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Mac OS X Panther On A 25MHz Centris 650

Posted by timothy on from the quaalude-vending-machine dept.

Currawong writes "danamania, well known for making the most of 68k Macs, has done the ultimate, and installed Mac OS X Panther on an old Centris with 68MB RAM, a 25MHz 68040 and 4GB drive - an early 90's machine with about the same power as a NeXT cube. To achieve this, she's had to run it under PearPC on Debian, resulting in a severe performance hit, as generic emulation runs "about 500 times slower" according to the developers. On this approximately 0.05MHz G3 speed emulator, the boot screen has taken 1.5 hours to appear, and the ETA for full boot is almost exactly 1 week! Regular updates are being posted as each milestone in the boot process is reached."

57 of 499 comments (clear)

  1. LOL by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 4, Funny

    I don't think I want to know what happens when you try to install or update fink on that machine...

    --
    Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
    1. Re:LOL by Tod+Hsals+5000 · · Score: 5, Funny

      and i always thought that trying to load doom3 on my abacus made it freeze... it seems i need more patience!

    2. Re:LOL by 2starr · · Score: 4, Funny

      Forget Fink, you should try Virtual PC.

      --

      "Let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average." - A. W. Tozer

  2. And in other news, I sat and watched plaster dry by DarthBart · · Score: 5, Funny

    This one qualifies for the "Too Much Time on Their Hands Award".

  3. Yay! by jargoone · · Score: 5, Funny

    the boot screen has taken 1.5 hours to appear, and the ETA for full boot is almost exactly 1 week!

    Gee, sounds faster than my wife's ibook G3/900 with 128M of RAM! Maybe I should upgrade to this!

    1. Re:Yay! by DarthBart · · Score: 3, Informative

      No. Just spend $70 and get yourself a 256 or 512Mb stick of ram. You'll thank yourself.

    2. Re:Yay! by jargoone · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yeah, about that. I bought the RAM, and while trying to install it, I broke the fucking memory slot. :-( Now I don't know what to do. I've installed memory probably a hundred times (literally), and never broke anything. I didn't exert any more than normal pressure. I still don't know what happened.

      Apple won't help -- it's explicitly excluded in their warranty. Paying for the repair would cost more than I paid for the laptop. So I'm stuck with pretty much a useless laptop, unless I go back to OS 9.

      My only hope is that the logic board problem in this series will rear its head, and that they'll replace it in spite of this issue. Otherwise, I'll just have to eBay it and eat the difference.

      I'm pretty bummed about the whole thing. I decided to buy my first Mac and see what the hype is sbout, and this is what happens.

    3. Re:Yay! by SonicBurst · · Score: 4, Funny

      Dude, I've got mod points and love to mod this up, but I can't find a +1 "Sucks To Be You" anywhere...though I'm sure there are some apple haters that would hit the funny button....

      --

      Geek used to be a four letter word. Now it's a six-figure one.
  4. Re:Very simple question... by Chrispy1000000+the+2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because it was there?

    --
    Sig
  5. Boot Time One Week!? by SillySnake · · Score: 5, Funny

    I had a windows system like that once.. But it wasn't emulated :-/

    1. Re:Boot Time One Week!? by Zork+the+Almighty · · Score: 4, Funny

      From scratch to a fully booted system in a week. Gentoo users must be jealous.

      --

      In Soviet America the banks rob you!
  6. Re:Very simple question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Simple answer:
    because you can

  7. Cheating? by Hatta · · Score: 5, Interesting

    IMHO using an emulator is cheating. You're not really running it on the Centris. You're running it in a VM that is running on a Centris.

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    1. Re:Cheating? by Guspaz · · Score: 5, Informative

      What's the difference? The first PowerPCs used a (hardware) emulator to run virtually ALL software, since nothing was native at that point.

    2. Re:Cheating? by Hatta · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you're using hardware, I'd argue that it is native. Anyway, I find it far more impressive that debian runs on this machine, than OS X "runs" on this machine.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    3. Re:Cheating? by pla · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Flamebait? C'mon, people, get a clue!

      Using an emulator does count as cheating.

      If I run Bochs to boot Win2k3 on an old 386, will I get a Slashdot FP?

      Shit, I suppose I can look forward to seeing that tomorrow now, can't I?


