SBB wrote on 2024-02-14, 14:50:

Hi all […]
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Hi all

Was wondering if anyone here has any thoughts on gaming on an old Mac

I've never had a Power PC Mac and thought it might be a good idea to get one whilst the prices are "reasonable"

I am thinking a G4-era machine of some sort (e.g. PowerMac G4 or iMac G4) as these can run both OS 9 and early OS X versions

Thanks in advance

for the same reason as you I got myself (as long as the prices are affordable) a beautiful PowermacG4 which can run OS9 and OSX both natively. To have a fast and compatible system you need to choose a Powermac Quicksilver or a mirror door. Personally I prefer quicksilver in terms of beauty, be careful that the mirror drive doors are not all OS9 compatible, firewire 800 equipped are not

Would a G5 fit the bill? I see them often on Marketplace, usually around the £100 mark. I have a G5 case for my workstation but refitted with a Laserhive ATX kit for normal x86 parts. Love the look of the G5 cases!

The first generation iMac G4 can run both MacOS 9 and MacOS OSX ‘Tiger’ so it opens up backwards compatibility with OS9 software. You can upgrade these systems with RAM and an SSD. I think those systems look nice and they don’t take up a lot of space. The G5 systems are usually plenty powerful for PPC (PowerPC) based games. Later versions for the Intel based Macs don’t have Rosetta so they won’t run PPC software.

I do like the PowerBooks as well. The 12” is nice and tidy but underpowered for the ‘newer’ games with it’s FX5200. The 17” model is equipped with a faster Radeon 9700 but be careful with it’s display. They are very prone for white spots if people press on the screen (or the backside) too hard. Especially these days when everyone seems to have the urge to touch screens all the time 😜. I believe later versions might have better displays or that there were replacements available.

Having said all this: I tend to use Windows XP based systems for all the older games that would fit the G4/G5 era since most games are available (and more easily to obtain) for the Windows platform 😉.

Not all G4s can boot the classic OS. I bought a lampshade iMac G4 intending to play Classic OS games on it. When I got it home, I saw the seller had given me a newer model by mistake, that couldn't boot OS 9. After some drama, I wound up with two iMac G4s, an early model (800 MHz 17") and a later one (1.25 GHz 20"). The first supports OS 9 and OS X 10.4, the second only supports OS X 10.5.

Mac mini G4 if you have sound amplifier or can use USB soundcard with MacOS 9 support.

I like the Mac Mini G4 idea. Though really, any pre Fw800 G4 you can get with a Radeon 7500/8500/9000 or GeForce 2/3/4 will fit the bill. Anything faster (Radeon 9500+, GeForce FX+) is an OS X only card and will not support 3D acceleration in OS9, which is where all the good games are. 😉

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2024-02-14, 18:49:

I like the Mac Mini G4 idea. Though really, any pre Fw800 G4 you can get with a Radeon 7500/8500/9000 or GeForce 2/3/4 will fit the bill. Anything faster (Radeon 9500+, GeForce FX+) is an OS X only card and will not support 3D acceleration in OS9, which is where all the good games are. 😉

I've flashed a Geforce 2 and a Geforce 4MX to Mac before.
They're using similar GPU and can be flashed with a generic BIOS.
After that, they can still be fine-tuned via utility if needed.

They're perhaps not the fastest, but are working fine on both Mac OS 9.2 and X.

Geforce 5 and up also require data for precise RAM timings and need more investment.
The Geforce 5/FX can do the advanced effects in Tiger and can do OpenGL 2.
Celestia on OS X can use it, for example.

Depending on the games being played, a Voodoo 2 might help.
It's being supported on some Mac games on Mac OS 8/9.

Virtual PC 2 and 3 on Mac OS 8/9 support it, too.
SoftWindows 98, as well.
Edit: These emulators support Voodoo 1, too.
So if you have a spare one, it may enhance PC gaming experience.
Voodoo 1 isn't being supported by Mac games though. They've started with V2.

Btw, the rare Geforce 3 is technically very interesting!
It had advanced features (shaders etc) that weren't being supported by Direct3D 8 at the time.

