Seeking Developers for PowerPC Project / OS Restart

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
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Sup

Years ago I was working on a port of Void Linux to PowerPC. A user by the name of Q66 then went and trashed the entire thing, claiming he owned it, holding the compute hostage, then kicking out the PPC32 and 64 users out to then try and force everyone to get a talos.

Honestly I hate that guy and I want to kick him in the you know what.

But, as of now, I am working to restart the project and kick out the 64LE image. Plainly I have no way to test for it, nor do I want to pay for compute time. OBV if someone wants to help, by all means.

The entire point was to make a development platform available to then continue hacking G4’s and G5’s, making them into more open-basis machines.

As of now, the system boots, posts, has a working installer, has the ability to boot to desktop, and do basic things. What I wanted to work on was a cloud / cluster build tool called CoreValence, documentation about the hardware, firmware, and interactions, and make OpenFirmWare less of a confusing mess for the basic end user, ultimately resulting in a completely new OpenFirmware image for powerpc macs. At lesat, that was the original goal.

Now the only goal is to correct what Q66 trashed for no reason.

If anyone hase a G3, G4, or G5, hit me up.

Here is what we will be tackling:

G5 (PPC64BE)

Driver Stablization (ati 96 97 9800 APO Driver, other drivers that were recetly released)
More Packages built and tested
Documentation of Hardware compatibility with the system (CPU PCi cards AGP cards whatever)
The weird shit that comes of of the above listed
Cloud building tool
Investigation and Documentation of RealTime kernel execution mode, and cache load patterns

G4 (PPC32BE)

Drivers
Packages (build test)
Documentation
Memory management cleanup
Cache management cleanup / cache wiping / reset system for on the fly halt fixes

G3 (PPC32BE/Old)

Get past a bash prompt

Other Needed Fixes

ATI 7XXX 8XXX compatibility fix (eMac G4 / Late G3’s)
(will add more here as I think of them, haven’t legit gone over notes for this in like a year and. a half)

And in case Q66 sees this because I know he has been here before

Eat my a** technofascist. You paid to be cool, pay to win is for fing losers. Learn how to be a real hacker, or get the f off the FOSS sphere. We’re tired of you and your bullshit kind, get tossed.

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Reserved Post

Edited for forum etiquette.
Edited in more G5 details (ofw rtm)

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Hey there, I was one of the others working on the Void PPC project. Things got a bit busy for me and I handed the project over to Q66. Didn’t hear that he got rid of the BE ports, I don’t think he had a G4/G5 so couldn’t maintain it, I wouldn’t be too hard on him. Still a bit of a shame though.

Well now I have a G5 quad, dual 1.8, and G4 sitting around not doing anything, if you’d like I could send them to you for the price of shipping. They are a bit heavy though :slight_smile: (Cheaper than a Talos)

Nice to hear from one of the other PPC guys.

2 Likes
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You know who I am lol we worked together. I had a g4 powerbook and was working 70 hour a week. I did testing and some community stuff.

Just won’t say any names out loud.

As of now I’m looking to take it and reboot.

As for Q66, he had the ability to do the work. He can run the packages. As well, I tried to build a tool to do automated, sort of, package building. You may not be hard on him, but with all the people I was working with, in total, we’re pissed. And there’s many other people that he kicked out of the group by hogging the compute and refusing to work with BE users.

He killed the entire original point of the project.

I think you had offered to send the machines before but I had been unsure. I will need a quad for a compute server as I still only have my agp G5’s I got from @Ramiel.

If you can price that out, I’ll glady take them for a short while. If you want them back, ask.

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I will say though, I remembered today that you are in Aussie land. Shipping might be a bit dangerous for more than one machine.

Weird offer, I know I said I’m not willing to pay for compute time from a business, but would you be willing to host it? If not, if I remember correctly, before covid, shipping was like 260 USD at the cheapest for the quad?

The G4 is also of interest. IDK about the 1.8, though they are uncommon atp and it’d be neat to put on a shelf or something.

Edit: Although, for CoreValence to work, everyone has to be able to use it… Actually the 1.8 might be better to stay with you for long distance testing, if I could ask you to help (I would send you an image)