Jag DP on Unsupported Hardware

Krevinek

Evil PPC Tweaker
Well, I got my Jag DP yesterday, but it won't install on my 8600. Apparently Apple did something to BootX and the kernel that broke Ryan Rempel's modified 10.1 BootX.

Has anyone had success with other means of installing the DP? So far, it just locks up the machine when BootX tries to load the kernel and I have to Command-Ctrl-Power the machine... not fun.

Is it possible there is some Darwin code for the new BootX floating around that I missed that I could patch manually, and use with XPostFacto?
 
Originally posted by Krevinek
Well, I got my Jag DP yesterday, but it won't install on my 8600. Apparently Apple did something to BootX and the kernel that broke Ryan Rempel's modified 10.1 BootX.

Has anyone had success with other means of installing the DP? So far, it just locks up the machine when BootX tries to load the kernel and I have to Command-Ctrl-Power the machine... not fun.

Is it possible there is some Darwin code for the new BootX floating around that I missed that I could patch manually, and use with XPostFacto?

Try to email Ryan Rempel, I'm sure he's working on it right now :)
 
Well, this wouldn't be that big an issue if I wasn't being bogged down by this... I have been getting some interesting reports from DP users that say their V5 card started working (As the only monitor no less, letting them boot the Install CD). I cannot actually do confirmation myself unless I can get this installed. If it does work, that means I can probably say 'screw this' to the Framebuffer code needed for V3/4/5 cards and get working on acceleration instead.
 
I did not know 10.2 would work on an 8600?

Is not the hardware too old?

Sorry that was two instead of one quick question.
Thanks,
SA:)
 
Read my sig, my 8600 has 10.1.5 and 9.2.2 running on it. This sucker doesn't have one single supported version of the OS on it.

I have no complaints so far ;)

Of course there are issues that OldWorld machines have to suffer through because of it (10.0.x was just slow as a snail, iTunes sucks down 30-40% of the CPU, lack of decent video cards on the market to accelerate the graphics...). However, it is tiding me over until I can afford a PBG4...

I am currently trying to manually install MacOS X from the Jag CD using the Terminal and the Finder from 10.1.5, it seems to be going okay so far... I just hope the original BootX is in good enough shape to use from XPostFacto to boot with (the modifications Ryan made were originally to allow BootX to pull startup extensions from 2 locations: CD and HD, but if I can get a complete install manually, I should be able to boot using the original BootX)
 
I read you sig. Hence, how I knew you were trying to install on an 8600.

There is of course a Hack out there to run pre-Jag OSX on old world macs. However, the point I was trying to make is that from what I read about Jaguar, even if you were successful in installing it on an old world mac, it would be a serious unusable dog. I could be wrong, and by all means try. Better backup, cause I got a feeling you'll be coming back to 10.1.5. (Even though it is not released yet) Let us know how it goes.

Thanks.:)
SA
 
How would 10.2 be slower than 10.1 on an 8600 when 10.2 appears to be faster than 10.1 on newer machines? That doesn't make sense considering I already find 10.1 fairly usable. Speed is an issue since I have less 2D/3D acceleration than those complaining on iMacs.

However, it does appear Ryan has some work ahead of him, since 10.2's lower level code isn't compatible with 10.1's lower level code (recompile essentially from my knowledge for drivers/etc), so there will be some more BootX mods and kext mods that need to be done.

Edit: The core of the OS will work with any PowerSurge model or later, as long as you retain the support kexts for the PowerSurge mobos in the package, which Apple removed long before Public Beta. (Rhapsody did run on PowerSurge models without modification up to DP or DR 3)

The core of the OS will work with any PowerSurge model or later without modification, but they dropped support for the older machines because of the lack of any acceleration-capable graphics card bundled with it. (They wanted it to be usable on the stock hardware, or not support it at all essentially, which makes good sense)
 
From what I hear you will need the video acceleration to access the speed of Jaguar. Seems Apple wants to port Aqua through openGL and take advantage of the video cards in their new Macs. This hardware advantage is what will make Jaguar faster than 10.1 on new world macs. Without the hardware advantage, it may still run on your computer, but my feeling is there is a reason why they are exploiting their hardware now. Whatever kind of tradeoff Apple made for this hardware acceleration should limit old machines. Of course this is just my opinion and I'm all for your going ahead and testing my theories. Will not hurt me any, and I think you will be able to bring some useful information to the discussion table. So by all means continue, just make sure everything is backed up.:)

Thanks.
SA
 
Still no luck with Jaguar. BootX and possibly even the kernel (ICK) might need some patching in places. Good thing they are both open source.

Although from what I have seen, considering the iBook cannot take advantage of Quartz Extreme due to the limited video card, the iBook shouldn't be snappier... but it sure is. Resizing is not a problem (to me at least), and that was the biggest complaint that lingered to 10.1.4 on G3 machines.
 
iBook cannot take advantage of Quartz Extreme due to the limited video card, the iBook shouldn't be snappier... but it sure is.

The iBook has an ATI card that works with Quartz Extreme as does my old TiBook. Straight from Apple's mouth:

Quartz Extreme
Jaguar dramatically improves the performance of Mac OS X with Quartz Extreme hardware-based graphics acceleration. Quartz Extreme takes advantage of the OpenGL 3D graphics engine to make the entire desktop a fully accelerated OpenGL scene. A supported* video card can then render the drawing of the desktop, just like it would a 3D game. The main CPU chip(s) can then focus on application-specific needs, making the whole system faster and more responsive.

That means your shadows will drop quickly, your genies will appear slicker and your transparencies will layer faster — and Mac OS X can do more processing in the background while you move the foreground.

And here are the supported cards indicated by the * :

*nVidia: GeForce2MX, GeForce3, GeForce4 Ti, GeForce4 or GeForce4MX. ATI: any AGP Radeon card. 32MB VRAM recommended for optimum performance.

Hope that clarifies it. Oh, I don't think the Kernel is actually open source. So you may have trouble hacking it.

Good Luck.:)
SA
 
Ahem... note that it says, ATI *RADEON* not ATI Rage. All iBooks, and all PowerBooks until the 550/667Mhz revision of PBG4s all carried some form of the Rage Mobility chipset, which isn't supported. So, that said, if this early beta is a little snappier, even on a fragmented drive, then it will be a little snappier on an 8600, as it will on ANY machine it will ultimately run on successfully.

[ Correction: Apple just announced new iBooks this monday which DO have Radeon Mobility chipsets, so now there is a form of iBook that can handle QE... I was partially wrong ;) My Jaguar experience to date has been on a 500Mhz iceBook with DVD/CD-RW, which doesn't support QE, so the fact that the speed HAS improved on not-as-accelerated hardware still stands. ]

Also note that Apple has the ENTIRE source for Darwin (at least 1.4.x which corresponds with OS X 10.1) posted, and this includes the 'xnu' kernel package. However, the version of Darwin that will correspond with Jaguar won't be released until Jaguar is.

Just to let you know, there isn't a need to try to correct me on Darwin and the OS X Graphics subsystem... I have been studying that for the last year trying to take it apart and put it back together to get Voodoo 3/4/5 drivers made for OS X... I tend to learn quite a bit about it doing that ;)
 
Sorry. I was not trying to correct you. Just making sure you understood what you were up against. Obviously you do, so as I said before:

By all means continue and let us know how it works.


Good Luck.:)
SA
 
Well, I don't have the source to the Jaguar BootX or xnu projects, so I can't really do anything other than wait at this point.
 
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