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I don't really know, Nik.
I don't ask the sensei too many questions.

And since the R500 drivers were released, I have been more focused on what the future may bring.

Now that we are back discussing the R400s, I may throw a FireGL 7100 PCIe video card into the latest package going to South Africa.

Anyway, Thursday is not too far away.
And Mark has been doing a lot of traveling lately for work (and once I know he is traveling I REALLY try not to be a pest).

I DO know that EVERY time he says he will do something, he DOES.
So five days? No big deal.

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I'm content with fiddling with getting Linux to work on this thing without the graphics being completely psychedelic in the tiny amount of free time I've got so no rush.

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Ubuntu MATE 16.04.2 (download iso) runs fine on my ppc machines and installing it is not too hard:

But beware, GPU-acceleration is a mess on Big Endian CPUs. Depending on what you got, you will experience glitches. Only card which was working out of the box is the Radeon 9700 in my PowerBook 5,8. The Radeon 9650 of my G5 only works when turning the acceleration off.

However at least the r600-class is getting some attention from devs thanks to some X1000 and X5000 users (klick).

The good thing is that Ubuntu MATE 16.04.x will be supported until 2021, the bad thing is that it's one of the few PPC-Distros left. Other than that I run Gentoo Linux besides MorphOS, as it's faster than Ubuntu an got a more recent software stack. But the installation procedure is rather tricky.

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Thanks. 16.10 has reversed colours RGBA/ARGB on the live CD with the 9650 and the X800. When I get time I'll install from text mode and have a play. Failing that I'll try 16.04 but I noticed Opensuse still supports PPC so I can try that too.

There's always the BSD's too, I'm too old to have the patience for gentoo these days :)

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The color issues are odd, but they remind me of what I was warned would happen if I tried to use a Voodoo 4 or 5 under MorphOS on a Mac (apparently those only produce the correct colors on a Pegasos2, even though that isn't mentioned on the MorphOS website).
Hey, as long as we use PPCs, there will be some support for Linux. You can't expect the old PPC mac hold outs to be the only ones still developing for this base. They're still waiting for Mark to finish that one project so they can use some of the code. .

Hi guys,

I'm sorry I'm a bit late to the party, but I've been super busy lately.

Assuming that Ebay is showing me the correct photo for the (now expired) listing in the first post, the card in question is the exact same one as I'm running in my G5 right now.

It's a bit unclear what the status is for the two users of this card in this thread, but let me see if I understand this right:

Using the OF boot menu accessed via the alt key fixes this issue for you, Koszer? For both of you? Does it fix it for that boot only, or also for subsequent boots?

Booting Mac OS X first, and then rebooting into MorphOS fixes the issue until next power off for you Koszer? Does this also work for you, Intuition?

Do these two workarounds fix all issues? Do they work equally well?

Would any of you be available at some point to do some testing? Said testing will likely involve a lot of reboots and booting MorphOS from CD to copy in a working driver after a test, so it'll require some time and some patience.

Also, what's your full system specs? Which G5 exactly do you have? CPU speed? How much memory? Any other cards installed?

I forgot to add... I had one other guy contact me about this same card, but in the end he was able to make the card misbehave in Mac OS X too by running Quake 3. Please do make sure that the cards work fine in Mac OS X too, especially under heavy 3D load. Running a Quake 3 benchmark or similar at high resolution in a loop would be good.

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Unfortunately it does not. I've booted the system a number of times since and I've found the graphic glitches are sometimes present too, even when booting from OF bootmenu, or rebooting from OSX. Sometimes there are none, but when I try to play a YouTube clip everything starts to stutter (just like when MorphOS demoversion 30 minute trial period ends). And sometimes everything works perfectly. No rules, sadly.

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Sure, bring'em on.

My system specs are:
PowerMac G5 Dual 2,7 GHz, 8 GB of RAM (of course only 1,5 visible/usable in MorphOS). I have one PCI card installed (Belkin F5U220 Nec based 5-port USB controller). Oh, and Bluetooth and AirPort Extreme.

One more question: Is this truly a X850XT, or some user-reflashed X800XT Mac version?

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Hi Mark,

Booting into OSX first doesn't make any difference, it seems random whether MorphOS boots to Ambient or not.

I'd be more than happy to do some testing. I've got a 2.7GHz DP with 4GB RAM and the only PCI card is a WiFi adapter but it's the same with or without it.

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I've downloaded the OpenArena, set the screen res to 1920x1200, recorded a demo and then benchmarked it a dozen times. No trouble so far (but I've achevied 293 FPS, yay!).

Wow! 293 fps in OpenArena.
With 12 year old hardware.

That at least partially deflates the anti-PPC argument.
With just the hardware we using right now, we have adequate performance.

What we really need are applications.

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Mind you it was the OSX version of OpenArena. On MorphOS port of Quake 3 i get around 70 FPS in 1600x1200.

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What resolution are you using in OSX?
That >400% difference is surprising, considering OSX's primary advantage is SMP.
You think it would be closer to 200%.

>>>> I've [...] set the screen res to 1920x1200 [...]. [...] I've achevied 293 FPS

>>> Wow! 293 fps

>> it was the OSX version

> What resolution are you using in OSX?

;-)

> >400% difference

It's 293/70-1 ≈ 320% difference (as 100% difference means twice the speed) :-)

Reminding me I should scroll back and look at previous posts again Andreas?

Curious, +400%, at a higher resolution.

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Well, it's the same engine, but not the same game and not the same demo. I would have to use OSX version of Quake III to repeat exactly the same test.

That said I've done a loop test on Q3 today (on MorphOS). Classic "four" demo looped and played umpteen times didn't make my machine unstable/stuttering or showing artifacts (when it was eventually working OK of course, I've booted it with no success a few times before, and when the gfx is unstable even "Voxel Bird saga" kills it).

EDIT: Quake III timedemo four on OSX (version "10.2 G4", whatever that is) does 250 FPS in 1600x1200. Now it's time for some stress tests in loop...

EDIT 2: When looped (on OSX) the demo "four" runs about 45 times and then Quake stops (hangs?). No artifacts visible.

[ Edited by koszer 08.05.2017 - 19:29 ]

A small update:

I let Quake III demo four run in loop for almost an hour on MorphOS and had no issues (be it graphic glitches, or whatever else) with it.

OK, now for something very strange:

The card doesn't give a single artifact when the monitor is hooked up via DVI (not ADC). I have an acrylic Apple Cinema Display 23" and had to use an Apple A1006 adapter, but the fact remains. DVI = no issues at all, ADC = random trouble.

By the way: I've tried replacing the thermal grease, just in case the card was overheating. It didn't help, but I've found that it's really a X850, not a reflashed X800 card. It's got a "X850" written on the core.

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I also bought a card from the same source, but I haven't given it that much use yet. I've connected it with DVI and haven't seen any described kind of issues with 20 or so reboots so far.

One thing came in my mind, that could those horizontal lines and blackouts be about the "non coherent display" problem found in Mac minis?

Or would the lines effect be the same which can happen occasionally on PowerBooks? Maybe a photo or video would help recognizing :)

[ Edited by jPV 24.05.2017 - 08:23 ]

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Sometimes it's just glitches, like here (although if I try to run a 3d accelerated app, or YouTube video - it will end up with a crash).
Sometimes watching the web is plain unusable (like here).
And none of the above appears when running through DVI.
One more thing - I've heard that some people complain they have artifacts in MorphOS on a dual DVI card (like Radeon 9650) in G5, but only on one of the DVI connectors. Maybe that strange feature has something in common with my X850?

And - as a proof the card is "teh real X850" - this photo.