Booting my PowerMAC G5 from SSD

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Grandpa’s G5

In my last trip to the United States, I scored yet another PowerMac G5, a model 7,2 which is one that is capable of running OS X 10.2.7 for the G5.  It was the proverbial dream come true, used by an elderly man to keep track of photos in iPhoto, which he used maybe a handful of times a year.

Needless to say, he wasn’t too pleased that his copy of Snow Leopard didn’t work on the machine, and he dumped the G5 for a much quieter MacBook.

At any rate, it also included an Apple Studio Display.  I found another Cinema Display in the used hardware market for $25, which even though the display works the screen was damaged at some point and shows scratches on the surface when the display is a solid colour.

At any rate, the machine was deadly slow to boot, I upgraded the RAM from 256MB to 1.2GB, and replaced the ancient disk for a SAMSUNG SSD PM830 2.5 256GB flash drive.  Now it’ll boot up in under 30 seconds from the graphics initialization.

That makes this the only machine I have capable of running MacOS 9, although in emulation under OS X 10.2.  I have the Jaguar DVD set, but Classic mode was removed in 10.5.  It was the ending of the PowerPC era, just as 10.6 was the last version to ship with Rosetta.

Its a fun machine from the era of the introduction of personal 64bit RISC computing to the home user, although too bad the full industry didn’t catch up until later, just as 32bit desktop computing had a few stumbles out of the gates.

My crappy CVS archive of old crap is now online via pserver!

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So yeah HOURS of fun.  Even though the database is only a few gigabytes, it took a while to rebuild everything as ‘cvs pserver’ package for Debian runs in a chroot of /var/lib/cvsd which doesn’t play nice when your archives are all created in /var/lib/cvs .. The cvs-web VM doesn’t seem to care, but the logon process for anonymous sure does.

Anyways the following archives are online:

  • 32v
  • binutils
  • cblood
  • Corridor8
  • CSRG
  • darwin0
  • darwinstep
  • djgppv1
  • dmsdos
  • doom
  • dynamips
  • frontvm
  • gas
  • gcc1x
  • gcc2x
  • gcc130-x68000
  • gdb
  • linux001
  • linux
  • lites
  • mach
  • MacMiNT
  • MiNT
  • net2
  • nextstep33examples
  • pgp
  • plan9next
  • qemu
  • quake1
  • quake2
  • research
  • rsaref
  • sbbs
  • simh
  • TekWar
  • tme
  • truecrypt
  • uae
  • winnt
  • WitchavenII
  • Witchaven
  • xinu
  • xnu

Say you are interested in Research Unix v6, you logon to the CVS server:

cvs -d:pserver:[email protected]:/research login

And in the case of research & CSRG there is multiple modules (directories) and it’s probably best to list them to see which one you want.

$ cvs -d:pserver:[email protected]:/research ls
CVSROOT
researchv10dc
researchv10no
researchv3
researchv6
researchv6id
researchv6kw
researchv7hs
researchv7kb
researchv7ni
researchv7th
researchv8dc
researchv9

Which in this case I tried to keep it somewhat sane with each found distro with some initials when there was more than one… As always its easier to look through the web interface (for me) and then decide which one to checkout.

And then you can checkout v6

cvs -d:pserver:[email protected]:/research checkout researchv6

Of if you wanted the Emacs that was in Research Unix v9:

cvs -d:pserver:[email protected]:/research checkout researchv9/cmd/emacs

Ok, that’s great, but how about something that has all kinds of source overlaid in varous branches, like my doom repository?  First login, and then check out the default repository:

cvs -d:pserver:[email protected]:/doom login
cvs -d:pserver:[email protected]:/doom checkout doom

Now we can run this quick thing I threw together to get each of the branches.

cvs -d:pserver:[email protected]:/doom log -h | grep -P ‘^\t’ | awk ‘{print $1}’ | sort|uniq| sed -e ‘s/://g’

And now this will tell us there is the following branches:

djgppdoom
heretic
hexen
iD
jagdoom
linuxdoom
windoom

So, let’s say I want to look at the Jaguar port, with the branch name of jagdoom:

cvs -d:pserver:[email protected]:/doom checkout -r jagdoom doom

You will get errors about not having write permission into the CVS repository to set your current tag level, but that is fine, because you don’t have permission.  And now if you check the directory it’s at the Jaguar port level, as the 68000 based assembly is now in the directory:

$ ls doom/*gas
doom/decomp.gas doom/music.gas doom/p_sight.gas doom/r_phase3.gas doom/r_phase7.gas
doom/dspbase.gas doom/p_base.gas doom/p_slide.gas doom/r_phase4.gas doom/r_phase8.gas
doom/eeprom.gas doom/p_move.gas doom/r_phase1.gas doom/r_phase5.gas doom/r_phase9.gas
doom/gpubase.gas doom/p_shoot.gas doom/r_phase2.gas doom/r_phase6.gas doom/sfx.gas
$

I don’t think many will care, but well for those who do, here you go.  Anyways the web browsing from unix.superglobalmegacorp.com should be working just fine.  Although I did move a bunch of stuff around, so people who like to deep link, I guess you are kinda screwed.