      I appreciate emulation, I really do. But aside from the author of the emulator, no one else gets to claim geek cred from using one. Had this person really gotten OS X to run on a 68040, I'd consider it somewhat cool. Running it on an emulator, though? Here, hold on, I'll come back and describe my experience getting SMB3 to run under SNES9x on a 2GHz Win2k box... Woo-woo, rolling in the coolness now, baby!

    4. Re:Cheating? by mvdw · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Try installing it. I've tried installing win98 on a 486/33, it barfs saying that "win98 won't install on a processor slower than 66MHz". Exact same machine, plugged in with a 66MHz processor, installed fine. Win98 also ran fine on the 33MHz processor once installed, BTW.

      Bottom line is, I would guess win2k would also have these checks to make sure it won't install on a slow machine.

    5. Re:Cheating? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative
      Yeah, back when Apple moved from m68k to PowerPC, the OS had software emulation for m68k code. Initially, most of the OS was compiled for the m68k series (the main exception being the core code, including the emulator), and as a result, the new hardware seemed slow. Newer and newer versions of the OS had more and more PowerPC native code, and that made the whole thing run faster and faster.

      They were only able to do this because PowerPC was so much faster than the old m68k. Had the speeds been comparable, it wouldn't have worked. But then, had the speeds been comparable, it wouldn't have been necessary, either.

  8. Errr... by AndyFewt · · Score: 3, Funny

    I sure hope the website isnt being hosted on it.

    1. Re:Errr... by nuclear305 · · Score: 4, Funny

      "I sure hope the website isnt being hosted on it"

      Considering it won't boot for another week, this truly must be a story from the Mysterious Future!

  9. Re:Very simple question... by mekkab · · Score: 5, Funny

    WTF else are you gonna do with a Centris? Play Marathon?! Or Spectre VR?

    --
    In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
  10. Wow by bnenning · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That is impressive. And it probably even gets around Apple's BS EULA clause that claims you can only install OS X on Apple hardware.

    --
    How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
  11. wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    imagine a beowolf cluster of those...

  12. Re:Very simple question... by LostCluster · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why?

    For those who haven't bothered to mouse-over that foot icon attached to the story, it's indicates that this story has been attached to a category known as "It's Funny. Laugh". That's the reason why this story made Slashdot.

    Why this was done in the first place? Dunno...

  13. IT SEEMS by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 3, Funny

    That they are hosting the website on this machine, too!

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
    1. Re:IT SEEMS by dougmc · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Imagine trying to get WinXP running via an emulator on a similar-spec XT machine...
      To be fair, the Centris is much faster than an IBM XT and has much more memory.

      A more accurate comparison would be to run XP on a 486/25 with 64 MB of ram. Of course, XP will probably refuse to run on a 486 at all, so you'll need a 686 emulator running on the 486, and you'll need at least 128 MB of ram (so the emulator will have to use virtual memory to emulate the extra 64 MB + that used in overhead.) I have no reason to expect that if the emulator is good that this won't work.

      It'll probably run faster than MacOS X on the Centris too. After all, OS X needs a PPC, which is totally different than a 680x0, so it needs to be emulated at the lowest level. But a 686 isn't very different from a 486, so an emulator could take advantage of this.

      That this works at all is not really a testament to the robustness of OS X, but instead a testament to the robustness of the PearPC emulator. As far as OS X is concerned, it's running on a PPC box. Just a very slow one ...

    2. Re:IT SEEMS by dougmc · · Score: 4, Funny
      Were it too much faster, it wouldn't be /. material ...

      Really, the reason it was posted to /. is because they think it'll take a week to boot. If it booted in an hour, we wouldn't be nearly as amused :)

      Hell, my Apollo 3000 with 8 MB of ram took about 30 minutes from power on until it was booted up enough for me to start an xterm. All thanks to the memory-grubbing power of HP VUE on top of DomainOS -- no emulation there!

  14. Ultimate? by SunPin · · Score: 5, Funny

    If "has done the ultimate" equates to "has smoked crack" then, sure, it's the ultimate.

    --
    Laws are for people with no friends.
  15. Simple answer ... by pavon · · Score: 5, Funny

    I don't know, but I want to marry her.

