
The SDK “Power Mac G5” for the Xbox 360 - bluedino
https://www.journaldulapin.com/2019/01/21/power-mac-g5-sdk/
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maximilianburke
When the Xbox 360 finally shipped, Microsoft didn’t want these alpha kits
returned. I waa working for EA at the time and our studio arranged a raffle
for these; you could enter a draw and if your name was chosen you could buy
one of these G5s freshly loaded with OS X for $500 with the provision that you
couldn’t flip it for a year.

All the money went to charity so it was a pretty good deal.

~~~
andrewf
If anyone still has one of these taking up space, a videogame museum near you
would probably welcome the donation.

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bagrow
Reminds me of the old (2003) story where a brand new Microsoft employee
blogged a photo of some pallets of Power Macs he saw on the company campus,
“Looks like someone is getting some new toys!” Or something to that effect. He
was quickly fired.

[https://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/Microsoft-
fires-w...](https://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/Microsoft-fires-worker-
over-weblog-1128373.php)

~~~
hadrien01
> 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons Sorry, this content is not available in
> your region.

Does anyone have another link?

~~~
mises
[http://web.archive.org/web/20040927081520/https://www.michae...](http://web.archive.org/web/20040927081520/https://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2003/10/even_microsoft_.html)

~~~
sciurus
And the pay about being fired:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20041101091454/http://www.michael...](http://web.archive.org/web/20041101091454/http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2003/10/of_blogging_and.html)

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zorpner
Very cool. Reminds me also of the N64 dev kit made for the SGI Indy (the video
it generated couldn't be handled internally, but because the Indy was designed
for video input you could simply loop it back in, and the machine could DMA it
directly onto the screen): [https://assemblergames.com/threads/my-complete-
sgi-ultra64-d...](https://assemblergames.com/threads/my-complete-sgi-
ultra64-dev-set-manual-scans-dev-software.45165/)

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gok
Tickles me that right as Microsoft was buying Macs to revive the NT PowerPC
port, Apple was buying PCs to revive the OS X x86 port.

~~~
bitwize
Apple had maintained an internal port of Mac OS X on x86 hardware for as long
as it had existed as OS X. They came quite prepared for the eventuality of a
CPU architecture change.

~~~
cududa
This is absolutely not true. JK and Kim Schienberg are personal friends and
can attest to the veracity of this story through other channels.
[https://qr.ae/TUfeNI](https://qr.ae/TUfeNI)

~~~
saagarjha
I seem to recall Steve Jobs himself saying this at WWDC, so are you saying
that he was lying during the presentation?

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mattnewport
I had one of these at my desk at work for a while. They were different enough
from the final hardware that it was a huge relief when we finally got the
first real dev kits. That was also when we started to realize how many
problems the lack of out of order execution on the real CPU was going to
cause.

~~~
filereaper
Xenon was a lightweight POWER 6 which also didn't support out-of-order
dispatch presumably to boost its clockspeeds to near 6Ghz.

~~~
classichasclass
It wasn't POWER6. It used modified PPEs (a la Cell), and it didn't get clocked
that high.

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PascLeRasc
It's odd how ancient the PowerMac G5 seems - even the early Intel Mac Pros
feel like they're from another era - yet the Xbox 360 seems like it's barely
aged at all.

~~~
qubex
I have one of the very final Power Mac G5s, a dual-dual G5 970mp (which
contrary to what one often reads on the internet, it wasn’t water-cooled, that
was the top-of-the-line of the previous year’s lineup). It featured PCI-
express and I’d stuffed it with oodles if ECC RAM, a FibreChannel interface,
and an early SSD.

I have to disagree that this system feels in any way ‘ancient’. Honestly it
feels more like science fiction, a professional, hefty, dependable machine as
opposed to today’s consumer-orientated devices.

Yeah, a modern MacBookPro is probably faster. It certainly costs much less
too. But... that was a workstation. I did science on it. Nowadays it’s one-
size-fits-all and if for some reason it doesn’t fit you you’re shit out of
luck.

~~~
robin_reala
Not just probably faster, it’s getting on for an order of magnitude faster.
Phoronix had some comparisons a couple of years ago to a dual core G5 machine:
[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=PowerMac...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=PowerMac-
Intel-KBL)

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malkia
The UI in the 360 is still one of the best UI's I've ever seen and used. And
compact at this (don't remember the details but it was few mbytes for all
textures used there)...

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EngineerBetter
I get the feeling the author found out what "a priori" means recently and is
trying to find excuses to use the term.

