Havro Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 Hello everyone. I'm taking on the daunting task of writing a PPC kernel for Snow Leopard. I would like to write one for Mavericks in the future, but I think that in terms of compatibility, SL is a better starting point. I hope to support 32 bit and 64 bit PPC CPUs, but I'll probably start with 32 bit. I'm not making any guarentees that this will run without bugs or that I will finish it, but if I manage to get a PPC mac booting in 10.6.x even only in single user mode, I'll release it somewhere to have help. I'm aware that I also need to write kexts for this as well. I decided to post here because Tonymacx86 would give me the boot for talking about PPC and 10.5. Anyway, I'll keep this thread updated if I get anywhere. For those curious as to where I'm starting, here are my very basic starting plans: 1. Buy a chargers for the millions of iBook's I have lying around or buy a Powermac G5 2. Explore the 10.5.8 kernel 3. Explore the 10.5.8 kexts 4. Copy compatible kexts from 10.5 to 10.6 5. See what happens 6. Explore issues and fix kernel 7. Test a ton of stuff 8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 millions of times Anyway, those are my plans. BTW, I'm no n00b at this type of stuff. I'm very farmiliar with hackintoshing and writing kexts and the like. That's not to say this is gonna be easy. School is busy, so IDK when Imma work on this. I already have machines running Mavericks, and have the install discs for 10.5. I also have an Intel MBP capable of running 10.5 (IDK why I'd really need it for this) and an f load of iBooks. I'll probably find a PowerMac G5 for really cheap or for free. Wish me luck! Cheers, JellyT0ast (Yeah ignore my real U/N lol) P.S.: If you are interested in helping, let me know EDIT: I'm aware I might need to use an alternate bootloader other than the built in EFI. If I need to, I'll use either Chameleon or Clover. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gringo Vermelho Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 Good luck with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Havro Posted January 10, 2014 Author Share Posted January 10, 2014 Good luck with that. Thx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PippoX0 Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 Good luck !! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meklort Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 The XNU version associated with 10.6 has always had ppc support, apple did not remove it until 10.7. Some of the remaining portions of the os, however, did not have ppc support (the gui was not compiled with ppc). Booting 10.6 on ppc really shouldn't be an issue... you just won't get the gui. As far as boot loaders go, chameleon was based on boot-132, which was based on bootX, the PPC bootloader that apple uses (and is open source), you'll want to use it. Also, PPC macs do not use EFI, they use OpenFirmware. For kexts, some of the ppc kexts (platform specific drivers) from 10.5 are what you'll need, the remaining from 10.6 should work fine, however you may have to update some of the 10.5 kexts to work with them. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Long Cat Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 Haha I love those steps... "see what happens"... nice. 1. Do stuff 2. See what happens 3. Reboot 4. ????? 5. PROFIT! In all seriousness though, good luck with your project. Hope you can get something out of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Havro Posted January 13, 2014 Author Share Posted January 13, 2014 The XNU version associated with 10.6 has always had ppc support, apple did not remove it until 10.7. Some of the remaining portions of the os, however, did not have ppc support (the gui was not compiled with ppc). Booting 10.6 on ppc really shouldn't be an issue... you just won't get the gui. As far as boot loaders go, chameleon was based on boot-132, which was based on bootX, the PPC bootloader that apple uses (and is open source), you'll want to use it. Also, PPC macs do not use EFI, they use OpenFirmware. For kexts, some of the ppc kexts (platform specific drivers) from 10.5 are what you'll need, the remaining from 10.6 should work fine, however you may have to update some of the 10.5 kexts to work with them. Yeah, that's what I thought. I just am worried if I ever get a gui working properly, graphics won't work properly with any of the PPC macs. I guess I could just try to update all of the kexts (including the graphics kexts) like you said. Thanks for clarifying somethings. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j2354 Posted June 18, 2014 Share Posted June 18, 2014 Did you get anywhere with this yet? Quite excited about it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gringo Vermelho Posted June 18, 2014 Share Posted June 18, 2014 He's probably deep in the process of repeating steps 6 and 7 a million times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j2354 Posted June 19, 2014 Share Posted June 19, 2014 I'd love to see if he's still working on it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theconnactic Posted June 19, 2014 Share Posted June 19, 2014 Oh, yeah! I'm also quite curious. I wonder if he would take a less ambitious task, like writing a clean and stable kernel for AMD machines, including old (non-ssse3) CPUs. All the luck for him! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j2354 Posted June 19, 2014 Share Posted June 19, 2014 Our G5's could be restored to their former glory! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Havro Posted August 11, 2014 Author Share Posted August 11, 2014 Hi guys, I haven't worked on this in a while because I've been working on other projects. Since there does seem to be interest, I guess I might have to start working on this again! In the mean time I'm writing Siri for the Mac 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
louman Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 So I know this to topic is old but how are you getting along I have a old g5 and I think this is a genius idea I'm planning on trying this on my own if I succeed I don't know but if your still doing this how far have you got ??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacAntiIntel Posted May 18, 2016 Share Posted May 18, 2016 Hi, I know I am a novice, but you have to learn somehow. I like using Legacy PPC Macs. I have several Quad Core G5 2.5s and I want them to run in 64 bit mode all the time since they are 64bit machines. With some digging I found out that the core is only 32bit. Snow Leopard has a 64bit kernel, but it is for intel only. How can I get the 64bit core modified to work in my 10.5.8 operating system. According to article: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6/5/ 10.6 has 64bit apps like, The Finder, the Dock, Mail, TextEdit, Safari, iChat, Address Book, Dashboard, Help Viewer, Installer, Terminal, Calculator. To do this how do I get a copy of the 64bit core for Mac OS 10.6 and then what do I use to modify it so it will work in Mac OS 10.5.8? Can I also load the above 64bit apps from 10.6 to 10.5.8? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeppfrog Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 On 1/10/2014 at 12:25 AM, meklort said: The XNU version associated with 10.6 has always had ppc support, apple did not remove it until 10.7. Some of the remaining portions of the os, however, did not have ppc support (the gui was not compiled with ppc). Booting 10.6 on ppc really shouldn't be an issue... you just won't get the gui. As far as boot loaders go, chameleon was based on boot-132, which was based on bootX, the PPC bootloader that apple uses (and is open source), you'll want to use it. Also, PPC macs do not use EFI, they use OpenFirmware. For kexts, some of the ppc kexts (platform specific drivers) from 10.5 are what you'll need, the remaining from 10.6 should work fine, however you may have to update some of the 10.5 kexts to work with them. very interesting. I have a mavericks hdd I hackintoshed some time ago that might be worth playing with, but then they may have made those code removals by then. I have been thinking of just popping it in my old g5 and seeing what blew up so maybe i will. It has been years since I actually compiled a linux version (redhat 5) But if replacing or modifying the gui was the main issue, it would seem doable. I will have to chew on this. Would love to get the old ppc flying again. For the record, didn't really care for the later docks anyways. forgive the old thread revival. but dang it, there are like 20 of us out here still with ppc's Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rikintosh Posted September 2, 2020 Share Posted September 2, 2020 (edited) Now in 2020 this is close to becoming a reality (osx 10.6 ppc) as recently leaked 10.6 beta builds that work almost perfectly in ppc. I believe that with some adjustments and recompilations, it could be the new OS for ppc that everyone will use. https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/mac-os-106-snow-leopard-powerpc-beta-10a190 Edited September 2, 2020 by Rikintosh 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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