Re: hacking for a slimmer world
On Nov 15, 12:21 pm, Jesse jesselorenstj...@gmail.com wrote: So what are the best drives and cards for scsi? I agree with Dan, a SATA PCI card and 10K SATA (Raptor) drive is fast and reusable in G5, MacPro, and PC machines. I do think SCSI drives are cheaper right now. There are ATTO UL2x and UL3x cards for under $25, 15K 36GB drives also around $25. They can also be reused in G5s and other machines. The advantage of SCSI drives over IDE isn't so much in the transfer speed as it is in the latency seek/read/write times. I don't have specific benchmarks now as I'm onto a MacPro, all my SCSI machines are in storage (I probably should give them away). But I've put fast SCSI drives in Macs from a 7200, beige G3, Smurf G3, PCI G4, AGP G4s, etc. and they have always made noticable real world speed improvement. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
On Nov 15, 9:01 pm, Stephen E. Bodnar sbod...@gci.net wrote: I'll keep my ears open. We live up on Purtov now and have a pretty active feeder, but Switgard and Lars will be over in Germany for Christmas. If somebody wants to sit in our kitchen drinking hot buttered rums and counting birds, that's OK too. I forgot to mention, this is the most random Mac advice I've read i a long time! -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
On 15/11/11 8:21 AM, Bruce Godfrey wrote: dc, do you have any data on how much difference a fast SCSI drive makes in a MDD or similar G$ Mac? I just installed one and I have used Disk Speed Bench X to test the transfer speed. I find 80MB/sec. My original IDE Hitachi Deskstar on the ATA100 bus is only moving about 50MB/sec. However, another WD drive on the same ATA 100 bus is also moving 80MB/sec. I was hoping the 15K U320 SCSI drive would easily beat a good IDE drive, but that does not appear to be the case. Is it maybe the kind of test Disk Speed Bench X performs? Bruce, I wished you'd seen my thread here on getting the most out of a G4. In there I'd proposed using SCSI disks and I think it was pharmacy Bruce who pointed out that I won't be getting much out of it. I think I'm known here as one of the dinosaurs who refuse to buy newer and better machines simply, for example, to be able to watch YouTube videos. So, I've come to accept that my macs are being programmed out of some websites and applications, and have stopped trying to deprogram them. I reckon there will come a time when text edit would be the champ on a G4, if I want to stay with OS X. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
On 11/11/11 12:43 PM, peterh...@cruzio.com wrote: Perhaps my perspective is different, or perhaps distorted by a space-time continuum. ..or perhaps you're being asked to put forward evidence of what you're saying; hardware or cheat sheet -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
On 11/16/11 2:54 AM, dc wrote: On Nov 15, 9:01 pm, Stephen E. Bodnarsbod...@gci.net wrote: I'll keep my ears open. We live up on Purtov now and have a pretty active feeder, but Switgard and Lars will be over in Germany for Christmas. If somebody wants to sit in our kitchen drinking hot buttered rums and counting birds, that's OK too. I forgot to mention, this is the most random Mac advice I've read i a long time! Oopsie, posted to the wrong list! Any bird brains around here doing the Christmas bird count this year? We compile the results on a Mac ;-) Stephen -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
I have a 15k U320 SCSI drive booting my system now, whereas before I had the slower of the two IDE drives in that position. The computer is definitely more responsive now. Applications open faster and documents save faster. Overall boot up time from being turned on isn't much different, but when the computer is on and I am just logging in my desktop appears faster. I do not have a comparison between the SCSI drive and the faster of the two IDE drives at the moment. I am thinking of putting another fast IDE drive in here and cloning my old system drive onto it and then swapping them. That would make for a better comparison. As for YouTube, I have a question about that - How much difference does the video card make in playing Flash stuff? I used to have a Beige G3 with Panther on it and a Radeon 9200 PCI video card. You could easily watch DVD movies on it, but YouTube was sketchy. This MDD has a 9800 Pro. YouTube works fine unless it is large HD video. Sharing a desktop in Skype is