  16. Who cares? by Radak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why does Slashdot keep covering people who waste time installing PearPC and OSX on various already-incredibly-slow pieces of aging hardware? Is Slashdot really this hard up for quality story material?

    Getting a web server to run on an Atari 800 is kind of cool. Modding a Roomba to deliver your Dr Pepper is nifty. Getting OSX to run on the slowest piece of hardware you can get Linux to run on is tired and boring.

    Don't make me start reading CNN for my news.

    1. Re:Who cares? by cgenman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because it's neat?

      In many ways getting OSX to run on an 040 based Macintosh is like playing the Matrix on a Zoetrope... Utterly pointless but damned nifty. Sure you had to create a connected series of bluetooth LCD monitors with alternating frames playing back from a 1GB CF drive, but don't it beat all that it works. And that the old macintosh is running the new mac software with a one-week boot time is even cooler and more interesting.

      If you want news, go to the BBC. If you want fanatical fandom with no grounding in reality... go to Fox. If you want nifty stuff like discussing the colors of glowsticks in 30 year old movies, you're in the right spot.

      --
      The ______ Agenda
  17. Wow. by bratmobile · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's the stupidest thing I've read all day long. And I've been reading POLITICS all day long.

  18. And on the other end of the mac spectrum... by RalphBNumbers · · Score: 5, Informative

    VT has officially got the BigMac up and running faster than ever at 12.25TF with 1150 dual 2.3Ghz XServes.
    Check out the announcment.

    I wonder how many Centrises that equates to...

    --
    "The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
  19. A useless and valuable exercise by Y-Crate · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Of course, people always ask "Does this have any practical use?"

    Absolutely not. But that it not the point. In The Real World imagination and creativity are the driving force. How do you foster that? By challenging yourself and inspiring others. There does not have to be any realistic application as much as there needs to be a thought process behind it that can be capitalized on in the future. Experiments such as this drive the imagination and the mind into new directions and those new paths we explore can lead to really, really utterly brilliant things that can have a profound effect on our lives.

    In school, a teacher once told me "Answers don't really matter at all. The process you use to reach your conclusions is the most important thing in the world." It blew my little mind open to the true nature of creativity and for the first time I valued it in a way that was truly profound.

  20. Journal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    OSX load journal: Day 6: Power outage.

  21. That is a bullshit answer. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    I mean really, what the fuck is that supposed to mean? I don't go around killing people just because I can. I go around killing people because it makes my dick hard.

    1. Re:That is a bullshit answer. by NanoGator · · Score: 5, Funny

      "I mean really, what the fuck is that supposed to mean? I don't go around killing people just because I can."

      Would you go around killing people if you couldn't?

      --
      "Derp de derp."
  22. And.... by penguinbrat · · Score: 3, Interesting

    To achieve this, she's had to run it under PearPC on Debian...

    Is the excitement here that Debian ran just fine on something so old, the great work from the developers of PearPC or what it takes to get an OS to take a week to boot?

  23. Watch by headbulb · · Score: 4, Funny

    Watch as danamania gets a whole lot of new slashdot friends just because she's a girl...

    I know I added her to my friend list.

    Ok off-topic but I thought it was funny.

    1. Re:Watch by Average_Joe_Sixpack · · Score: 5, Funny

      i'd do her

      As opposed to your usual crusty tube sock ... yeah I'm sure she's flattered

  24. Re:Very simple question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This same dumb question gets asked every time, and the same dumb answers come up. Stop modding this tired old shit up.

  25. So in a week from now... by DA_MAN_DA_MYTH · · Score: 3, Funny

    If someone trips over the power cord, or the power goes out, does she have the patience to start over?

    So the G3 Emulates at 50Khz with PearPC. Bet she wishes she could have used Cherry OS!

    --
    "It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
  26. Useless and Wonderful... by venomkid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I feel sorry for people who bitch about how this has no "practical" use. I can't help thinking they're the same ones who walk into art museums and make winning comments like "pfff, I could do THAT..."

    --
    vk.
    1. Re:Useless and Wonderful... by Bishop · · Score: 4, Insightful

      seriously. a true geek or nerd is always asking questions and wondering if something will work. I can only surmise from the negative response that many of the posters are reading the wrong website.

      kudos to danamania for wondering if this would work. it is useless, but it still geeky cool.