Darwin 0.3 & 1.0 on Qemu

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Darwin 0.3 PowerPC

Interestingly enough a lot of the same weirdness of missing bits I saw on the x86, is also on the PowerPC.

There is no nice installer, the CD image actually boots MacOS 8.6 which currently won’t run on Qemu.  However Darwin 1.0 uses MacOS 9, which will.  There is not install program for Darwin, rather you need a secondary disk, that is partitioned so the volume manager will pick it up, and then you restore a backup onto the target disk.  Naturally the restore program from 0.3 won’t work, but the 1.0 will under the G4 Cube MacOS 9 CD-ROM install.

Also I couldn’t figure out the boot parameters so I used Steve Troughton Smith’s BootX loader https://github.com/steventroughtonsmith/BootX to get the OS booted.

qemu-system-ppc.exe -L pc-bios -drive file=..\darwin03.qcow2,index=0,format=qcow2,media=disk -drive file=BootX_custom.dmg,index=2,format=raw,media=disk -prom-env “boot-device=ide1:2,\BootX” -prom-env “boot-args=-v rd=hd0 debug=0xffe kdp=2” -prom-env “boot-file=ide0:8,\mach_kernel” -M g3beige

It’s a little convoluted but it does work.

I put together a binary package for Qemu on sourceforge here: Darwin03-PowerPC_qemu-2.11_04_22_2018.7z

Currently there is no networking, I’m guessing I need drivers from OS X 1.x but Ive had really bad luck with the mouse to try to open a terminal window to see if the new sungem NIC is functional at all.

Mac OS X Server 1.0 installs on Qemu

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OS X Server 1.2 on qemu single user mode

That’s right, the ADB is usable enough now to type and move the mouse, meaning that OS X Server can now be installed within Qemu!

It’s incredibly slow, and the mouse is incredibly jumpy, but it’s actually running!

Basically, like A/UX, you boot up into MacOS to partition the drive.

qemu-system-ppc-screamer.exe -L pc-bios -m 256 -M mac99 -prom-env “boot-args=-v” -prom-env “auto-boot?=true” -prom-env “vga-ndrv?=true” -hda 2GB.vmdk -cdrom “Mac OS X Server 1.2, MOSX_Booter.iso” -sdl -device usb-mouse -device adb-keyboard -boot d

OS X Server 1.2 MacOS 9 Create OS X Server partition

And then kick off the installer:

OS X Server 1.2 MacOS 9 Start Install

Which really isn’t much to do, other than tagging the partition, and prepping the machine to reboot.

It’s OK

Qemu doesn’t emulate the NVRAM, so it’ll complete with this ‘non fatal’ ‘fatal error’

After that, boot into the OS X Server kernel, and continue the install:

qemu-system-ppc.exe -L pc-bios -prom-env “boot-args=-v rd=sd0″ -drive file=2GB.vmdk,index=1,format=vmdk,media=disk -M g3beige -cpu g3 -drive file=”Mac OS X Server 1.2, MOSX_Booter.iso”,index=0,format=raw,media=cdrom -prom-env “boot-device=cd:9,\\:tbxi” -m 256 -net none

OS X Server 1.2 installing text mode

It will then format the disk, and copy over the base operating system.  After that it’s time to shutdown, and reboot the VM.  I couldn’t figure out a pure hard disk boot, but again using the CD-ROM, you can just tell it to pull the root from the hard disk.

qemu-system-ppc.exe -L pc-bios -prom-env “boot-args=-v rd=hd0″ -drive file=2GB.vmdk,index=1,format=vmdk,media=disk -M g3beige -cpu g3 -drive file=”Mac OS X Server 1.2, MOSX_Booter.iso”,index=0,format=raw,media=cdrom -prom-env “boot-device=cd:9,\\:tbxi” -m 256 -net none

OS X Server 1.2 installing

And after this, it’ll want to reboot again.  Launch it up and now we get the initial setup

Setup Assistant

And with that out of the way, we can logon!

