)/ 1GB and MacOS9
Patrick Giagnocavo
2018-04-10 05:28:17 UTC
Permalink
I am sick of OSes and hardware that have remote surveillance capabilities... plus I have some writing to do, so I decided to look around for something I could use that would minimize my Internet dependence...

I rebuilt the LiIon battery on the TiBook and it now gives ~3 hours I think, depending on what I do with it. Just writing, with the backlight turned down, probably more.

I installed MacOS9 and between MacintoshGarden.org and MacintoshRepository.org, plus help from MacOS9Lives.com forum, found software and config help I needed. Now the machine is running pretty well, though there are certain apps that should run but which lock up (WebSTAR Admin app, but I don't really need it).

I have FullWrite, MORE (outliner), and Photoshop 7.0 running, along with Classilla (a backport of Mozilla) for limited web browsing. I had to modify ciphers on a Linux machine to get MacSSH working, though. Not sure if I want to try to get VirtualPC running or not - might be a distraction. I do want to play around with HyperCard some though.

I will tweak it further by adding a PATA - SATA bridge and an mSATA 500GB drive. Under MacOS, you have to create an 8GB or so boot partition, then create partitions of no more than 190GB in order for MacOS to see the whole drive and be able to run its maintenance utilities on it.

It sleeps perfectly, so much better than my (high end at the time it was made) HP EliteBook. I think with some more work it can serve as a useful system - some 16 years or so after it was manufactured? Pretty neat IMHO.

No spinning beachballs, unlike its newer sister, an AluBook 1.5Ghz G4 running 10.4 Tiger; and the 1280x854 display is more suited to my taste.

Anyone else doing anything with old Macs?

Cheers

Patrick
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rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
Lionel Peterson
2018-04-10 14:53:27 UTC
Permalink
I've got my old 17" Ti powerbook (plus 3rd-party DOCK!) that could probably
find a useful life again, the battery is likely toast, but the hardware is
still beautiful.

I also have a PowerPC MacMini that is just sitting on the shelf...

Lionel
Post by Patrick Giagnocavo
I am sick of OSes and hardware that have remote surveillance capabilities...
plus I have some writing to do, so I decided to look around for something I
could use that would minimize my Internet dependence...
Post by Patrick Giagnocavo
I rebuilt the LiIon battery on the TiBook and it now gives ~3 hours I think,
depending on what I do with it. Just writing, with the backlight turned down,
probably more.
Post by Patrick Giagnocavo
I installed MacOS9 and between MacintoshGarden.org and
MacintoshRepository.org, plus help from MacOS9Lives.com forum, found software
and config help I needed. Now the machine is running pretty well, though
there are certain apps that should run but which lock up (WebSTAR Admin app,
but I don't really need it).
Post by Patrick Giagnocavo
I have FullWrite, MORE (outliner), and Photoshop 7.0 running, along with
Classilla (a backport of Mozilla) for limited web browsing. I had to modify
ciphers on a Linux machine to get MacSSH working, though. Not sure if I want
to try to get VirtualPC running or not - might be a distraction. I do want to
play around with HyperCard some though.
Post by Patrick Giagnocavo
I will tweak it further by adding a PATA - SATA bridge and an mSATA 500GB
drive. Under MacOS, you have to create an 8GB or so boot partition, then
create partitions of no more than 190GB in order for MacOS to see the whole
drive and be able to run its maintenance utilities on it.
Post by Patrick Giagnocavo
It sleeps perfectly, so much better than my (high end at the time it was
made) HP EliteBook. I think with some more work it can serve as a useful
system - some 16 years or so after it was manufactured? Pretty neat IMHO.
Post by Patrick Giagnocavo
No spinning beachballs, unlike its newer sister, an AluBook 1.5Ghz G4
running 10.4 Tiger; and the 1280x854 display is more suited to my taste.
Post by Patrick Giagnocavo
Anyone else doing anything with old Macs?
Cheers
Patrick
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
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Liam Proven
2018-04-10 16:30:48 UTC
Permalink
Post by Lionel Peterson
I also have a PowerPC MacMini that is just sitting on the shelf...
What is it with folk top-posting on here?

Gmail bottom-posts fine. Look at me, I'm doing it right here in the
web interface. No client required. Hit Ctrl-A, trim, reply,
Ctrl-Enter.