horrible.That makes me wonder if Skype uses the video card at all. And it makes me wonder how much Flash even uses a video card. Bruce Nestamicky wrote: On 15/11/11 8:21 AM, Bruce Godfrey wrote: dc, do you have any data on how much difference a fast SCSI drive makes in a MDD or similar G$ Mac? I just installed one and I have used Disk Speed Bench X to test the transfer speed. I find 80MB/sec. My original IDE Hitachi Deskstar on the ATA100 bus is only moving about 50MB/sec. However, another WD drive on the same ATA 100 bus is also moving 80MB/sec. I was hoping the 15K U320 SCSI drive would easily beat a good IDE drive, but that does not appear to be the case. Is it maybe the kind of test Disk Speed Bench X performs? Bruce, I wished you'd seen my thread here on getting the most out of a G4. In there I'd proposed using SCSI disks and I think it was pharmacy Bruce who pointed out that I won't be getting much out of it. I think I'm known here as one of the dinosaurs who refuse to buy newer and better machines simply, for example, to be able to watch YouTube videos. So, I've come to accept that my macs are being programmed out of some websites and applications, and have stopped trying to deprogram them. I reckon there will come a time when text edit would be the champ on a G4, if I want to stay with OS X. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
On Nov 16, 2011, at 8:24 AM, Bruce Godfrey wrote: As for YouTube, I have a question about that - How much difference does the video card make in playing Flash stuff? Very little. Flash is almost entirely CPU bound. It's faster on your G4 versus your G3 because the G4 is faster. -- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
I like the SATA drive idea as well. A couple of weeks ago I found out you can have it both ways. There is a simple cable adapter made that you connect to the 68-pin SCSI card and it leads out 4 SATA cables. I have not found anyone who has tried these, but the discussion on this web page indicates it works in servers where these folks have tried it. http://www.dealextreme.com/p/4-in-1-sata-to-scsi-hard-disk-data-cable-1940 The nice thing about this is that you can use a SCSI card that actually runs in 64 bit PCI mode that was made specifically as a fast HD adapter for the G4s as your SATA adapter. I can find no SATA adapter that is 64 bit PCI, so this might just make a faster interface for a SATA drive than the SATA cards out there. Bruce - Original Message - From: dc dbc...@verizon.net To: G-Group g3-5-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:53:11 - (UTC) Subject: Re: hacking for a slimmer world On Nov 15, 12:21 pm, Jesse jesselorenstj...@gmail.com wrote: So what are the best drives and cards for scsi? I agree with Dan, a SATA PCI card and 10K SATA (Raptor) drive is fast and reusable in G5, MacPro, and PC machines. I do think SCSI drives are cheaper right now. There are ATTO UL2x and UL3x cards for under $25, 15K 36GB drives also around $25. They can also be reused in G5s and other machines. The advantage of SCSI drives over IDE isn't so much in the transfer speed as it is in the latency seek/read/write times. I don't have specific benchmarks now as I'm onto a MacPro, all my SCSI machines are in storage (I probably should give them away). But I've put fast SCSI drives in Macs from a 7200, beige G3, Smurf G3, PCI G4, AGP G4s, etc. and they have always made noticable real world speed improvement. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
On Nov 11, 2:09 am, Jesse St.John jesselorenstj...@gmail.com wrote: alright everyone i am using leopard 10.5.8 on a dp 1.25mhz mdd with 2 gigs of ram, any tweaks that you would suggest, any ways to go about kernel hacking and trimming my system? The easiest, cheapest and safest things to do with your MDD: 1. Download and run Monolingual. You can trim more than 2 GB of unneccesary languages and architectures out your OS, it will run much better. It's free. 2. SCSI PCI cards and SCSI hard drives are cheap now that most people are using SATA or SSDs. A 15K SCSI drive with a 16 MB cache is an awesome upgrade, around $50.00 for used 73 GB drives. 3. If you add another hard drive (of any kind) and use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your original drive it will defrag everything in the process of cloning. Apple claims you don't need to defrag OS X but I always felt mine ran better after using TechTool Pro to defrag files. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