SBB wrote on 2024-02-14, 14:50:

Hi all […]
Show full quote

Hi all

Was wondering if anyone here has any thoughts on gaming on an old Mac

I've never had a Power PC Mac and thought it might be a good idea to get one whilst the prices are "reasonable"

I am thinking a G4-era machine of some sort (e.g. PowerMac G4 or iMac G4) as these can run both OS 9 and early OS X versions

Thanks in advance

So... I have a G4 MDD. It was actually my first vintage machine. Here are some thoughts:
1) You want the non-FW800 G4 MDD because it can natively boot OS 9. The FW800 models are more plentiful and a lot cheaper. You may be able to use one as a parts donor, but... otherwise you really want.
2) The G4 MDD is not that strange a beast to a PC/Windows user. USB, AGP, PCI, IDE, DDR memory, DVI, etc. Nothing too unorthodox. This is not a 1993 Quadra 840av with Nubus, ADB, etc.
3) Biggest issue with the G4 MDD, especially the early FW400 models, is noise. My MDD is insanely, insanely loud.
4) The best models, probably, are the later FW400 that came back in production in 2003 to run OS 9. Those can be identified by their single processor 1.25GHz G4 or 2x1.25GHz G4 options; the earlier models of the G4 MDD were all dual processor. Dual processor is useless for OS9.
5) The video card you want is the GF4 Ti4600, which is the best OS9-compatible card ever made. Those now go for insane money on eBay because, well, they've all been swallowed up. The best way to find one may be in a FW800 system being sold for relatively cheap. I managed to get my hands on one from a fellow on Reddit who had stumbled on a bunch of FW800 machines, and while I did pay a bit less than eBay prices... well, it was still steep.
6) A non-OS 9-booting PPC machine doesn't make any sense to me for retrocomputing. The vast majority of OS X software, including a lot of games from the big porting houses like Aspyr, from ~2003-2005ish were recompiled for Intel, so you do not and should not want a PPC Mac for those - just pick up something like a Mac Pro 5,1 and set up a Snow Leopard dual boot. In particular, G5 Power Macs are power hungry and not that reliable.

I think someone else pointed this out, but in the early-mid-2000s and even a little earlier, most of the big gaming titles were cross-platform. I have Unreal Tournament 2004 or Age of Mythology or Rise of Nations on one of my vintage Macs (either the G4 or the Mac Pro 5,1), but those are not exactly Mac exclusive titles. If you already have a vintage or not-so-vintage Windows machine with some of those titles, it's not clear to me what the practical benefit of running them on PPC OS X is.

The interesting software, games or otherwise, for the Mac is older. Precedes the era where most of a game's budget was for artwork, soundtrack, and other things that are easily portable across architectures. A few of these games have since been open sourced and gotten ported (e.g. Maelstrom... where, in a weird twist of fate, the Linux port was ported back to OS X and even Apple Silicon... so what was a high-profile Mac-exclusive title 30 years ago... is a cross-platform game that runs on modern OSes) to other OSes, and a lot have gotten forgotten, never making it through the dark era of the Mac.

And that's why I come back to the importance of being able to boot the classic OS.

Oh, and get a Mac Pro 5,1 too. Plentiful, can dual-boot Snow Leopard (last OS with Rosetta to run PPC OS X software) up to, without a not-compatible-with-Snow-Leopard GPU upgrade, High Sierra which roughly represents the end of the 32-bit Intel road. With a GPU upgrade and OCLP, you can go much newer OSes, and they are plentiful on the used market because a lot of people held on to them until now. That and a G4 will get you access to the entire Mac software library prior to 64-bit Intel and ARM, both of which run on current models.

Dual processor is useless for OS9.

Except for Photoshop, which I think had a plug-in for it. And Altivec support, too.

Btw, I remember once reading an interview about a mangaka who had an MDD to run Photoshop. I think it had run OS 9, as well.
A Windows PC was being used for web browsing and e-mail and stuff.

Jo22 wrote on 2024-02-15, 00:01:

Dual processor is useless for OS9.

Except for Photoshop, which I think had a plug-in for it. And Altivec support, too.

Okay, sure, and there may have been a few other applications with multiprocessor support as well. I should have been more precise and said that dual processor is useless for a retro system.

Why would anyone want to run Photoshop 7.0 in 2024 and care about its performance? I am not a Photoshop guy, but I presume the CS versions or CC versions running on newer hardware can do all the tasks that Photoshop 7.0 can do and run them much, much faster.