Anyway. The most interesting thing I found to do with my Mac mini G4
was to put MorphOS on it.

It was an epic task -- brief mention here:
https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/48183.html

I had to use a mixture of Mac OS X 10.4, Ubuntu for PowerPC, and at
least one 3rd party disk management tool, _plus_ the MorphOS
partitioner and installer. It needs 2 partitions, as I recall, which
are the Amiga equivalents of /boot and /.

But it works. The freeware version is hobbled and goes into a slowdown
mode after 20min. There's no wireless support at all -- see the blog
post.

But saying that, it makes a Mac mini into one of the fastest Amigas
that there ever was.

Unfortunately, I was never an Amiga guy (I went with an Acorn
Archimedes instead and had a 32-bit personal RISC workstation in 1989)
so I don't really know what to do with it, but it was an educational
and instructive exercise.

--
Liam Proven b" Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: ***@cix.co.uk b" Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: ***@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven b" Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 b" D R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
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Mark Benson
2018-04-13 09:47:44 UTC
Permalink
Post by Liam Proven
Post by Lionel Peterson
I also have a PowerPC MacMini that is just sitting on the shelf...
What is it with folk top-posting on here?
Most Phone apps make proper posting quite a lot of effort to do these days,
sadly.

But, again, I just did it in GMail on an Android phone, they've just driven
me to lazin3ss and bad habits.
--
Mark
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Liam Proven
2018-04-13 10:30:55 UTC
Permalink
Post by Mark Benson
Most Phone apps make proper posting quite a lot of effort to do these days,
sadly.
But, again, I just did it in GMail on an Android phone, they've just driven
me to lazin3ss and bad habits.
OK, that's true, but my personal solution to this genuine issue is...
not to post to mailing lists from my phone. Since it is, IMHO, rude
and disruptive, makes threads very hard to follow, breaks up
discussions, etc., and it's hard to quote properly from phones -- I
blame Microsoft, for the ignorant programmers who implemented Outlook,
and cowards like Google not having the guts to resist the creeping
trend -- the easy answer is, don't. I just wait 'til I'm on a proper
computer.

Failing that there are apps like K9:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fsck.k9


--
Liam Proven b" Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: ***@cix.co.uk b" Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: ***@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven b" Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 b" D R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
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Joshua Boyd
2018-04-12 02:33:09 UTC
Permalink
Post by Lionel Peterson
I've got my old 17" Ti powerbook (plus 3rd-party DOCK!) that could probably
find a useful life again, the battery is likely toast, but the hardware is
still beautiful.
I also have a PowerPC MacMini that is just sitting on the shelf...
I bet that would be fun to put MorphOS on.
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Jerry Kemp
2018-04-10 15:11:13 UTC
Permalink
I do.

I have a laundry list of old Mac applications that I paid $$$ each for, and also a hand full of games. None of any of these, will
ever be upgraded to x86/x86. Starcraft is the rare exception to that rule.

Initially, I had hoped to address my (old) application issue via emulation and/or virtualization, but many apps, especially games
that push video, do not do well with emulation and virtualization.

What I finally decided to do was to purchase relevant Macs based on my software. In specific, I purchased a Mac Cube for my general
Mac OS applications. I also purchased an early G4 to run Mac OS X 1.2 server, that specifically was on the HCL. I purchased a 6100
series pizza box system to play with Copeland. I didn't start doing Apple stuff till the mid 1990's, and never had any Motorola
(CPU) apps.

For anyone interested in following my example, of course, based on their specific old Mac applications, there is a similar mailing
list for buying/selling/trading Apple equipment that is called LEM (Low End Mac) mailing list.

Jerry


On 10/04/18 00:28, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:

STUFF DELETED HERE
Post by Patrick Giagnocavo
Anyone else doing anything with old Macs?
Cheers
Patrick
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
Sandwich Maker
2018-04-10 21:15:39 UTC
Permalink
" From: Patrick Giagnocavo <***@zill.net>
"
" []
"
"
" Anyone else doing anything with old Macs?

i have a ppc emac running 10.5 that i'm aiming to put a 400G disk
into. slowing me down is figuring how to put non-server osx swap into
its own partition -- i *think* i've got it...

i have tenfourfox, but i was also thinking about all the other things
that *could* be updated. there's a long freeware shopping list
included in the os - 150-200 things - plus the kernel is opensourced.*
probably not all the freewares can be updated to their latest without
surrounding revisions, but there must surely be later versions which
would still drop in.

the kernel includes much more than processor-specific code; general
kernel features and drivers et al might be back-portable from later
osx with 'little' work.

alas, i don't have the skills or resources for any of this. i'd be
willing to help test though.