dc, do you have any data on how much difference a fast SCSI drive makes in a MDD or similar G$ Mac? I just installed one and I have used Disk Speed Bench X to test the transfer speed. I find 80MB/sec. My original IDE Hitachi Deskstar on the ATA100 bus is only moving about 50MB/sec. However, another WD drive on the same ATA 100 bus is also moving 80MB/sec. I was hoping the 15K U320 SCSI drive would easily beat a good IDE drive, but that does not appear to be the case. Is it maybe the kind of test Disk Speed Bench X performs? Another related point - AFAIK the fastest SCSI card made for a PCI slot is U160. The U320 cards are all PCI-X or later. Those work in a PCI slot, but only at 33MHz and 32 bits. The PCI SCSI cards, at least the ones from ATTO Tech, actually use the 64 bit wide PCI bus in old Macs. Maybe the only PCI cards made that do. Bruce dc wrote: On Nov 11, 2:09 am, Jesse St.John jesselorenstj...@gmail.com wrote: alright everyone i am using leopard 10.5.8 on a dp 1.25mhz mdd with 2 gigs of ram, any tweaks that you would suggest, any ways to go about kernel hacking and trimming my system? The easiest, cheapest and safest things to do with your MDD: 1. Download and run Monolingual. You can trim more than 2 GB of unneccesary languages and architectures out your OS, it will run much better. It's free. 2. SCSI PCI cards and SCSI hard drives are cheap now that most people are using SATA or SSDs. A 15K SCSI drive with a 16 MB cache is an awesome upgrade, around $50.00 for used 73 GB drives. 3. If you add another hard drive (of any kind) and use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your original drive it will defrag everything in the process of cloning. Apple claims you don't need to defrag OS X but I always felt mine ran better after using TechTool Pro to defrag files. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
I think that the advantage of using SCSI drives is not only in the transfer speed, which as you say is equal to one of your newer IDE drives, but IDE uses more CPU DMA to run than using SCSI which frees the CPU up from managing the data transfer. I don't know all the details as I am not a technical guy (not too much anyway), but when faced with limited CPU power, SCSI drives will always be better than IDE from what I have read in the past. This will speed up your G4 PowerMac, as it will have more CPU resources to work on other tasks, instead of using a chunk of it's power to transfer data over the IDE bus. I have several ATTO fibre optic controller cards pulled from Avid Meridian audio/video editing MDD G4 systems, if anyone is interested in getting one. I think the max transfer speed for them is faster than your 80MB/s, but then you need a hard drive or adapter that converts drives to fibre optic, which I am unfamiliar with, as the editing systems did not come with the storage drives that the fibre optic cards connected to. Not sure how you are going to test the speed improvement you can get from using SCSI drives instead of IDE, when both drives are transferring data at the same speed, but as I said above, your G4(s) should have much more resources available when using SCSI than IDE. On Nov 15, 2011, at 7:21 AM, Bruce Godfrey wrote: dc, do you have any data on how much difference a fast SCSI drive makes in a MDD or similar G$ Mac? I just installed one and I have used Disk Speed Bench X to test the transfer speed. I find 80MB/ sec. My original IDE Hitachi Deskstar on the ATA100 bus is only moving about 50MB/sec. However, another WD drive on the same ATA 100 bus is also moving 80MB/sec. I was hoping the 15K U320 SCSI drive would easily beat a good IDE drive, but that does not appear to be the case. Is it maybe the kind of test Disk Speed Bench X performs? Another related point - AFAIK the fastest SCSI card made for a PCI slot is U160. The U320 cards are all PCI-X or later. Those work in a PCI slot, but only at 33MHz and 32 bits. The PCI SCSI cards, at least the ones from ATTO Tech, actually use the 64 bit wide PCI bus in old Macs. Maybe the only PCI cards made that do. Bruce -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
