
NetBSD on the last G4 Mac mini and making the kernel power failure proof - UkiahSmith
http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2019/06/and-now-for-something-completely.html
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MrRadar
For those who are not familiar with the author of this blog, he is a PowerPC
enthusiast and the maintainer of TenFourFox, a Firefox port to PPC OS X. He's
also currently working on a new PPC JIT for (modern) Firefox on Linux (a
project for which he is looking for volunteers to assist him[1]) to bring it
to speed parity with Chrome on PPC (which already has a PPC JIT).

[1] [https://www.talospace.com/2019/03/pitch-into-firefox-
jit.htm...](https://www.talospace.com/2019/03/pitch-into-firefox-jit.html)

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classichasclass
Author here. Thanks for the kind word. :)

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MuffinFlavored
Why the obsession with PPC? Don't you feel you could put your time + effort
into something more modern that isn't dying?

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MrRadar
PPC is far from dead. You can buy brand-new POWER9 workstations with up to 44
cores (with SMT4 for 176 threads) from Raptor Computer Systems. They are also
about as open as a modern computer can be with board schematics included with
every system and only one component with closed firmware (the BCM5719 network
controller, which is currently being reverse-engineered so an open firmware
can be developed).

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mritun
Nonsense. PowerPC in old PowerMac and modern POWER 9 have about as much in
common as Pentium Pro and a modern Xeon!

PowerPC is a dead platform, POWER9 is not - but they are not the same!

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classichasclass
I'm not sure that's an apt comparison. If you were saying that 32-bit PPC is
dead, then the answer is probably yes at least in general computing, though
there are still lots of 32-bit PowerPC parts in embedded systems. However,
64-bit PowerPC systems have substantially more in common with "big" POWER. The
G5, which was clearly positioned as a member of the PowerPC family (PPC970)
but descended from the POWER4, would be the classic example.

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mikece
Somewhere there are chip designers thinking they can create the first
processor on which NetBSD cannot run. Have fun kids: many have tried that and
failed!

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verisimilitudes
Not every chip mimics a PDP-11 or can be made to resemble one. Chuck Moore's
GA144 is an array of his F18A Forth chips, which are all rather small and
simple stack machines that support such fine grained operations as looping the
instructions that share a machine word.

Given that this is a heavily segmented machine, with very different primitive
operations than a PDP-11, and also has a word size of eighteen, I don't
imagine C would run very well on it at all, if you even wanted to try.

So, there you have it.

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Dylan16807
I'd say that the stack machine in the GA144 is feasible to compile normal C
to. And the 18-bit word is barely a problem. But the (complete lack of) memory
architecture is a clear dealbreaker. There's no compiling a normal C program
down to an architecture that has 64 words of RAM. At best you can gang a few
cores together to make an emulator for a simple virtual machine.

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oneplane
As fun as this is (and as much as I appreciate putting good old hardware to
use and as much as I like PPC): the power consumption alone wouldn't make this
a winner :(

I have a PowerBook G4 DVI, iBook G4, B&W G3, GbE G4, Dual G5 here, I want to
get rid of them but I like them too much. Yet I can't run them for fun all day
long either because the amount of power they eat >:( The problems of a
hardware connoisseur.

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classichasclass
Author here. Power consumption on this unit is about 21W.

Is the CPU/watt ratio less than later units? You bet. But it's not bad, it's
free, it's not in a landfill, and it's more than enough grunt for the basic
tasks it's doing.

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oneplane
Yeah, those Mac Minis can go quite low. But still the CPU power from any PPC
vs. an ARM or low-end x86 is a bit inverted. A low-end ARM or x86 that is
faster than any of the PPCs while using less than half the power (in the 1W to
8W range) does make a dent.

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microcolonel
The fire extinguisher on the desk is a nice touch; though I'm not sure that's
enough volume to extinguish a G4 fire.

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giobox
I don’t recall the G4 PowerPC designs being unusually hot running by standards
of the day? The G5 was of course, but it was much worse in this regard than
the G4.

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tomxor
As an owner of both G4 and G3 laptops, I can assure you, eggs will fry given
the right task... The G3 was actually worse.

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ianai
Long way from reports of fires. I’ve only heard of lithium batteries doing
that

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tomxor
No it's the chips, these machines didn't exactly have the most user friendly
heat dissipation design, on both models the CPU heat conducted straight
through to the top case. maybe not cook an egg very fast but uncomfortable to
touch for more than a second... maybe 1 EPH (one egg per hour) :)

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UncleSlacky
The early Intel MacBooks weren't much better - my black 2007 2,1 model gets
pretty hot and has a serious lack of ventilation holes.

