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Build Your Own PowerPC?
amokk asks: "Let's assume for a second that somebody would want to take the time and effort to build a Personal Computer but base it on a PowerPC architecture. Besides saying 'Buy a Mac' (I already have one) or 'Buy an IBM server', is there any way of acquirng the individual parts and slapping them together? Why you would want to do this isn't up for debate. Rather, this is one of those 'wouldn't it be neat if...' type of experiments."
Look here, but it's kind of old. Oh and here also!
For the latter I would suggest FreeBSD. Leave it in Runlevel 5, and install the OSX themese for KDE or Gnome (Your choice). But, I have this odd feeling that you are probably wanting the macintosh compatibility.
Can all fish swim?
He had a dozen or so free copies of Mac OS X (10.1 I believe) but no hardware onto which to place this neat new OS.
So, he scoured eBay for the appropriate parts (motherboard, chip, RAM, SCSI hard disks) and pieced together all of the new machines from scratch.
He told me the only real hard part was finding cases. I think he's still two cases short, but ended up simply mounting the components onto a piece of drywall and setting them flat on a lab table!
Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., Canada, B3H 3J5
If you could get Darwin running on such a homemade PowerPC (not made from old Mac parts, but built from 'scratch')... could you then take the pre-compiled parts of aqua out of Mac OS X and run this on your homemade powerpc computer?
Doesn't darwin handle all of the interaction directly with the hardware? If the aqua binaries can run on your homemade powerpc, shouldn't everything work just fine?
And a related question... what if you got Darwin running on an x86 chip with a PowerPC emulator? Could you, theoretically, get aqua to run on such a system?
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
...are there mainboards and CPUs available to end-users that are not in the sky-high price-range that manufacturers take for developer hardware?
I'd be interested in building an ARM-based desktop computer, but it seems there is no normal mainboard sold to end-users. Or is it? ("Normal" = standard form factor, standard RAMs, IDE, USB and VGA included, possibly PS/2 and serial too.)
Same question for the Crusoe, btw. Seems that the only desktop mainboard available is developers only...
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To be perfectly honest, what I hope is a valid, non-troll question: why?
I mean, I can understand buying a Mac for the ease of use and integration of the Mac OS and it's associated applications. However, when you start talking about buying/building a PowerPC machine - I don't see the point.
Those who say that the PowerPC is falling behind - fast - in processor performance have a very valid point. I'm a Mac fan, and I realize this. It is getting to the point that Intel-compatible processors are equal to or better than PowerPC processors at the same or lower cost. It's only the Mac OS that still gives reason to continuing to use the PowerPC.
And as such, if you aren't talking a Mac OS machine, you can run Linux or BSD just as easily on a Intel-compatible processor and platform as you could if you built a PPC machine. More easily, actually, because you can get the parts to put the machine together so much easier.
Note: I'm not talking a POWER server - that's a different beast, and there's reason for that as well. This is strictly talking about building or buying a non-Mac OS compatible PowerPC computer.
You know, I keep wondering if we'll ever see the return of Mac-clones. Because Darwin is open-source, it should be possible to port it to any other PPC-based machine. Quartz and carbon and cocoa all ride on top of Darwin and don't know what is underneath, so once you've ported Darwin, you should be able to install the full MacOS X.
This would be a better situation for Apple than their old clone prorgam was, because Apple can force the other hardware vendors to port Darwin to their own clones and support it themselves, and pay Apple for the bit that provides the interface. It would also help Apple spread the cost of Darwin development out a bit.
Probably a pipe dream, but still...
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Why you want to do this *IS* up for debate. If you're shooting for a unix (linux/whatever) platform, does it really matter that it's PowerPC? I mean, unix is general enough that unless you've got specific hardware requirements (and processor alone doesn't constitute this -- I'm talking wierd ass PCI cards or other barnyard oddities) it doesn't matter if you're on powerpc, intel, or sparc. The cheapest bang for the buck in this category is, as we all know, intel.
:)
I've no idea what you'd need to do to get this MacOS compatible. Do they still use dark matter (ROM) in those machines? But if you're not going for Mac compatibility I don't know why you want to roll your own.
If you've got a warezhouse full of PowerPC assembly programs then that's a different story. Obviously you're going to need a specific processor to run them. Or maybe you're looking to do embedded system development on a PowerPC?
Inquiring minds want to know. Ok, we don't really *want* to know, we'd really just like to laugh at the idea a bit more.
I think the person is probably asking about commodity parts. Anyone can go into a local hole in the wall PC shop and buy an Intel/AMD compatible mobo and plug commodity hardware (video, NIC, sound, IDE HDs, etc...) into it and get a working computer out of it. But, is it possible to get a PowerPC based mobo with PCI/AGP slots, an IDE controller, USB in an ATX (I'm not a hardware guy, so ATX could be the wrong term) form factor and have it work with an OS like Linux? That would be a great way to get away from the WinTel world and avoid paying the steep prices that Apple fetches. However, since any mobos like this are likely to be made in a much smaller volume and harder to find (implying a small customer base), they would probably be fairly expensive anyway. It's a beautiful idea, but it's not a reality at this time.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
This is a fine piece of iron. Slow by today's standards, but bulletproof / built-like-a-tank.