So what are the best drives and cards for scsi? Am I able to find larger drives in scsi? Seems as though, looking at the Mac swap list that,sadly, that a used option would be as expensive as a new one? Ne deals ne one? Sent from my iPhone 4 On Nov 15, 2011, at 10:45 AM, David W. Morris bbh...@gmail.com wrote: I think that the advantage of using SCSI drives is not only in the transfer speed, which as you say is equal to one of your newer IDE drives, but IDE uses more CPU DMA to run than using SCSI which frees the CPU up from managing the data transfer. I don't know all the details as I am not a technical guy (not too much anyway), but when faced with limited CPU power, SCSI drives will always be better than IDE from what I have read in the past. This will speed up your G4 PowerMac, as it will have more CPU resources to work on other tasks, instead of using a chunk of it's power to transfer data over the IDE bus. I have several ATTO fibre optic controller cards pulled from Avid Meridian audio/video editing MDD G4 systems, if anyone is interested in getting one. I think the max transfer speed for them is faster than your 80MB/s, but then you need a hard drive or adapter that converts drives to fibre optic, which I am unfamiliar with, as the editing systems did not come with the storage drives that the fibre optic cards connected to. Not sure how you are going to test the speed improvement you can get from using SCSI drives instead of IDE, when both drives are transferring data at the same speed, but as I said above, your G4(s) should have much more resources available when using SCSI than IDE. On Nov 15, 2011, at 7:21 AM, Bruce Godfrey wrote: dc, do you have any data on how much difference a fast SCSI drive makes in a MDD or similar G$ Mac? I just installed one and I have used Disk Speed Bench X to test the transfer speed. I find 80MB/sec. My original IDE Hitachi Deskstar on the ATA100 bus is only moving about 50MB/sec. However, another WD drive on the same ATA 100 bus is also moving 80MB/sec. I was hoping the 15K U320 SCSI drive would easily beat a good IDE drive, but that does not appear to be the case. Is it maybe the kind of test Disk Speed Bench X performs? Another related point - AFAIK the fastest SCSI card made for a PCI slot is U160. The U320 cards are all PCI-X or later. Those work in a PCI slot, but only at 33MHz and 32 bits. The PCI SCSI cards, at least the ones from ATTO Tech, actually use the 64 bit wide PCI bus in old Macs. Maybe the only PCI cards made that do. Bruce -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
I have a box full of SCSI-3 drives, but they are all smaller sizes, only 18gb, 36gb 73gb drives. I would suggest if you are going to do this to have a faster system, put MacOSX on the faster SCSI drive and use a larger IDE drive for storage of your large files, like videos and huge iTunes libraries. SCSI drives are not yet really cheap, or cheaper than IDE drives. Finding large SCSI drives will likely be expensive and you won't find them as large as the current IDE and SATA drives. I don't know the speed of, or availability of SATA controllers that will work in a G4 PowerMac, but that might be a better choice, instead of searching for old SCSI hardware and drives. On Nov 15, 2011, at 9:21 AM, Jesse wrote: So what are the best drives and cards for scsi? Am I able to find larger drives in scsi? Seems as though, looking at the Mac swap list that,sadly, that a used option would be as expensive as a new one? Ne deals ne one? Sent from my iPhone 4 -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
At 7:21 AM -0800 11/15/2011, Bruce Godfrey wrote: do you have any data on how much difference a fast SCSI drive makes in a MDD Multiple factors. The drive has to be able to throw data at x speed. (read and write cycles are usually quite different)! The drive's hardware cache has has be large enough to be able to buffer sufficient data to keep both the mechanism and i/o bus busy. And the i/o bus, be it IDE or SCSI or ..., has to be able to throw the data quickly. In my experience, the drive's capabilities are usually the bottleneck. And be careful of the version and bit widths of the i/o bus. Firewire, btw, is actually a form of SCSI 3. Wikipedia has some very nice articles that include tables comparing bus speeds... As far as getting the best performance overall... Optimize speed, capacity, and especially cost. Your best bet is a SATA controller and 7200rpm or faster SATA drives. That way the drives are inexpensive *and* usable in future machines! fwiw, - Dan. -- - Be Prepared! http://www.bt.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp - Psychoceramic Emeritus; South Jersey, USA, Earth. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