And I think my biggest point still stands: the 1.25GHz early-2003 G4 FW400 MDD with the quieter revised PSU/fans/etc is the best retro Mac. If you can find the dual-processor variant of the 2003 FW400, sure, why not, but if the choice is between a 1.25GHz 2003 model and a 2x1GHz 2002 model (what I have), I would think the uniprocessor model makes more sense for a retro system. Although... if you wanted to run OS X Leopard... Leopard is not exactly that fast on G4 hardware...

If you care about a speedy (instead of a "good enuff") OS X experience, wouldn't it make more sense to forget about native PPC and go with the fastest machine (that still support Rosetta (i.e. Snow Leopard) for PPC things)? i.e. a second machine? The polycarb Minis are still somewhat affordable rn.

elszgensa wrote on 2024-02-15, 01:51:

If you care about a speedy (instead of a "good enuff") OS X experience, wouldn't it make more sense to forget about native PPC and go with the fastest machine (that still support Rosetta (i.e. Snow Leopard) for PPC things)? i.e. a second machine? The polycarb Minis are still somewhat affordable rn.

Yes - this is why I was suggesting adding a Mac Pro 5,1 to the G4...

It's bulky, but the nice thing about the Mac Pro 5,1 is that you can dual boot Snow Leopard up to High Sierra, which basically covers the entirety of the 32-bit Intel era. And if you're interested in games... well, there are a lot of games that were ported to 32-bit Intel that never made it to 64-bit.

I had spent a lot of time exploring earlyish Intel Macs and, well, a lot of the options aren't great. Mac minis typically don't have discrete graphics, and the few that did... had 6xxx ATI/AMD chips known for hardware failure. The 6xxx chip issue spreads to a number of iMacs of the early 2010s too. So, almost by elimination, I ended up with the 5,1 Mac Pro.

My Mac Pro 5,1 is such an odd not-really-retro-yet machine - 2x 6-core Xeons, 64 gigs of Apple RAM (I can't believe the original owner sprung for that), an Apple 512 gig SSD, 2 5770s that I can't upgrade to anything other than a 5870 without losing Snow Leopard, etc. It's really fast at some things and really slow at other things.

Oh, and the funniest thing - it's just an Intel box with an ICH10-family south bridge, I can put in the same slipstreamed disk with ICH10 AHCI drivers I used for a retro C2Q project and the XP installer recognizes all the drives in the "Mac".

But generally, my view is that there is huge retro value to the classic OS - it's a unique piece of computer history, has a range of unique software, etc. There's even more retro value (but a lot more hurdles) in the old world hardware. But I just don't see the retro value in early PPC OS X - really, OS X really hit its stride with the Intel transition. And my read of the vintage Mac market seems to align with that - non-OS-9-booting PPC machines do not seem to be particularly valued in the retro community. Aluminum G4 laptops, iMac G5s, and most Power Mac G5 configurations don't seem that highly valued... certainly you could probably buy 5-10 aluminum G4s for the price of a good condition recapped SE/30 or a G4-friendly GF4 Ti4600.

(And you are talking to someone who has two vintage G4 machines...)

+1

I just want to add that older Photoshop versions might be still interesting to use because they supported older plug-ins.
There used to be a whole market for third-party plug-ins.

I'm just speaking as a layman here, of course.

I *assume* it's a bit similar to the VBX plug-ins that were exclusive to 16-Bit Visual Basic (VB1 to VB3 or VB4 16-Bit).

Also good about the Mac Pro 4.1 or 5.1 is the 64-Bit EFI and the more recent processors.

The older 3.1 did have 64-Bit EFI but didn't have Intel-VT compatible processors, I believe, which is bad for VMs.

The older 1.1 and 2.1 model has Intel-VT but has a 32-Bit EFI.
This means that the 32-Bit kernal of OS X is being loaded. Not relevant for applications per se, but for all the kernal stuff. Including KEXTs!

So a VM software like VirtualBox is being limited to ~4GB. For all VMs running same time, not just one VM.
Parallels Desktop 10 for Mac als needs 64-Bit EFI host.

Mac OS 9.2.2 is still being patched by the Mac community, I think.
It tries to make it run on non-supported G4 models.
Things look good so far, but not all features are working properly yet.