If I had one, I'd immediately proceed to install Linux on it.
I do have an old RS6000/43P (desktop unit, 120MHz ppc uniprocessor) that I just decommissioned from service as an Informix workgroup database server, and intend to try installing Linux on it if I ever find some spare time to play around with it.
Those boards are basically the same as Eyetech's/Hyperion's/Amiga's A1 and Bplan's Pegasos...
Microcode Solutions are writing an iMac emulator now, both an all-software emulation and a hardware emulation solution (PPC CPU on a PCI card). It currently still vaporware, but they say it is nearing completion.
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Ralmin.
Linux compatbility is pretty much enough. MacOnLinux can run Jaguar on an RS/6000 now, so linux on a PPC system not designed by apple can work great. There is also work into getting Jaguar to boot on an AmigaOne PPC ATX motherboard, I think os9 already runs...
-biv
This was called the "common reference hardware platform". Before Apple usurped back the Power Computing, Motorola, and Umax clones, this was supposed to be one potential answer to building a non-mac powerpc box. Motorola came the closest to accomplishing this by implementing standard PC parts (like ps/2 ports) on their computer.
. sh tml
At one time, back when Microsoft actually supported the PowerPC architecture, Firmworks and IBM actually made a dual-booting macintosh/NT computer in 1996. IBM's motivation was linux, I believe. Check these links out:
http://www.firmworks.com/www/chrp.htm
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/CHRP.html
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/9908/19.ibm
I personally LOVED the thought of being able to go to a computer show and putting together an NT or a linux or a mac-compatible computer by purchasing individual parts.
You know, it's really a damn shame this wasn't meant to be.
I'm no EE so maybe I'm way off, but I don't understand why a single mobo maker (e.g., Abit, Asus, Tyan) couldn't make just one PowerPC-based mobo, since all the other parts (IDE, PCI/AGP, et al) are the same. I would think minor changes to the clocking of the board and the right kind of CPU socket is all that's needed. Oh yeah, it would also need Open Firmware for booting.
Sure the market is tiny compared to the x86 mobo market. But there's also no competition. Linux works great on the PowerPC so it would be easy to support a board like this. Someone take a risk and create the market!
You need to check out the Acorn community (or perhaps that's where you're coming from?). Acorn was an English Arm-based home computer of the late 80's that competed (none to sucessfully, outside Britain at least) against Amiga an Atari.
Even though the Acorn community is now shriveled enough to make Amiga look healthy by comparision, they have been the one and only group pushing Arm-based desktops over the last decades.
There seems to be at least a couple hardware resellers still in operation. The pricing didn't seem to extortionate to me, either.
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
The problem with building a Gigabit G4 and probably every other AGP G4 is that the chips on the bottom of the motherboard touch the case and use the case as a heat sink. When you use a standard ATX case those chips on the bottom contact nothing and are not properly cooled. This works for a while but you are going to end up with a fried motherboad eventually.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
I know this really doesn't answer his question but couldn't the transmeta chip be programmed to emulate PowerPc chips.Not that I have see a whole lot more transmeta mobo's out there.
... but I'm typing this reply on a Mac that I pieced together for less than $250 all figured. I run OS 9.1 currently, but another $100 worth of parts and I can put OS X on here.
Basically, I started with an old PowerCenter 120 (a PowerPC Mac Clone) with 32MB of RAM. Total cost? $47 from Ebay
Next up, I added 128MB of RAM from Computer Renaissance... it's fussy about is RAM (5V DIMMs). Total cost: $30
Next... I added an old SCSI drive I had knocking around (4Gb drive from an old server of mine). Total cost: $0
THEN I added a Powerlogix G3-400 upgrade card, $85 from Other World Computing. Finally, added a $49 copy of OS9.1 and OSX 10.1 (a bundled special also from OWC).
So what can I do with it? Well, I love the fact that I now have a machine that's relatively trouble-free, runs the applications I use most often with aplomb (word processing, email, Mozilla etc.) and provides me a REAL upgrade path to OSX. Yeah, OSX isn't strictly compatible with my hardware, but the only piece that's truly critical is the video; to be fixed by the addition of a Radeon 7000 in the next few weeks. Everything else can be worked around using XPostFacto.
Worth a thought if you REALLY want to play with OS X but don't want to outlay on the hardware. FYI, this thing runs OS 9.1 faster than my neighbor's 400Mhz Imac... still remains to be seen how X will run.
Total cost for the project: $300 or so
Value of knowing my 5-year old Mac is more reliable and stable than anything with Microsoft OS's on it: priceless!