I'll keep my ears open. We live up on Purtov now and have a pretty active feeder, but Switgard and Lars will be over in Germany for Christmas. If somebody wants to sit in our kitchen drinking hot buttered rums and counting birds, that's OK too. Stephen On 11/15/11 9:51 AM, Dan wrote: At 7:21 AM -0800 11/15/2011, Bruce Godfrey wrote: do you have any data on how much difference a fast SCSI drive makes in a MDD Multiple factors. The drive has to be able to throw data at x speed. (read and write cycles are usually quite different)! The drive's hardware cache has has be large enough to be able to buffer sufficient data to keep both the mechanism and i/o bus busy. And the i/o bus, be it IDE or SCSI or ..., has to be able to throw the data quickly. In my experience, the drive's capabilities are usually the bottleneck. And be careful of the version and bit widths of the i/o bus. Firewire, btw, is actually a form of SCSI 3. Wikipedia has some very nice articles that include tables comparing bus speeds... As far as getting the best performance overall... Optimize speed, capacity, and especially cost. Your best bet is a SATA controller and 7200rpm or faster SATA drives. That way the drives are inexpensive *and* usable in future machines! fwiw, - Dan. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 1:09 AM, Jesse St.John jesselorenstj...@gmail.com wrote: alright everyone i am using leopard 10.5.8 on a dp 1.25mhz mdd with 2 gigs of ram, any tweaks that you would suggest, any ways to go about kernel hacking and trimming my system? i cant really afford a g5 at the moment, and i dig the ppc arch, so i am using this up for what i am doing. im trying to make it ultra-snappy and everything that doesnt need to run or be loaded, needs to be killed. So any ideas? i have gotten a better video card( i have the adc variety 128meg radeon agp) updated mouse and keyboard and i am using some usb apple pro speakers(there shot). help please. ideas, things to read, anything This isn't Linux. People don't normally kernel hack OS X and rebuild their kernels. I suppose if you really wanted to, you could hunt down the Darwin source code and build a custom kernel with it. You'd probably be missing some key functionality, though, because I believe Apple kept quite a few proprietary bits to themselves. For stripping out unneeded languages, I believe Monolingual is the app. It breaks some commercial applications, though. There's also a utility to strip out the Intel code in Leopard, but I can't recall it's name at the moment. For improving performance, try adding some RAM (though you may be at the upper limit for that G4) and a bigger/faster hard drive. Make sure your Radeon supports Core Image for the best UI experience with Leopard. Radeon isn't enough - we also need the GPUs model number, usually something like 7500/9600/9800. Eric -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
This isn't Linux. People don't normally kernel hack OS X and rebuild their kernels. I suppose if you really wanted to, you could hunt down the Darwin source code and build a custom kernel with it. You'd probably be missing some key functionality, though, because I believe Apple kept quite a few proprietary bits to themselves. Sure they do. Custom kernels exist for ALL x86 versions of MacOS X. I am presently running mach_kernel_non-atom on my Shuttle SP35 which has a Pentium 4 541 processor. This proc supports EM64T and hyper-threading, but not SSE4. With mach_kernel_non-atom, I can run any version of Snow Leopard as this kernel is based upon the SL kernel which Apple is REQUIRED to deposit in the open source repository. SL believes I am running on a 3.2 GHz Core Solo, and SL is perfectly happy with that. I am presently running mach_kernel_atom.10.7.1 on my Supermicro Atom 330 Server. This proc also supports EM64T and H-T and also SSE4, but not certain features which make it a Core 2 Duo. With mach_kernel_atom.10.7.1, Lion and Server Lion believe they are running on a 1.6 Ghz Core 2 Duo. Others have hacked the kernels for older procs, and even for non-Intel procs. MacOS X kernel hacking is alive and well, just as OS hacking was alive and well in System/360 OS/360 (1965) through z/System z/OS (currently). -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 12:34 PM, peterh...