* https://opensource.apple.com/
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay the genius nature
internet rambler is to see what all have seen
***@an.bradford.ma.us and think what none thought
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Ray Arachelian
2018-04-13 12:26:23 UTC
Permalink
Post by Patrick Giagnocavo
I am sick of OSes and hardware that have remote surveillance capabilities...
plus I have some writing to do, so I decided to look around for something I
could use that would minimize my Internet dependence...
Post by Patrick Giagnocavo
I rebuilt the LiIon battery on the TiBook and it now gives ~3 hours I think,
depending on what I do with it. Just writing, with the backlight turned down,
probably more.

Wow, how did you rebuild the battery?B I do see replacement ones on
Amazon for various G4 notebooks, and I'm actually tempted to buy one,
but if it can be rebuilt, that sounds like a fun project.B Do you have
any docs/pics on how you did that?

Actually I recently purchased a 17" G4 mostly because I wanted to still
be able to compile for that platform, and to add to the collection since
Apple Inc. doesn't make 17" notebooks anymore...

I'm not planning on making it my day to day daily machine since I've
need to run modern software, but still...B It's amazing how usable it
is.B While the display isn't a HiDPI retina, it's much more comfortable
to sit infront of despite the lower resolution, just by virtue of it not
having a glaring panel of dark glass infront of the LCD, and because of
that same reason, the brightness of the backlight can be much lower
saving battery run time.B

Don't get me wrong, I do have a HiDPI linux laptop without glass and the
higher resolution is great - at least when the software supports it, I
do appreciate the resolution.B But the glare on the macbooks, feh!B (The
higher end gaming laptops are better replacement for the 17" macbook
workstations than anything Apple offers today as a "pro" 15" machine if
you're willing to run Linux)

And isn't it funny how the newer and newer macbook and pro models are
actually slower and slower CPU GHzwise?B Sure the GPUs are offloading a
lot of work.B Why bother offering an i7 if you're going to have to
underclock it or only offer two cores + two threads?B Sure, it can burst
a short while to higher speeds, but as soon as it does the fans kick it
to cool it off and when they're unable to, the CPU clocks right back
down.B I want a usable workstation, not a notebook thin enough to shave
with.

And don't get me started on the glued in batteries, soldered in RAM, and
now SSD...

Our friends at Apple really made some terrible decisions around when the
retina macbook was introduced, and they continue to make worse and worse
ones today...

The older sculpted keys on the G4 with full travel are such a total
pleasure to use vs the current macbook abomination of a keyboard that
$work offers...B If you stick to software of that era, it's quite
usable.B I'll probably find a converter and put an SSD in there to get
it to go even faster if I start using it more.B I was able to get it up
to 2GB of RAM despite the specs saying it supports 1.5G max.

The only feature I missed when using the 17" G4 is that the trackpad
doesn't support two finger scrolling.B It doesn't have a webcam, and I
actually feel much better without it. :)B No need to glue a sliding
webcam cover over it just because it was included and you don't know
when some malware will turn it on remotely...B And I find it's not
really that heavy or that thick.B It still looks quite modern and not
bulky or ugly in any way.B Gotta say, it's got really great design.
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Liam Proven
2018-04-13 13:40:09 UTC
Permalink
Post by Ray Arachelian
The older sculpted keys on the G4 with full travel are such a total
pleasure to use vs the current macbook abomination of a keyboard that
$work offers...B
Strongly agreed. I am considering fixing and selling my iBook G4 and
trying to find a working Powerbook Pismo, mainly because I vastly
preferred the older keyboards -- and I think that the black G3
Powerbooks just looked nicer.

But the TiBooks were a design classic, yes.

By the way... and at risk of starting another argument... Your
sentences all seem to have a capital B following the punctuation mark.
(!) No punctuation, or a line return, no capital B. *That* is a new
one on me.

