Dear fellow MOS / MacPPC users,

I have been thinking how to improve my iMac G5 experience

PROBLEMS
Apple BIOS is in tiny fonts and my eyesight is operated and bad (ablatio retinae)
and its hard to find some special characters. Any help here is greatly appriciated.
Entering BIOS and booting from CD requires strange key combo at least for PC Amiga users :D

My G5 is second hand, has a bit bad speaker sound and not so clear screen and just 1GB RAM and mechanical drive, and has installed Leopard on drive and I boot MOS from CD.

I have managed to install MOS only by formating whole hard drive.

Even I have extensive experience with CFE, some with Uboot and have tried all PPC Linuxes on x-1000
I did not manage to start Linux PPC install.

I understand there is no GUI Boot menu a la GRUB possible. Is there a simple way to enter BIOS and boot from some parition, like UBoot had boota, bootb or similar command or CFE had path line from where to start?

WISHES

- Hardware upgrade RAM to 2-4GB if possible for MacOS and Linux
- HW upgrade: Installing clean larger SSD that can work with old SATA? Which models?

Pointing 101% working parts on ebay, offering them for late 2024 or early 2025 would be grately appriciated

- SW upgrade: installing to hard drive, Registering MorphOS at end of 2024 (is it 100e for G5 via PayPal?)
- SW upgrade: IF possible, installing that "unofficial Snow Leopard PPC" crossmix with latest updates that I find on Mac forums and Mac Garden

- SW upgrade: IF possible, installing Linux PPC (prefered LinuxMINT or Debian based distro with LXDE and MATE, plus some browser and some version of Libre)

- SW upgrade: Out of those 3 OSs which can easily emulate Classic MacOS 8.1 m68k or MacOS 9 PPC?
This is a bit trivial, but I prefer MacOS Classic look to OS X. Or can OS X look more like

- SW upgrade: Linux Can read FAT32, can MacOS and MOS do it too, so I make 4th data exchange partition?

Would pay small fees via Pay pal for assistance at end of year, this is just planning phase.

And will encourage DJ Nick to register MorphOS on his SAM460, deleting OS 4.1 :D


Thank you, who can really help can contact me via vojinvidanovic at gmail.com
Viber, Telegram, Signal 381629670515
Forums vox here or at AW.net

Thank you

> I understand there is no GUI Boot menu a la GRUB possible.

GRUB is possible on G5 Macs. The inofficial Debian PPC64 builds depend on it.

> Hardware upgrade RAM to 2-4GB if possible for MacOS and Linux

2.5 GiB is the maximum for the hardware.

> SSD that can work with old SATA? Which models?

You may start from that thread:
https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=13116&forum=11

> is it 100e for G5 via PayPal?

"The price is 79 EUR for one laptop or desktop computer. Special pricing of 49 EUR per device is offered for EfikaPPC and Sam460 systems."
https://www.morphos-team.net/faq

> Linux Can read FAT32, can MacOS and MOS do it too,
> so I make 4th data exchange partition?

Yes, they can of course. For file size over 4 GiB and/or partition size over 2 TiB, I'd recommed ExFAT or NTFS-3G, though. I'm not sure about ExFAT for PPC Mac OS, but NTFS-3G exists for it.

> will encourage DJ Nick to register MorphOS on his SAM460, deleting OS 4.1 :D

There's no need to delete OS4 in order to use MorphOS on the Sam460 :-)

Thank you wise man!
So 1 x 2GB RAM, which specs?
Recommended SSD that can work on G5 old SATA quite well?
GRUB - can it pick MOS and MacOS X choices?

I wonder could MacOS X see NTFS partition, that is why I opted FAT32 for data exchange partition.

Deleting OS4 is personal vengeance :D

[ Edited by vox 22.02.2024 - 16:03 ]

> So 1 x 2GB RAM, which specs?