@cruzio.com wrote: Sure they do. Custom kernels exist for ALL x86 versions of MacOS X. I am presently running mach_kernel_non-atom on my Shuttle SP35 which has a Pentium 4 541 processor. This proc supports EM64T and hyper-threading, but not SSE4. With mach_kernel_non-atom, I can run any version of Snow Leopard as this kernel is based upon the SL kernel which Apple is REQUIRED to deposit in the open source repository. SL believes I am running on a 3.2 GHz Core Solo, and SL is perfectly happy with that. I am presently running mach_kernel_atom.10.7.1 on my Supermicro Atom 330 Server. This proc also supports EM64T and H-T and also SSE4, but not certain features which make it a Core 2 Duo. With mach_kernel_atom.10.7.1, Lion and Server Lion believe they are running on a 1.6 Ghz Core 2 Duo. Others have hacked the kernels for older procs, and even for non-Intel procs. MacOS X kernel hacking is alive and well, just as OS hacking was alive and well in System/360 OS/360 (1965) through z/System z/OS (currently). In principle, I agree with you. It is possible to hack your kernel, it's just not commonly done for PPC. I used to build custom monolithic kernels all the time under Linux kernel 1.2, but the need diminished as more functionality was added to the kernel and the ability to use modules was added. I've also seen a *few* custom kernels on Hackintosh ISOs, but I've never had or felt the need to hack the kernel myself. I think DSDT hacking is more common, though again, it's not something I've had to do. Maybe I'm out of touch with the Hackintosh scene, but I really think Darwin PowerPC kernel hackers are few and far between. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
In principle, I agree with you. It is possible to hack your kernel, it's just not commonly done for PPC. I used to build custom monolithic kernels all the time under Linux kernel 1.2, but the need diminished as more functionality was added to the kernel and the ability to use modules was added. I've also seen a *few* custom kernels on Hackintosh ISOs, but I've never had or felt the need to hack the kernel myself. I think DSDT hacking is more common, though again, it's not something I've had to do. Maybe I'm out of touch with the Hackintosh scene, but I really think Darwin PowerPC kernel hackers are few and far between. DSDT hacking is an essential activity with Hackintoshes. There are as many distinct DSDTs are there are distinct mobos. And, even within an Intel Northbridge and Southbridge complement, each distinct mobo might require its own customized DSDT. Basically, you use Ubuntu Desktop to grab the unmodified DSDT and save it to a USB flash drive. You do not need to install Ubuntu to do this, just boot a temporary version, usually from a CD but with no hard drive. Once dsdt.aml has been written to a USB flash drive, you sneaker net that instance to a working version of an Intel-based MacOS X. Could be a real Mack, but it is more likely to be a Hack. Once on the Mack or Hack, you launch DSDTSE, ideally the 1.4.3 version which has the latest English commands (the developer is Brazilian) and the compare facility. THEN, you start to apply the numerous mods to support MacOS X. There are many usual ones, and also some special ones. With experience comes the facility to edit a DSDT by eye. Otherwise, and especially for a beginner, there are several Guides for DSDT editing. I wrote the one on AMI BIOS DSDT hacking. Others wrote the ones on Award BIOS DSDT hacking, but I revised and extended (and, yes, corrected) several of those. Then, you compile the dsdt thereby producing a new instance of dsdt.aml, and you use that with certain so-called kernel extensions (kexts) in order to boot and use MacOS X on a Hack. The process is by now well understood, and a new x86 product never brought up on MacOS X before can possibly be running MacOS X within 30 minutes. It took no more than that for my latest Hack, a Supermicro Atom 330 Server. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
On Nov 11, 7:06 am, Dan dantear...@gmail.com wrote: [snip] If you're ok with making future updates (system and app) more complicated, you can rip out unused languages and template files. That won't save you any cpu time, but it will save some disk space. ...As I recall, GarageBand's library is gigantic! [snip] Just last week via Secure Empty Trash I tossed everything with GarageBand and iMovie in the title. Freed up almost 6 gig disk space. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
hacking for a slimmer world
