On Wednesday, February 25, 2004, at 10:21AM, Darren <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Minimum OS for ppc macs is 7.1.2 from memory. 7.1 plain wouldn't have enough fat in it to run a ppc.
Technically speaking you don't need any FAT code to run an OS on a PPC. AFAIK, for example, NetBSD-mac68k will run fine on a PPC, although it warns you it is not optomised for that platform. All you need is a set of hooks that start the PPC's 68k enmulator. I have a feeling that is pretty much all that 7.1.2 was.
NetBSD-mac68k is a verrry long stretch, the hooks are located in the data and resource forks of Mac software. You require the nessary ppc code in the system folder to boot a ppc, there is no inbuilt enmulator. The term *fat* was used to describe the un-needed bloat....
These macs are better suited to 7.5.x
In actual fact 8.1 runs very well o nthem as it was the first Mac OS that was optomised greatly for PowerPC CPUs. Although most of it is FAT it'smore efficient on PPCs than 7.6.1, which was still predomminantly an enhanced 68k OS.
I dont agree. Not owning a 601 mac I'll give you 8.1 has a home in the scheme of things, for anything else with more than 32mb ram I'd suggest 8.6 was the first truly optimized OS and works better than 8.1 on a powermac 603+, I also disagree that 7.x isn't faster on a compatible powermac than the FAT mess 8.0 (ick) 8.1
OS8.1 is less than suited to many 68k machines. Apart from eye candy and compatibility for some programs you might wont what has it got for a 68k mac? Dont get me wrong, the eye candy is nice but the memory foot print and the over all sluggishness is a poor trade off which can be got around mostly on lower OS versions or with 3rd party software with some help from the Appearance extention.
Grab a copy of PowerPCheck-FAT and have a look at the amount of un-needed code your loading for 8.1, I haven't looked at earlier OS versions. Almost everything in the system folder can be stripped of ppc code for 68k macs, the tool works in report mode or will strip ppc or fat code out so it can be useful. I only found two extensions that could not be stripped under 8.1 of ppc code.
Looking through a old log I find the "Mac OS Easy Open" and Text Converter and Appearance extensions should not be stripped when stripping the fat from 8.1 system folder. From the system folder alone being 12mb I removed 9mb of un-needed code leaving only 3.5mb of 68k code.. EG: start of log
PowerPCheck by Alessandro Levi Montalcini * = Code resource has routine descriptor Items checked: 389 Items listed: 52 Native items: 64 Native code: 12028K Removed code: 9311K Native code left: 2717K 68K app code: 3665K
As for the emulation layer, a few programs claim to increase the speed of 68k emulation under ppc, Speed Doubler comes to mind, above that provided by the Macos. The readme's alone are informative as are a couple of mactech links I cant find.
YMMV.
Indeed. Sorry Stuart, I only mentioned bloatware for ppc compatiblity.
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