DDR2 SDRAM, DDR2-533 PC2-4200 or faster.
The 2.5 GiB maximum is outdated Wikipedia info, sorry. People have managed to get up to 4.5 GiB to work:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=13558&forum=3&start=7 (#8)
https://www.reddit.com/r/VintageApple/comments/n53nqn/so_the_isight_g5_imac_tops_out_at_25gb_does_it/

> Recommended SSD that can work on G5 old SATA quite well?

See the linked thread, and threads linked from there.

> GRUB - can it pick MOS and MacOS X choices?

Good question. I don't know, sorry.

>> I'm not sure about ExFAT for PPC Mac OS, but NTFS-3G exists for it.

> I wonder could MacOS X see NTFS partition

Yes, at least with NTFS-3G installed.

Thanks for answers.
Would DDR2 666 4GB work?

Will come back soon with some PPC Mac users hints too!

>> DDR2 SDRAM, DDR2-533 PC2-4200 or faster. [...]
>> People have managed to get up to 4.5 GiB to work

> Would DDR2 666 4GB work?

I guess so.

iMac G5 RAM - 4GB - so it seems that as well as the samsung M378T5263AZ3-CF7 1405 6400U PC2 DDR2 memory - that Sailor identified as working OK in an iMac G5 A1145

Also - Crucial CT51254AA667.M16FC 240-pin 1.8v Non-EEC 4GB DIMM PC2 DDR2 667MHz 5300 Desktop memory ?? - should work OK as well
Also - Kingston KVR667D2N5/4G 240-pin 1.8v Non-EEC DIMM PC2 DDR2 667MHz 5300 Desktop memory/RAM - does work OK - using it on my iMac now as I type this message.

Bear in mind that the Kingston KVR667D2N5K2/4G designation - CHECK for a "K2" which is added into the memory-ID if it is a KIT of 2 (TWO) memory sticks with a combined/added together (accumulated) memory amount of 4GB = 2GB x 2GB (per RAM stick). As these are NOT 4GB memory sticks.

CAUTION - the Kingston KVR667D2E5/4G is NOT COMPATIBLE with the iMac (or ANY Desktop system) as the "E" indicates it is ERROR-CORRECTED (SERVER) memory.

The "N" in the compatible memory (as above) indicates it is NON-ERROR-CORRECTED memory (Desktop (iMac) compatible).

I was supposed to be sent the Crucial memory stick (mentioned above), but the Kingston stick was delivered, and after cleaning - it then worked.

The strange thing is that when it is shown in the "About This Mac" in the mini MacOSX/hardware window it is shown as 4.5GB (0.5GB on-board memory and the 4GB memory stick), but in the more detailed hardware display of the "Memory" installed - the second memory slot is shown as EMPTY, even though the memory is recognised and works as it should. It seems some parts of the firmware cannot cope with displaying the extra memory, so it cannot display it in that section of the hardware details, as it was never expected to exist, or maybe that it would not be able to handle it, but it can!

Quote:
In my A1145 iMac 20" 2.1GHz system I too have had bad speaker sound, and it seems it probably relates to the thin rubber flexible border rim to the speaker cone becoming brittle/perishing and then it makes a bad vibrating/rattling sound instead of a nice clear pleasant audio response.

So, with my speakers that were affected I coated the rubber border with a glue called "Pritt Power Gel" (not sure if it is still manufactured) which is often used by paper crafters/hobby model makers, and that works nicely at bonding all the membrane together, while still remaining flexible and is not sticky once it has dried There are probably other glues that will do the same/better job, but you may have to search to find them, by trial/error.

It may work, though I have also replaced the speakers in another iMac with ones from an Intel (Core (2) Duo) based iMac (e.g. A1207) which can be picked up quite cheaply for parts and then the speakers can be "harvested" for the A1145 - if they are intact, though they may be worth coating with the adhesive/glue to protect them from any future deterioration!

Hope this information helps other MorphOS users with A1145/A1144 iMac systems.