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I always loved the Power PC based Macintosh computers - my first was a iMac DV 400 with G3 CPU. So i bought a refubrished Power Mac G4 MDD with two G4 1.25Ghz / 2GB Ram some days ago, added a PATA to SD Adapter to get a "SSD" and installed Sorbet Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5.9) on it.
The operating system was build in 2009 and the hardware was sold in 2002. So yeah, it is slow and outdated. But with Sorbet Leopard [1] there is a community patched version von Leopard with many modernizations so that this old machine is quite snappy and works well for writing, chat, E-Mail, terminal stuff (,...). The modern web on the other hand doesn't work very nice. But there is Omniweb [2] for http pages like macintoshgarden, frogfind [3] or 64k.news [4] and stuff like that.
For modern sites i recommend Artic Fox [5] which is a port of Pale Moon and works with modern SSL versions.
Other stuff like Adium for XMPP and IRC, iTerm2 as better terminal and many more can be found on macintoshgarden.net.
There is no Lagrange, amfora, Element.io, gomuks or other matrix or gemini client available for PowerPC based Mac OS X out there. So what are the options? First of all make sure you have installed Noto Emoji (or another emoji font; please search for it on the web...) and a nice nerd font [6] installed and set to use in iTerm. Also set the terminal emulation to "linux". Because the way to go is using a small SBC like a Raspberry Pi, imho! Just use a small external computer or your home server - if you like me have one - and ssh to it via iTerm2. Then for example use amfora or gomuks for Geminispace and Matrix. But that also means that you always need to run two computers...
Maybe you remember there where "PC Cards" for older Macintosh systems that allowed the user to run DOS/Windows alongside Mac OS in one system...?!
The Power Mac G4 is a classic tower with PCI slots inside. Many users of such old machines already use PCI USB2 (or even USB3) cards. Some of these cards also have an internal USB port. A Raspberry Pi can be used in gadget mode. This means you can just plug the right port in of your Raspberry Pi into the internal (or an extern) USB port and ssh to it because even the old Mac OS 10.5 recognize the little SBC as network device. I've chosen a Raspberry Pi Zero because it is very small and there are nice adapter boards out there to use it a "gadget".
Hardware used:
- 5 Port USB2 PCI card [7]
- Raspberry Pi Zero (any version)
- ZeroDongle [8]
- USB2 90 degrees adapter [9] depending on how the internal port is aligned
- Micro SD Card
- Linux computer or extfs file system driver for Mac OS X
1.) Install the PCI Card, assemble the ZeroDongle and Pi Zero
2.) Flash the Raspberry Pi OS Lite on the Micro SD Card [10]
3.) Open the file "config.txt" on the boot partition of the Micro SD Card and add following line at the end:
dtoverlay=dwc2
4.) Open the file "cmdline.txt" on the same partition and add following between "rootwait" and "quite":
modules-load=dwc2,g_ether
5.) Create a clean file "ssh" on the boot partition with no content
6.) Create "userconf.txt" on the boot partition and write the user name of your choice and a encrypted password inside it. The password can be created with the commandline command "openssl passwd -6". An example of the file content:
myuser:$6$5vCTlUyVblMXtNnx$PXOtA9UuHhinicEzg3gI/4TOWt2EFEdczOGQnWK6fJ5QJekM/w5kfPKX5lrlmOkXXi5Axeua/caPPEXMj3kYr/
If you use a current macOS version that doesn't recognize the -6 parameter you need homebrew [11] and the openssl@3 package installed. The command line is in this case something like that: "/opt/homebrew/Cellar/openssl@3/3.0.8/bin/openssl passwd -6"
7.) Now the tricky part: Because the network setup is set to a dynamic on default you need to edit /etc/network/interface file of the root partition. This must be done via a linux system or you need a extfs driver for Mac OS X. There is a example of the file:
# interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8) # Include files from /etc/network/interfaces.d: #source /etc/network/interfaces.d/* allow-hotplug usb0 iface usb0 inet static address 192.168.7.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 network 192.168.7.0 broadcast 192.168.7.255 gateway 192.168.7.1
8.) Just put the Micro SD Card in the Pi and the Pi into a USB port of your mac
9.) Mac OS should recognize the Pi with a new ethernet connection, you need to set the IP manually to 192.168.7.1 and the netmask like above
10.) In the sharing settings you need to share your primary network interface with the one the Pi is connected to
11.) Now you are ready to go and should be able to ssh into the Pi
Yeah, it is possible to use graphical applications with the help of the lastest XQuartz [12] version available for Mac OS X 10.5. But the XQuartz is quite old so not many applications work; they just tell you a "segementation fault" on executing. For example Terminology or leafpad work. Connect to your Pi via "ssh -X myuser@192.168.7.2" and call the x application you want to try out.
I have some problems with this setup at the moment. For example the ethernet device on the Mac OS side changes on each reboot. You also should shut down the Pi before you shut down your mac. Maybe someone have could help me with that? I will post an update if i fixed this - and other - issues with my setup.
[1] Sorbet Leopard (macintoshgarden.net)
[2] Omniweb (macintoshgarden.net)
[5] Arctic Fox (macintoshgarden.net)
[7] USB2 PCI card (amazon.de, example)
[9] USB2 adapter (amazon.de, example)
[10] Raspberry Pi OS downloads
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