--
Liam Proven b" Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: ***@cix.co.uk b" Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: ***@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven b" Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 b" D R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
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Peter Corlett
2018-04-13 15:02:25 UTC
Permalink
On Fri, Apr 13, 2018 at 03:40:09PM +0200, Liam Proven wrote:
[...]
By the way... and at risk of starting another argument... Your sentences all
seem to have a capital B following the punctuation mark. (!) No punctuation,
or a line return, no capital B. *That* is a new one on me.
It's probably the UTF-8 representation of U+00A0 NO-BREAK SPACE (0xc2, 0xa0)
which has been high-bit stripped to produce "B " (0x42 0x20).
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Ray Arachelian
2018-04-13 17:14:17 UTC
Permalink
Ugh, so now Thunderbird is infected...B wow.
Post by Peter Corlett
[...]
By the way... and at risk of starting another argument... Your sentences all
seem to have a capital B following the punctuation mark. (!) No punctuation,
or a line return, no capital B. *That* is a new one on me.
It's probably the UTF-8 representation of U+00A0 NO-BREAK SPACE (0xc2, 0xa0)
which has been high-bit stripped to produce "B " (0x42 0x20).
_______________________________________________
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Ray Arachelian
2018-05-14 00:00:39 UTC
Permalink
So to update this a bit - I just took apart an old 120G SSD, added an
inline 2.5" ATA to SATA converter (
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MU023LO/ ) and replaced the
original 80GB 2.5" disk - which I think is a 5400rpm. It's much much
faster now, and likely uses a bit less energy so the battery can last
longer.

If you try to use this inline adapter with a 2.5" disk, you'll find it
won't fit in your Powerbook. But the trick is that the 2.5" SSD has a
metal enclosure that is usually much bigger than the SSD's circuit
board. I'm sure not all SSD's fit this way, so if you have a few older
ones lying around from machines you've upgraded, carefully take them
apart and see if the circuit board plus the inline adapter is the same
or shorter than the total length as case, if so, it likely will fit in
your G4. (Not taking credit for this, I saw it here:
)

Before you do this (and after you confirm the SSD board + converter will
fit), you should install the SSD drive in a USB enclosure,
format/partition it with Disk Utility, and see if it's compatible.
Alternatively, you could go to OWC or somewhere else and buy a
specialized PATA/IDE SSD, but these are overpriced, and likely you have
some old SSDs lying around after upgrades.

Next, you can either boot off the 10.5, or 10.4 DVD/CD and install it on
the drive, or in my case I downloaded an old version of SuperDuper that
works with 10.5.x and cloned the existing OS onto the SSD, since I had
already spent a lot of time installing and compiling various software on it.

If you've never opened up your G4 Powerbook, look on iFixIt and youtube
for disassembly instructions for your specific model, be very careful of
the flex ribbon cable on the keyboard that threads from the inside to
under the memory slot as this is a very fragile cable, and if you break
it, you'll have to find a replacement, which I'm not so sure is easy to get.

There's a question as to what to do about TRIM. 10.4/10.5 and OS9 will
not support TRIM, and the earliest TRIM enable I've found is for OS X
10.6. In my case I just do something like this:

B dd if=/dev/zero of=DELETEME bs=4096; rm DELETEME

The hope there is that the SSD might be smart enough to recognize zero
filled sectors as trimmable, but YMMV.


I'm going to see if my 5300ce will work with the same kind of setup,
that would be neat. Just gotta find some more <100G old SSDs that might
work there. Not sure what the max drive size for these is, I remember
the TAM has some artificial limit where it won't see disks larger than
2G, so maybe that applies to those as well. I suppose in those cases
something like a SCSI2SD or a CF to ATA board might be better.

Maybe I can make my SPARCBooks (mine has a SCSI to IDE bridge) or maybe
use these in my Tadpole Voyager and get all these to run faster this way.
_______________________________________________
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Patrick Giagnocavo
2018-04-13 18:09:00 UTC
Permalink
[NB: I AM TOP-POSTING; LOOK AWAY, LOOK AWAY!]

So, about rebuilding the battery, the key is to examine the cells very carefully and make sure you understand the exact layout in full detail, before taking it apart further.