PS: There are of course als Tiger (10.4) fans out there.
Essentially, Tiger is to PPC users what Snow Leopard is to x86 Mac users.
They may still have an interest in 64-Bit G5 systems or running Classic Environment.

People into networking might still have an interest in native hardware for Jaguar (10.2) or Panther (10.3).
They support a large variety of networking protocols and thus can bridge old classic systems and new OS X systems.

I vaguely remember that performance of Classic Environment on Jaguar or Panther used to be better than it is in Tiger, too.
Screen drawing was smoother, I believe.

Edit: That brings back memories! I used to be a late Cheetah user (10.0) when I got an iMac G3. ^^
It was in the 2000s, when I learned to upgrade that Mac from 8.5 to Cheetah.

I fondly remember using it to watch Pokémon on the internet (RTL2 website?), thanks to Flash Player.
At the time, the latest plug-in still had worked with the old Internet Explorer 5.x.

Interestingly, Cheetah wasn't that bad, also.
After I've added to RAM (from 32MB to 96MB?) it ran acceptable. Not exactly smooth, but okay.

I've later upgraded to Puma, to get some more recent software running.
It was a really fine piece of software, too.
Then I went further, over to Jaguar.

But by that point somehow I occasionally had missed the old Cheetah GUI a bit.
The introduction of brushed metal surfaces wasn't so pretty, it didn't fit the iMac G3 style.

I got a dual 1Ghz MMD as I also like dual processor PC's
Only has Radeon 9000 but I'm thinking this enough OS9 as really I'll just be comparing to the PC, It's never going to be my main gaming rig.

I added some IDE drive I had spare and installed OS9 and OSX on separate disks, that was fun to learn how to do. And then kind of haven't done anything with it since!
but I still think its worth it, worst case you can always sell it on.

I would like to add the beauty of the object. Although being personal, I think that the first Powermac on the left (graphite) represents, with its transparent plastics, the perfect conjunction with the beautiful case of the G4 line and the colorful and cheerful Mac computers of the revival carried out by Steve Jobs, a piece in conjunction between the primordial macs and those already established. Unfortunately, Graphite has CPUs that are too slow and I don't think it can run OSX. In the center there is Quicksilver which in my opinion is the most beautiful if graphite seems unserious to you, clean design and a professional grey. It mounts fast CPUs and can make everything work, be careful that to install the latest OSX you need a CPU of at least 867Mhz. The last one on the right is the MDD, in my (personal) opinion the least successful, due to the lack of elegance of the window as well as the slits at the bottom. It is faster than the Quicksilver but by very little compared to the loss of elegance. Lastly, I advise you to get a version with a coordinated monitor (I found the 17" Trinitron which is powered by the video cable), its keyboard and its mouse. Compared to Windows machines, the colors and plastics are the same and transparent. , wonderful.

AlessandroB wrote on 2024-02-15, 07:30:

I don't think [graphites] can run OSX

Think again. Officially they run up to Tiger, and apparently with some hacking also Leopard.

Hell, Tiger's officially supported even on G3 iMacs - which are ~1/2 as powerful as a base model PM G4! It does a pretty bad job there (maybe a SSD would help, haven't tried), but it does run!

elszgensa wrote on 2024-02-15, 07:53:

AlessandroB wrote on 2024-02-15, 07:30:

I don't think [graphites] can run OSX

Think again. Officially they run up to Tiger, and apparently with some hacking also Leopard.

Hell, Tiger's officially supported even on G3 iMacs - which are ~1/2 as powerful as a base model PM G4! It does a pretty bad job there (maybe a SSD would help, haven't tried), but it does run!

My mistake on this point, thanks for the correction.

I put Tiger on a first generation tray-loading iMac but quickly removed it again. Even upgraded to 333 MHz/384 MiB it was horribly slow. (Didn't try SSD though)

chinny22 wrote on 2024-02-15, 05:02:

I got a dual 1Ghz MMD as I also like dual processor PC's
Only has Radeon 9000 but I'm thinking this enough OS9 as really I'll just be comparing to the PC, It's never going to be my main gaming rig.

I'm inclined to agree. For OS 9, I think the only option better than the 9000 is the Ti4600 which is insanely pricy now. That being said... as I said in this thread, I did get one, for too much money... and I have done absolutely nothing with it since. Too many projects. I really want to wrap up my 98SE project first... and I just received a PATA cable today so hopefully, hopefully I can.