And after a while, it’ll load up the desktop

OS X Server 1.2 Desktop

As mentioned above, the mouse is incredibly jittery.  Doing anything graphical is very difficult. But here we are, running OS X/Rhapsody for the PowerPC!

That’s all!

Because the mouse is VERY jumpy at the moment, Im going to make some pre-configured disk images available because running the disk tool under OS 9 is a major pain.  The first image has only been partitioned, while the second has completed the ‘text mode setup’, aka a minimal install.

And that’s it for now!

Japan get’s all the neat looking SONY PC’s AKA the trouble with early SSDs

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Is it a Rumba? or a PC?  It’s a SONY!

SONY VGX-TP3G

So while cruising the junk market in Hong Kong I found this little ‘roomba’ looking machine.  Looks pretty neat, and because it has video & crashing issues I was able to get this thing for $500 HKD or about $75.  I mostly felt bad for the guy as the disk had died in the thing, and he had spent the money to get a SSD into this thing, and had been nice enough to upgrade the Windows 7 to Windows 8, and onward to Windows 10 for me, all legit.

But to start the adventure what the heck is this thing?  Naturally SONY has several things that look like model numbers.  Normally I’d just flip it on it’s back and reveal..

SONY VGX-TP3G underside

A model of PCG-2G2P.  However looking at it’s side I find…

SONY VGX-TP3G side view

That this thing is also a VGX-TP3G.  Way to complicate things SONY!

So searching SONY seems kind of funny as it bounces me to America first for some reason, then tells me to go to the APAC site.

GOTO APAC!

I don’t know why these kinds of ‘main corp, but not really main corp’ companies drive me crazy.  And wouldn’t you know it, no manuals, and the downloads are only for the SONY applications built in for BlueRay playback that aren’t on the SD.

And then I find this fun support article, 00188888.

Dear Valued Customers,

Please be informed that Sony’s support has ended for VAIO computers which were shipped with the following Microsoft Windows operating systems preinstalled:

•        Windows 95
•        Windows 98
•        Windows 98 SE
•        Windows ME
•        Windows 2000
•        Windows XP
•        Windows Vista

As of March 1, 2018, we will no longer provide drivers and software for download for these computers.

That’s right!  Even though they already offer no drivers, BIOS updates or anything they will kill all downloads for all the older machines in less than 2 weeks.  Great.  So avoid any old SONY salvage guys.

So I decide I’m going to wipe the machine, and re-install Windows with the x64 variant, and I also wanted it in English.  The OS installs just fine, and everything looks good.  Even though this is a 10 year old machine, I thought I’d try something simple, like compiling a Linux kernel, and that is when I saw the weirdest thing. While unzipping the archive, the disk usage hit 100%, but there was no blinking on the disk LED (this machine is so old, it has one of those things!), and in the task manager, no program was using the disk at all.

So a quick search led me to this article, 3083595.

Task Manager might show 100% disk utilization on Windows 10 devices with Message Signaled Interrupt (MSI) mode enabled

Symptoms
Task Manager shows the disk to be at 100% utilization despite a light or no workload, and the system may experience lag or become unresponsive. In addition, the system event log contains numerous events with Event ID 129, which represent resets of the disk controller.

While device resets can be caused by a varying number of factors, we are aware of issues with some Advanced Host Controller Interface PCI-Express(AHCI PCIe) models that causes these symptoms in Windows 10 when running with the inbox StorAHCI.sys driver. Due to a firmware bug, the Solid-state drive (SSD) does not properly complete input/output when Message Signaled Interrupt (MSI) mode is enabled. As a result, the Windows storage stack attempts to reset the device after waiting on unresponsive reads or writes for a period of time.

Well isn’t that interesting!  So it turns out that a firmware update could solve this, and I didn’t figure it out until actually much later.

I loaded up Kerbal Space Program, but it’s ancient Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor T8300 & NVIDIA® GeForce® 8400M GT GPU really show their age.  But it does run, so that is nice.  It runs Edge & YouTube just fine, and handles all the general media stuff I wanted so that’s a win for me.

so here we go again.

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Docker is going nuts after I had to reboot for some ‘critical’ update for something else.

Looks like it’s going crazy regarding ARP:

07:27:18.632243 ARP, Request who-has 172.17.0.4 tell 172.17.0.2, length 28
07:27:18.632275 ARP, Reply 172.17.0.4 is-at 02:42:ac:11:00:02, length 28

Of course the weird thing is that 172.17.0.2 doesn’t need to talk to 172.17.0.4 at all.