I broke open the case (don't have a good solution for re-sealing it, I just used duct tape) and pried the two halves apart rather inelegantly.

For the TiBook battery, there are 8 cells total. I gently pulled back the insulating tape (that keeps the cells from touching each other where they shouldn't) and did not take apart the pack until I had gone over, about 3 times, exactly what was connected where. I took photos and diagrammed it, then double-checked myself.

The 8 cells are laid out with (my numbering) 6 cells in a single row, with 1 cell lying lengthwise along the top and one lengthwise along the bottom, to form a rough rectangle.

e.g.:

7 lengthwise
1 2 3 4 5 6
8 lengthwise

(hope formatting isn't too screwed up)

The case itself, has indentations where each battery should lay. When re-assembling the pack, the batteries should fit back into the indentations.

I used the electronics bench at the maker space I am a member of - they have a spot welder to weld on each battery the flat battery tabs - much easier to solder to, and it helps to prevent heating up the cell when you are soldering to it.

Spot weld the batteries together in the same configuration (a mix of serial and parallel) as the original pack. Once you have started welding, use some electrical tape or other means to prevent accidental contact - even with the batteries un-charged they can discharge what remains!

As you get closer to the finished product the danger will increase a bit - so protect both yourself and the battery pack.

"Tin" the wires with solder. Then, put a blob of solder on both the end of the wire, and, another blob on the battery tab you have spot-welded to the cell.

To solder together, put the soldering tip onto the blob on the cell, and push the blob on the wire against it. As soon as they both melt together, remove the tip. Remember you don't want a lot of heat going into the cell; this method should minimize heat going anywhere other than the soldered connection. If you can, leave a bit of the tab metal that you spot-welded to the cell, able to be bent upwards so you can lessen the heat transfer into the cell.

After you have carefully finished soldering, let it sit (not on a conductive mat) for a minute or two, then, carefully feel each cell with your fingertips. If ANY are warm - you have either wired incorrectly, or two cells are touching that should not be! Go over your connections again - in my case, the end of one cell was touching the solder blob of another cell, that should not have been. I put electrical tape on both connections to keep them separated from each other and haven't had any problems since.

Carefully re-assemble everything into the case; wait again for a minute, feeling the cells for warmth. Then when everything seems fine, use duct tape or whatever to hold the case together and test-fit into your laptop, unplugged from main power. Plug in the laptop and keep feeling/monitoring the battery pack for undue warmth; don't plug it in and walk away.

After the batteries are charged, test runtime (the learning by the driver or in-battery chip means that times will be inaccurate at first) and there you go ...

Cheers

Patrick



----- Original Message -----
From: Ray Arachelian <***@arachelian.com>
To: The Rescue List <***@sunhelp.org>, Patrick Giagnocavo <***@zill.net>
Sent: Fri, 13 Apr 2018 08:26:23 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: [rescue] revived: TiBook G4 867 (DVI)/ 1GB and MacOS9
Post by Patrick Giagnocavo
I am sick of OSes and hardware that have remote surveillance capabilities... plus I have some writing to do, so I decided to look around for something I could use that would minimize my Internet dependence...
I rebuilt the LiIon battery on the TiBook and it now gives ~3 hours I think, depending on what I do with it. Just writing, with the backlight turned down, probably more.
Wow, how did you rebuild the battery? I do see replacement ones on
Amazon for various G4 notebooks, and I'm actually tempted to buy one,
but if it can be rebuilt, that sounds like a fun project. Do you have
any docs/pics on how you did that?

Actually I recently purchased a 17" G4 mostly because I wanted to still
be able to compile for that platform, and to add to the collection since
Apple Inc. doesn't make 17" notebooks anymore...

I'm not planning on making it my day to day daily machine since I've
need to run modern software, but still... It's amazing how usable it
is. While the display isn't a HiDPI retina, it's much more comfortable
to sit infront of despite the lower resolution, just by virtue of it not
having a glaring panel of dark glass infront of the LCD, and because of
that same reason, the brightness of the backlight can be much lower
saving battery run time.