alright everyone i am using leopard 10.5.8 on a dp 1.25mhz mdd with 2 gigs of ram, any tweaks that you would suggest, any ways to go about kernel hacking and trimming my system? i cant really afford a g5 at the moment, and i dig the ppc arch, so i am using this up for what i am doing. im trying to make it ultra-snappy and everything that doesnt need to run or be loaded, needs to be killed. So any ideas? i have gotten a better video card( i have the adc variety 128meg radeon agp) updated mouse and keyboard and i am using some usb apple pro speakers(there shot). help please. ideas, things to read, anything -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
On Nov 10, 2011, at 11:09 PM, Jesse St.John wrote: alright everyone i am using leopard 10.5.8 on a dp 1.25mhz mdd with 2 gigs of ram, any tweaks that you would suggest, any ways to go about kernel hacking and trimming my system? i cant really afford a g5 at the moment, and i dig the ppc arch, so i am using this up for what i am doing. im trying to make it ultra-snappy and everything that doesnt need to run or be loaded, needs to be killed. So any ideas? i have gotten a better video card( i have the adc variety 128meg radeon agp) updated mouse and keyboard and i am using some usb apple pro speakers(there shot). help please. ideas, things to read, anything I'd look for a 1.42 processor, a 7200 RPM SATA HDD, and turn off journaling. John Carmonne Yorba Linda CA 92886 USA MacPro 2.66 Quad Nehalem -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
At 1:09 AM -0600 11/11/2011, Jesse St.John wrote: leopard 10.5.8 on a dp 1.25mhz mdd with 2 gigs of ram, any tweaks that you would suggest, any ways to go about kernel hacking and trimming my system? You looking for better cpu performance, i/o performance, or just more disk space? If you don't regularly use all your installed ram, how 'bout a RAM Disk? What speed HD you gots? WRT externals, keep in mind that FW is far less cpu intensive than USB. im trying to make it ultra-snappy and everything that doesnt need to run or be loaded, needs to be killed. So any ideas? OS X is quite thrifty. It already only loads what it needs, and even then mostly not until it's actually needed. About the only thing that can slow it down is stale or corrupted caches. An app such as AppleJack can fix that easily. If you're ok with making future updates (system and app) more complicated, you can rip out unused languages and template files. That won't save you any cpu time, but it will save some disk space. ...As I recall, GarageBand's library is gigantic! There are things that can be done to individual apps. eg: Use Perian instead of the regular divx codec. Use VLC instead of QuickTime Player (Apple's codecs pretty much suck). Install appropriate ad and Flash blockers in all your browsers. ... It would help if you mentioned your actual app mix. At 5:35 AM -0800 11/11/2011, JohnCarmonne wrote: and turn off journaling. sigh. HFS' journaling feature can be a pig - using up as much as .01% of your CPU and about as much i/o bandwidth. Perhaps a bit more when you make BIG changes to your file system (like moving or deleting hundreds/thousands of files). Be sure to keep a bootable DiskWarrior disk around ($99?), of course --- without journaling, a simple power hit can fark your file system way beyond fsck's (Disk Utility) ability to fix it. heh. sigh. Journaling is one of the most efficient triumphs Apple has added to our HFS file system in 15+ years. Don't shoot yourself in the foot. You'd be better off ditching things like Dashboard. a big memory pig, if you don't use it. - Dan. -- - Be Prepared! http://www.bt.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp - Psychoceramic Emeritus; South Jersey, USA, Earth. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
Il giorno 11-11-2011 8:09, Jesse St.John ha scritto: alright everyone i am using leopard 10.5.8 on a dp 1.25mhz mdd with 2 gigs of ram, any tweaks that you would suggest, any ways to go about kernel hacking and trimming my system? im trying to make it ultra-snappy Sorry to bring bad news but - AFAIK - OSX will NEVER be snappy on a G4. If you want a really snappy OS on your G4, better use OS9. :-) I just went from a G4 DA 1.4 GHz to a G5 2.7 DP, both with OSX 10.4. OSX doesn't feel snappy even on the G5...! Responsive, yes, but not snappy. (and, of course, it has always been sluggish on the G4) So, IMHO, there's no magic wand to make your G4 superfast... (save for transplanting an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU in it ;-) Some people here is very fond of hackintoshes (PCs hacked