How can I develop software for a PowerPC?
(midwest.social)
retrocomputingDoes anyone know how I can cross-compile software for a 1999 iMac G3 with a PowerPC processor? Are there resources on how to develop for this CPU and is there any community around it?
Do it on-board with openbsd, if that's your bag.
https://www.openbsd.org/macppc.html
I want to preserve the MacOS 9 on the iMac, but I think I'll do this on the 2005 Mac Mini.
I can't speak for cross-compilation, but I was a serious Mac developer on System 7 - MacOS 9 back in the day, and Metrowerks CodeWarrior was my tool of choice for C/C++ . A thread on 68KMLA from a few years ago has an extensive discussion of CodeWarrior: https://68kmla.org/bb/threads/metrowerks-codewarrior-best-version-and-updates.42338/
Bravo for keeping this great old software and hardware going (System 7 is perhaps my favorite OS of all time). Let us know what you build!
Wow I had no clue it would be possible to develop on the machine itself! I'm glad people have maintained archives of this system's software, it may be worth it to develop on the iMac itself, thank you!
I mean, I've played ‘Deja Vu’ in a MacOS emulator on my Android tablet. Having first to boot from a system floppy image, then adding the game image. I'm quite sure there are archives of old Mac software around, just archive.org should have plenty.
The most annoying aspect of getting software into the emulator was the fact that a lot of it is distributed in archives made by a popular compressing utility for Classic MacOS, I forget what it's called. The util is proprietary, and even with my flexible morals I didn't want to sully my emulator with it.
If I had to guess, I'd say that you're referring to StuffIt archives (with a .sit file extension). They were the most common classic MacOS archive format. Copies of StuffItExpander (free, if I remember correctly) are readily available, however unrar on *nix platforms will also extract them and retain the Mac resource fork according to https://github.com/PiSCSI/piscsi/issues/630 . Good luck!
https://djanotes.blogspot.com/2018/02/painless-powerpc-cross-compiling.html
This is a great and direct guide, thank you!
You are a gentle person and a school girl.
There absolutely is a vintage Mac 68K and PowerPC development community, if you allow me to be loose with the word community. To my knowledge, there isn’t a single, centralized space for people discussing and sharing tips and projects for vintage Macs. Instead, there are a lot of different people and mini communities spread all over the place, not all of which are specific to development.
First of all, there’s MARCHintosh and the wider community of vintage Mac retrocomputing enthusiasts, including Ron’s Computer Videos and Mac84.
Next there’s the 68KMLA forums which, despite the name, also include PowerPC Macs for discussion. There’s also the MacRumors forums which have numerous sections for earlier Macs.
Now, for cross-compiling, the main project I’m aware of is Retro68 which supports 68K and PowerPC targets. I’ve never used it though so I can’t vouch for it.
If you’ve never developed software for Mac before, you’re going to want some documentation. Thankfully, there’s a nice library over at Vintage Apple! Also be sure to check out the various collections over at Internet Archive (the filtering options on the left are extremely powerful).
To get more specific you’ll have to provide more specifics about the type of development you’re interested in. Is it Mac OS 9 or X? I assume you have an iMac G3 and you’ll want to run software on it. Have you serviced the machine to avoid damaging it with leaky capacitors or batteries? Have you replaced the mechanical hard drive with an SSD using an IDE/SATA converter?
These are all things to consider if you want to keep your iMac going as a long term hobby!
This is quite awesome! Unfortunately as far as servicing goes the machine has been sitting in our basement for years, no work has been done on it. I'm glad its still working, hopefully I can deal with the capacitors before its too late. It has its original hard drive which still works and has some cool old games on it and its running the original MacOS 9.
It has its original hard drive which still works
For reliability you should really switch to an IDE SSD.
Yes, they do exist. OWC sells them, albeit in laptop HDD size, so you will need an IDE adapter.
I have an old Mac Classic from 1990-1991 or so sitting in my basement collecting dust. I need to clean it up and crack it open to do a full recap soon. I’m going to grab a BlueSCSI to replace the internal hard drive with a fast SD card. These old machines absolutely FLY when you get them on solid state storage. It’s pretty amazing how nice they feel to use when everything loads instantly!
This forum and Macintosh Garden would be worth taking a look.
Back in the day, an easy programming tool for Mac was called Real Basic. Like VB but on a Mac.
I don’t have any PPC hardware anymore, but now I kind of wish I did lol.
Hope this points you in the right direction.
Thank you! I have spent some time learning Basic so Real Basic could be fun.
Don't have an answer but I'd like to see what you're cooking
Maybe I'll make a game.
Are you putting Linux on it, or are you looking to run MacOS?
If you're doing Linux, doing a GCC cross tool chain (with a tool like crosstool-ng) should be a good start.
That's cool that Linux can be put on this machine! I plan on preserving the original OS though.
Check out T2 Linux.. I see it supports lots of hardware.
Edit: ahh g3 is a little too far. G4 minimum I think for T2
I do have a 2005 Mac Mini with the PowerPC CPU, maybe it'll work on that?
https://t2linux.com/
Well, one option would be either Open or NetBSD. They both have Power PC architecture ports and come with compilers. It would not be cross compiling, but you could run native and compile the source there.
Its really amazing how the Unix-like OSes can run on anything! I plan on keeping the original OS though, but thank you for the information.
I believe you could use THINK Pascal to do it.
A great opportunity to learn Pascal, thanks!
Codewarrior
I'll definitely get that if I find or get a spare CD to burn it to.
The Yocto project supports PowerPC as a compilation option so you could build a lightweight distribution from source that way
Wow that's pretty cool! I'll have to try that one day, so long as I can test it in a live environment.
That’s pretty badass getting more value out of such old hardware!
Yeah its the most retro computer I have and I definitely want to have some fun with it!
@dr_robotBones Retro68 is a gcc-based cross compiler not only for 68k-, but also PowerPC-based Macs running classic MacOS:
https://github.com/autc04/Retro68
IMHO, this is one of the best options if you want to develop on a modern system.
I have heard of this before, I'll have to learn how it works.