Don't get me wrong, I do have a HiDPI linux laptop without glass and the
higher resolution is great - at least when the software supports it, I
do appreciate the resolution. But the glare on the macbooks, feh! (The
higher end gaming laptops are better replacement for the 17" macbook
workstations than anything Apple offers today as a "pro" 15" machine if
you're willing to run Linux)

And isn't it funny how the newer and newer macbook and pro models are
actually slower and slower CPU GHzwise? Sure the GPUs are offloading a
lot of work. Why bother offering an i7 if you're going to have to
underclock it or only offer two cores + two threads? Sure, it can burst
a short while to higher speeds, but as soon as it does the fans kick it
to cool it off and when they're unable to, the CPU clocks right back
down. I want a usable workstation, not a notebook thin enough to shave
with.

And don't get me started on the glued in batteries, soldered in RAM, and
now SSD...

Our friends at Apple really made some terrible decisions around when the
retina macbook was introduced, and they continue to make worse and worse
ones today...

The older sculpted keys on the G4 with full travel are such a total
pleasure to use vs the current macbook abomination of a keyboard that
$work offers... If you stick to software of that era, it's quite
usable. I'll probably find a converter and put an SSD in there to get
it to go even faster if I start using it more. I was able to get it up
to 2GB of RAM despite the specs saying it supports 1.5G max.

The only feature I missed when using the 17" G4 is that the trackpad
doesn't support two finger scrolling. It doesn't have a webcam, and I
actually feel much better without it. :) No need to glue a sliding
webcam cover over it just because it was included and you don't know
when some malware will turn it on remotely... And I find it's not
really that heavy or that thick. It still looks quite modern and not
bulky or ugly in any way. Gotta say, it's got really great design.
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
Sevan / Venture37
2018-04-20 12:40:54 UTC
Permalink
Post by Patrick Giagnocavo
Anyone else doing anything with old Macs?
Yes. I'm slowly building up a collection of hardware for testing NetBSD/macppc.
I generally dual boot with OS X Tiger which I use for testing pkgsrc support.
There is a repo from pkgsrc-2017Q4 available at http://sevan.mit.edu
targetting Tiger, but should work on Leopard also.
If anyone has a spare G4 TiBook (867Mhz or 1Ghz) or a mid 2005 G4
iBook (with Radeon 9550 graphics card) looking for a new home over in
the united states side of the pond, the NetBSD/macppc port maintainer
could do with these systems to flush out some bugs in NetBSD (eg
port-macppc/22316). Please let me know offlist and I'll put you in
touch.


Sevan
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Chris Hanson
2018-04-23 01:31:04 UTC
Permalink
Post by Patrick Giagnocavo
Anyone else doing anything with old Macs?
One of the things Ibve been doing with older Macsband with emulation of
older Macsbis to occasionally hack on things that can help connect Macs
running the classic System Software to the modern era.

For example, several years ago, getting SSL working meant going through the
hell of building OpenSSL. Nowadays therebs ARMbs mbedTLS project, which
compiles very quickly on a G4 under CodeWarrior on Mac OS 9 and which could
easily be built for System 7 as well, thanks to its modularity and isolation
of POSIX dependencies.

The same is true for libssh2; itbs not entirely isolated from POSIX
dependencies yet, but I have a set of patches that can finish isolating it[1],
and it also builds really quickly and compactly on Mac OS 9. If it were wired
into MacSSH or NiftyTelnet, you could use anything from a Mac Plus (if you
have quite a bit of patience during key exchange) to a dual-G4 to connect to a
modern system via SSH.

Even libcurl fits the same pattern; it supports mbedTLS now, it can also be
isolated from POSIX dependencies, and it can then be leveraged to implement a
full HTTP/HTTPS stack that can run on pretty much anything, letting you build
other software on top of that.

A few years ago I tried to do something similar on SunOS 4.1.4 or Solaris
2.5.1 and it was nigh-impossible to bootstrap all of this. The big change
between then and now has been that a lot of the embedded world has been
adopting these protocols (as part of the push towards bInternet of
Thingsb) and thus therebs been the necessary sponsorship of the work to
make these things run on smaller devices without a full POSIX-style OS
underneath, which turns out to also make them very usable for retrocomputing.

One downside to what Ibve been doing is that I need to jump through some
bureaucratic hoops to release anything I do. However, thatbs actually
feasible now, and if I can ever get this stuff in sufficient shape to release,
I can start that process.

-- Chris
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