to run OSX). If you're short on cash and like to tinker (and study), that might be a viable route. Coming back to reality... AFAIK Leopard is not well optimized. Tiger (10.4) could be (moderately) faster on your Mac. Or maybe even Snow Leopard (but I'm not sure about this). and everything that doesnt need to run or be loaded, needs to be killed. So any ideas? You could use Activity Monitor to check what is getting more CPU time. I don't think you can kill much, thou; but, maybe, you could find that some app is CPU heavy, and you can find something lighter to substitute with. E.g., I found SoundJam and MacAmp Lite are lighter than iTunes. am using some usb apple pro speakers I wonder if USB speakers put a load on the system... and I think they do. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
Some people here is very fond of hackintoshes (PCs hacked to run OSX). If you're short on cash and like to tinker (and study), that might be a viable route. Not much study is required these days. Professionally written Guides are available for a great many configurations from netbooks to enterprise-level servers. Most of the tools are now GUI and some require just a one-page cheat-sheet to go from bare hardware to a booted and fully functional Lion system in under an hour. Coming back to reality... Hackintoshes seem pretty real to me. Lion and Server Lion, running on a PC with NO modifications whatsoever to either the PC or to Lion is a reality. With prior versions of MacOS X Server, the software cost many times what the hardware cost, and the temptation was there to use a flavor of Linux for one's server. Alas, the learning curve for Linux ... any flavor, server or not ... is VERY steep. But with Server Lion, the software costs a fraction of the hardware cost, so there is really no reason not to run Server Lion, and then to get all the benefits of Lion along with it. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
Il giorno 11-11-2011 20:10, peterh...@cruzio.com ha scritto: Some people here is very fond of hackintoshes (PCs hacked to run OSX). If you're short on cash and like to tinker (and study), that might be a viable route. Not much study is required these days. You sure? Aren't you underestimating your own know-how? :-) For a long time I heard Linux lovers claiming their OS had become easy and straightforward... IMHO, that's not true, by a long shot. But they are so much in love with their OS, they can't see their own geekiness is far from the common user. When I approached the Hackintosh world, years ago, things were difficult and troublesome. I'm not contradicting your position (you know much more than me), I just wonder if you aren't forgetting that what you know might not be a given for most people (an error many experts fall for). Coming back to reality... Hackintoshes seem pretty real to me. Ok but, again, rocket science is pretty real... but that doesn't mean is accessible to everybody. :-) What I meant was reality for the average Joe without any particular knowledge, the average user and the things he has in his reach. Lion and Server Lion, running on a PC with NO modifications whatsoever to either the PC or to Lion is a reality. Well, I am just glad to know it. :-D If I had not just got my G5, I might be tempted... Any link to get direct access to those possibilities? :-) -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
Re: hacking for a slimmer world
Some people here is very fond of hackintoshes (PCs hacked to run OSX). If you're short on cash and like to tinker (and study), that might be a viable route. Not much study is required these days. You sure? Aren't you underestimating your own know-how? :-) Perhaps my perspective is different, or perhaps distorted by a space-time continuum. I spent more than 30 years in professional employment in IBM System/360, System/370, System/390 and z/System mainframes, both hardware (some of which I designed, for my then-employer, Amdahl Corp) and software (where I was a widely-acknowledged subject matter expert in many of that OSes' components). Heck, Lion and Server Lion, on Hacks, is child's-play compared to the learning curve with a mainframe OSes such as OS/360, OS/370, OS/390 and z/OS. At least eight years of continual study just to achieve a functional, journeyman level understanding of the externals, much less the internals. Throw in a decade or two more for the internals. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list