Month: May 2020

Booting from USB on a G4/G5

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As usual, your mileage may vary, but this link gave me life the other night:

https://www.deviantart.com/foxhead128/journal/Installing-Debian-on-a-Mac-Mini-G4-via-USB-drive-573686827

My Mac mini G4 is a cherished machine. I love the form factor. I love G4 processors. It is superbly limited which makes it not age so well, but nonetheless, it is beloved. After running OS9 on it, despite some sound limitations, I decided to push it in a new direction as a Linux box. Enter MacBuntu-Remix, available over on the MacRumors Forums.

BTW – a review is forthcoming.

But first, the Mac mini G4 is notorious for having an awful CD/DVD drive. This unit’s drive long ago bit the dust. I was using an external FireWire drive, but it too was whining every time I opened it up. It finally would not read a recently burnt disc image.

I fiddled with Target Disk Mode, which is still amazing technology, and gave up only to discover the above technique. Holding down the option key on boot will not generally allow us to boot off of a USB Drive, but using the Open Firmware gimmick above does. A great tip to turn some of those old USB drives into serviceable backup booting options for these old Macs.

Enjoy.

— Nathan

Snow Leopard on PPC

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Screenshot from Lars Von Hier at MacRumors

The incredible PowerPC community is at work again, conjuring up some interesting experiments to see how else our machines can be extended.

The biggest nugget that has been circulating is the discovery of early builds of Snow Leopard which included PowerPC compatibility. These images come before Apple decided to nix PowerPC code. As such, they aren’t finished builds of Snow Leopard, and the support for some hardware is sketchy. However, initial reports of those who are trying them out note that Snow Leopard runs fairly well, though graphics drivers are buggy.

I haven’t taken the plunge yet, but I am working up to it as I watch the community learn about these finds and troubleshoot how to get the system stable. For example, kexts and drivers from Leopard (10.5.8) could being copied over when missing in Snow Leopard. Other imaginative thoughts include exploring later Snow Leopard builds for PowerPC code that lingered and moving those pieces back into these pre-release disc images. A Frankenstein kind of experience.

Read the thread on MacRumors to get started: Snow Leopard on Unsupported PPC Machines

Questions that remain:

  • Will this open PPC machines to some later builds of certain software? Would this potentially make some TenFourFox builds easier?
  • Is this stable enough to be a daily driver, and is it truly snappy?
  • What will be incompatible?

— Nathan