I keep getting this on the db server:

2018-04-11 9:11:30 139923730724608 [Warning] Aborted connection 4226 to db: ‘virtuall_wp152’ user: ‘root’ host: ‘172.17.0.3’ (Got timeout reading communication packets)

which of course is up the entire time.  restarting either the web server or the db server puts me up for seconds at a time.

So while I move stuff around, and get ready for a re-install of my base OS, as I can’t seem to figure out why the bridge has freaked out, if you can read this, then the sloppy.io container thing is actually working.  And at least on the surface, moving container persistent storage, along with a DNS update looks pretty quick.

WinFile comes back from the dead.

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WinFile!

Yes, this WinFile.  So Microsoft apparently went through their Windows NT 4.0 source code tree from 2007, and decided to pull this tool out, and send it out into the world.  It’s available in a ‘original’ version, and a ‘v10’ version which includes the following enhancements:

  1. OLE drag/drop support
  2. control characters (e.g., ctrl+C) map to current short cut (e.g., ctrl+c -> copy) instead of changing drives
  3. cut (ctrl+X) followed by paste (ctrl+V) translates into a file move as one would expect
  4. left and right arrows in the tree view expand and collapse folders like in the Explorer
  5. added context menus in both panes
  6. improved the means by which icons are displayed for files
  7. F12 runs notepad or notepad++ on the selected file
  8. moved the ini file location to %AppData%\Roaming\Microsoft\WinFile
  9. File.Search can include a date which limits the files returned to those after the date provided; the output is also sorted by the date instead of by the name
  10. File.Search includes an option as to whether to include sub-directories
  11. ctrl+K starts a command shell (ConEmu if installed) in the current directory; shfit+ctrl+K starts an elevated command shell (cmd.exe only)
  12. File.Goto (ctrl+G) enables one to type a few words of a path and get a list of directories; selecting one changes to that directory. Only drive c: is indexed.
  13. UI shows reparse points (e.g., Junction points) as such
  14. added simple forward / back navigation (probably needs to be improved)
  15. View command has a new option to sort by date forward (oldest on top); normal date sorting is newest on top

Which is quite the list of things to add to the old WinFile.

You can find the source & binaries on github.

So the source code to the Macintosh port of System Shock was just released

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It’s the ‘classic’ MacOS. And it requires Code Warrior 10 to build. Apparently its for the PowerPC only, although I haven’t tried to compile it yet, as I foolishly just upgraded to 10.5 on my PowerPC, which of course has no classic support.

Source code is on github, here.

It’s a nice present from Night Dive studios.  I know that many people are mad at their reboot being consumed by feature bloat, but at least they aren’t going down into obscurity.

As always, enjoy!

Anyone in need of bash?

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I found this post the other day, and thought it was interesting.

Date: 13 Apr 91 18:17:44 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki
Lines: 18

I've recently ported bash to minix-386 (nice, but takes about 300kB of
RAM). It's been "tested" by me using it all the time (good editing and
history - couldn't live without it any more), but I won't make any
guarantees. If anybody is interested in cdiffs against bash-1.05, please
mail me (I'll post if there is enough interest).

The port definitely needs GCC, and 386-minix. ST-minix will probably
work as well (I've sent it to one ST-minixer), after changeing a #define
LITTLE_ENDIAN to BIG_ENDIAN. If the port already has been done by
someone else - just ignore this message.

		Linus Torvalds		[email protected]

PS. I've hacked the kernel to accept gcc-compiled programs directly
without going through gcc2minix, but I haven't tested it very much yet
(bash works though, so most things probably will). Changes are trivial,
mail me if interested. (And yes - it accepts old minix format too - you
don't have to recompile everything :-)

Naturally it’s about the impending birth of Linux.  First he needed to get GCC running under Minix 386, but I didn’t know at the time that he had patches floating around to allow Minix to directly run the GCC A.OUT format executables.

Scary to think that if Minix had allowed submissions and ‘bloat’ that Linux would have never been.

On the other hand, much like 386BSD the backpressure of having some kind of free BSD/UNIX system which did take in submissions was overwhelming, with the false start of 386BSD going the route of Minix and in that first critical year not pulling in any of the additional patches, while Linux grew by leaps and bounds.  By the time the AT&T vs BSDi lawsuit hit, well the game was already in Linux’s favour, even with it’s already fragmented distro base.