[haiku] Re: Booting Haiku PPC


On 2 Dec 2008, at 21:51, kallisti5 wrote:
It was my understanding that ADB was only present on old-world Mac's (pre 
G3 w/o  USB)
No, most of the G3's in the "translucent" iMac-esque designed cases had ADB too. I way "most" because I looked for a more definitive answer on EveryMac and found an asterix against the ADB with no explanation that I could see at to what it referred to. From memory, it was the G4 that fisrt removed ADB completely. 

The cheapest New World models would therefore have ADB.


There are a few G3 stragglers which were old-world ROM systems
but those were not produced for very long and not many exist (namely the 
7300 based, G3 Desktop) (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Apple_Macintosh_models)
Hem, preaching to the converted :-) I'm fairly up to speed on Mac models. I used to advocate BeOS PPC a lot on various forums and such.
The Beige G3's where not "stragglers" and they existed for over a year, which in Apple terms is a good lifetime. There were a number of models and not all were in 7300 cases, some were in the 8600 style case.
I've heard several places that the old-world ROM was incomplete and bug 
riddled.  It's also stated here: http://penguinppc.org/bootloaders/quik/
Yeah, but that's why people are mentioning boot loaders. The boot loaders bypass the mess that is OF.
More to the point... I can verify that my "Old world" Macs can all boot Panther (Mac OS X 10.3), which didn't support any Old World Macs, by using a boot loader. The Bootloader patches nvram and all is happy from then on. So I assume, perhaps wrongly, that the work could be re- used. You tell me. I have 3 PCI Macs that could boot Haiku if the old world ROM was supported via a boot loader. I have only got one Mac that is less than 10 years old, and it's Intel based, so I don't really have an incentive to get behind a "new world" solution. New world for me would be useless.
Given the infancy of the Haiku-PowerPC Port, focusing on more stable/ newer 
Power hardware may be beneficial.
The old stuff is extremely, extremely cheap. A boot loader is a boot loader, what does it matter when it kicks in and what it patches? The BootX bootloader seems pretty stable to me. I use it almost daily and it hasn't failed me yet (bar installing updates that wiped the boot support files added by Xpostfacto..:-( ) 


The user base for ADB based apple systems is small;
Wel, no. The user base is as large as there are legacy Macs. Picking up a G3 is far more likely for a casual user. The G4's still go for a few hundred and the G5's for more. The laptops are even more insane. Pismo's (like, what, 8 year old laptops) still go for close to £150 if they are fully functional. iBooks and Powerbook's post Pismo still fetch £200+. The white G3 and G4 iBooks are, to be frank, extremely flakey and regularly die. The older hardware refuses to die :-) 


the user base for ADB based systems with G3 upgrade cards is smaller;


Support 603 and 604 processors then. It can't be that hard, BeOS did.
the user base of users with ADB based systems, G3 upgrade cards that work 
as generic CPU upgrades is smaller.;
I read a lot of the LEM lists. There's still people out there on Mac OS System 7 on 68000 hardware. Mac's don't die, they just change ownership to more enthusiastic people. Making statements about who may or may not use Haiku on a specific hardware platform is a bit like predicting the results of a horse racing event. With all the inside knowledge in the world, anything could happen on the day. In truth, most people who *can* run Mac OS X on their G3's and G4's will. There are ways an means of installing it on unsupported hardware that are pretty straight forward. There's no real incentive to try Haiku. Better to target as wider audience as possible. Supporting hardware that once ran BeOS is a good start.
But hey, what do I know? :-) I just know that my Mac Book is my best be and my Powerbook would be a nice alternative. 

M

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