    2. Re:Useless and Wonderful... by venomkid · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You're comparing this to fine art?????Walk away from your computer RIGHT NOW and get a life. Start by talking a walk in the fresh air or talking face to face with another human being.

      Wow, way to miss the forest...

      --
      vk.
  27. I've done similarly stupid things... by sakusha · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...but not intentionally. A friend of mine once called me over to his shop to check out his new IBM PC 286 clone and a clone-PostScript laser printer. You can tell this was a LONG time ago. I fired up Corel Draw and did a few odd things, like a PostScript pattern fill inside a clipping path. I sent it to print and nothing happened. It was 5PM on Friday, he said he never turns off his computers, so we just left it running and left for the weekend.
    On monday morning, I got an excited phone call from my friend, the page had just popped out of the printer! That means the print job ran on the laser printer's processor for about 2.5 days.

  28. Linux on an Abacus... by Jace+of+Fuse! · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's nothing.

    When my port of Linux on an Abacus is complete, I shall hold the true crown of new stuff on old shit geekiness! (Though, I wonder if people are going to say I cheated because I had to overclock it a little, and I added a few more beads to increase bandwidth.)

    --

    "Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"

    Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
  29. Re:wow by pclminion · · Score: 4, Funny
    imagine a beowolf cluster of those...

    I started to, but it'll take me 52.6 years to finish imagining it.

  30. Re:Very simple question... by zephc · · Score: 3, Funny

    Nuh uh, it was James T. Kirk! Duh!

    --
    "I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
  31. Not totally. by Inoshiro · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There are new instructions on 486+ CPUs that are not supported on the 386. Instructions like cmpxchg8, for example. Some of these can be worked around (cmpxchg8 is used for data moving, and you can "fake it" for the locking involved with more computationally expensive instructions), but some of them cannot, and either way would require extensive work in the lowest level functions of the kernel to match the differences in the design.

    That's why most new packages you see are i486; they use instructions Intel added to the ISA when they released the 486.

    --
    --
    Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
  32. old games by ChristTrekker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What's wrong with Marathon and Spectre? That's why I'm keeping around a couple of my beige Macs - a Q840AV and G3/300 to be exact. There a dozens of fan-made Marathon scenarios I have yet to play. In terms of storyline and gameplay I still think the Marathon series was the best FPS I've ever seen.

    --

    Constitutionally Correct

  33. Re:Very simple question... by carpe_noctem · · Score: 3, Funny

    The real question is: Can it use a two button mouse?

    --
    "Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
  34. An Excellent Demonstration of Church-Turing... by borgheron · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is an excellent demonstration of the Church-Turing hypothesis.

    Boiled down, it basically states that any computer can emulate any other. :)

    GJC

    --
    Gregory Casamento
    ## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
  35. I'm not impressed by Paladeen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hah!

    0.05Mhz? That's just plain speedy. I'd like to see them do what I did: Run it on a 0Mhz processor:

  36. Re:Very simple question... by Drishmung · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually, no. Right mountain, wrong climber.

    --
    Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
  37. I don't want to start a holy war here, by teamhasnoi · · Score: 4, Funny
    but what is the deal with you OS X fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Centris with 68MB RAM, a 25MHz 68040 and 4GB drive for about 2 months now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 2 months. At home, on my C64 w/ 64k of RAM running Contiki, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this lickable OS, the same operation would take about 3 days, if that.

    In addition, during this file transfer, Safari will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Textedit is straining to keep up as I type this.

    I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various OS X machines, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a OS X machine that has run faster than its Contiki counterpart, despite the thousands of lines of code stolen from Windows Longhorn. My Tandy 102 with 32k of ram and MS BASIC runs faster than this 25 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that OS X is a superior OS.

    OS X addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use OS X over other faster, cheaper, more stable OSes.

  38. Aleph One by interactive_civilian · · Score: 3, Informative
    For those Marathon fans who don't want to keep around a lot of old equipment, head over to source.bungie.org and download Aleph One, which is the updated Marathon engine. It should work just fine with your Marathon 2 and Infinity files. Then you can go here and get all of your Marathon 1 goodness for Aleph One.

    cheers. :)

    --
    "Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks