How to run MorphOS on unsupported iMAC G5
  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    sailor
    Posts: 357 from 2019/5/9
    From: Central Bohemi...
    Hello,

    inspired by zukow thread about powermac G5 here is some info about MorphOS 3.12 on unsupported iMac G5/2.1 (PowerMac12.1):

    + installation works out of the box from instalation CD
    + builtin graphics (Radeon X600 XT) supported
    + sound is supported
    + ide is supported
    + sata is supported
    + usb is supported
    + temperature sensors are supported
    + onboard lan is supported
    + onboard wifi is supported
    + firewire is supported (at least for HDD connection)

    - no bootlogo
    - fans runs all the time at 100%
    - graphics sometimes crashes (GraphicsSpeed, SDLBench, SDL game 1941), but except these three other tested works - for example Quake 3, Tower57, DOSBox(=SDL), OWB with youtube videos.
    - camera not supported ;-)

    Majority of OS works with no problem. Fluently and quickly.
    See SystemMonitor and GraphicBoards.
    Now I have my iMacG5 MorphOS registered and after addition of NIC I will register also PowermacG5 Quad.

    I made some tests and compares speed of machines:
    Pegasos is overclocked to 1.33GHz. AmigaOne X1000 runs AmigaOS 4.1FE, all others MorphOS 3.12
    Dhystone+Whetstone and games
    Exact numbers are in tables in this article (CZ).

    Today iMacG5 is suitable for web surfing and gaming and other joy - with small gfx limitations. For me the biggest problem is loud fans.

    Generally I am very satisfied with support of "unsupported" computers from MorphOS Devs. Many thanks again.
    MorphOS support for unsupported is better then some other OS support for supported.

    I have one question - how to debug via firewire?
    iMAC firevire port works OK with external HDD. After graphics crashes I want to debug iMAC, but with no success.
    I have SDK installed (3.14)
    firewire connected with Pegasos2 (SDK 3.12?)
    if I set iMAC/logtool prefs: ohci1394_mon SM, on Peg2 nothing visible
    if I try run ohci1394_mon SM from shell there is allways error.
    Pls, what is correct settings? Is it SN on one side and DPO on other - like here?
    There is also info:"Added Firewire debugging to bootargs on the Macs", but I don't find exact bootarg in docs.
    AmigaOS3: Amiga 1200
    AmigaOS4: Micro A1-C, AmigaOne XE, Pegasos II, Sam440ep, Sam440ep-flex, AmigaOneX1000
    MorphOS: Efika 5200b, Pegasos I, Pegasos II, Powerbook G4, Mac Mini, iMac G5, Powermac G5 Quad
  • »29.11.19 - 08:27
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12058 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    > games

    The ≈60 FPS figures for Quake 3 on Pegasos, iMac G5 and AmigaOne X1000 suspiciously look like they might be the result of enabled vertical sync with the 60 Hz monitor refresh rate. It may be coincidence, though.
  • »29.11.19 - 09:29
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    sailor
    Posts: 357 from 2019/5/9
    From: Central Bohemi...
    Quote:

    Andreas_Wolf wrote:
    The ≈60 FPS figures for Quake 3 on Pegasos, iMac G5 and AmigaOne X1000 suspiciously look like they might be the result of enabled vertical sync with the 60 Hz monitor refresh rate. It may be coincidence, though.


    Pegasos & iMAC vertical sync was disabled - acc. to this post.
    AmigaOne X1000: I don't know exactly, for testing I use ioquake3. I used the same settings like for MorphOS, but "setenv TGLSYNC 0" maybe have no effect on AmigaOS.
    Also relatively poor results of powerbookG4 and iMacG5 can be caused by running the test in resolution (1600x1200) bigger then native resolution of their displays.
    AmigaOS3: Amiga 1200
    AmigaOS4: Micro A1-C, AmigaOne XE, Pegasos II, Sam440ep, Sam440ep-flex, AmigaOneX1000
    MorphOS: Efika 5200b, Pegasos I, Pegasos II, Powerbook G4, Mac Mini, iMac G5, Powermac G5 Quad
  • »29.11.19 - 10:09
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12058 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    > "setenv TGLSYNC 0" maybe have no effect on AmigaOS.

    Yes, that's for sure. OS4 does not use TinyGL, after all.
  • »29.11.19 - 11:39
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  • Moderator
    Kronos
    Posts: 2231 from 2003/2/24
    Quote:

    sailor wrote:

    - no bootlogo
    - fans runs all the time at 100%
    - graphics sometimes crashes (GraphicsSpeed, SDLBench, SDL game 1941), but except these three other tested works - for example Quake 3, Tower57, DOSBox(=SDL), OWB with youtube videos.





    I have the same iMac running 3.12/3.13 betas for several months now and can't confirm any of these.

    Well, to be honest not 100% sure bout the bootlogo (would only be displayed for a splitsecond with my SSD) and I haven't really pushed it in the GFX department.

    Unit is pretty silent with reasonable temps even when pushing the CPU (and no, no secret-handshake fan control active).
  • »29.11.19 - 12:25
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  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Doffo
    Posts: 507 from 2010/10/14
    From: Nevada
    Might need to open up your Imac and make sure it ain't clogged up or maybe clean and reapply the thermal paste. :)

    On Quake 3 under MorphOS, be sure to /r_primitives 2 and then /timedemo 1 .
    -=-=-=-
    YUUUP!
  • »29.11.19 - 13:43
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    MoerBoer
    Posts: 210 from 2019/10/15
    I run the same iMac and I also don't experience those issues. Mine is silent.
  • »29.11.19 - 16:19
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  • jPV
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    jPV
    Posts: 2021 from 2003/2/24
    From: po-RNO
    Quote:

    sailor wrote:
    I have one question - how to debug via firewire?
    iMAC firevire port works OK with external HDD. After graphics crashes I want to debug iMAC, but with no success.
    I have SDK installed (3.14)
    firewire connected with Pegasos2 (SDK 3.12?)
    if I set iMAC/logtool prefs: ohci1394_mon SM, on Peg2 nothing visible
    if I try run ohci1394_mon SM from shell there is allways error.
    Pls, what is correct settings? Is it SN on one side and DPO on other - like here?
    There is also info:"Added Firewire debugging to bootargs on the Macs", but I don't find exact bootarg in docs.

    I don't know about Peg2, but I recently did some debug via FireWire between two different Mac setups. First between two PowerMac G5 machines and then between Mac mini and Powerbook. It worked in similar way in both cases.

    As the FireWire support has been enabled in the boot.img since 3.12, I had to disable it on the machine I run ohci1394_mon, because it doesn't seem to work if Helios is running. To disable it I gave "fwdebug" (or shorter "fd") argument to the boot.img. If FireWire support isn't enabled in boot.img on Pegasos2 but only on Macs, then this step can be skipped. But in any case the FireWire support must be turned on on the "source" machine you want to get the log from, and turned off on the "destination" machine you want to get the log to.

    I didn't get ohci1394_mon to work by any other way but in the "interactive mode". So I started it by "ohci1394_mon ia", and then used the "dl" command to view the log in real time, or "dl ram:fwlog.txt" to save the log to a file. Don't use plain "dl" before "dl file" if you want to get the full log, because "dl" clears it to the point it displays it.

    I needed to get the debug at boot time, so I also gave "ed=init" argument to the boot.img. Not related to this case, but I'll document it in this post if needed in the future ;)

    [ Edited by jPV 29.11.2019 - 20:48 ]
  • »29.11.19 - 18:41
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    sailor
    Posts: 357 from 2019/5/9
    From: Central Bohemi...
    Quote:

    Kronos wrote:
    I have the same iMac running 3.12/3.13 betas for several months now and can't confirm any of these.

    Well, to be honest not 100% sure bout the bootlogo (would only be displayed for a splitsecond with my SSD) and I haven't really pushed it in the GFX department.

    Unit is pretty silent with reasonable temps even when pushing the CPU (and no, no secret-handshake fan control active).


    Bootlogo is minor issue. During boot process on iMac(HDD) I see grey screen and after that ambient screen.
    Booting process with Powermac G5 Quad is faster (SSD), and I see the logo.

    The fans on my iMac runs silently with MacOS and Linux. On full speed with morphos. In means it is probably no mechanical problem.
    tool sensorlist shows CPU temp 48C and other temps are lower.
    Maybe Alert limit ? it's set to 0C for CPU and 80C for others.
    AmigaOS3: Amiga 1200
    AmigaOS4: Micro A1-C, AmigaOne XE, Pegasos II, Sam440ep, Sam440ep-flex, AmigaOneX1000
    MorphOS: Efika 5200b, Pegasos I, Pegasos II, Powerbook G4, Mac Mini, iMac G5, Powermac G5 Quad
  • »29.11.19 - 19:06
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    sailor
    Posts: 357 from 2019/5/9
    From: Central Bohemi...
    Quote:

    Doffo wrote:
    Might need to open up your Imac and make sure it ain't clogged up or maybe clean and reapply the thermal paste. :)

    On Quake 3 under MorphOS, be sure to /r_primitives 2 and then /timedemo 1 .



    Fans are cleaned. Next time when I will opens iMac I will check again everything. But i think it is no mechanical.

    yes, all tested configurations have /r_primitives 2 and identical all settings.
    AmigaOS3: Amiga 1200
    AmigaOS4: Micro A1-C, AmigaOne XE, Pegasos II, Sam440ep, Sam440ep-flex, AmigaOneX1000
    MorphOS: Efika 5200b, Pegasos I, Pegasos II, Powerbook G4, Mac Mini, iMac G5, Powermac G5 Quad
  • »29.11.19 - 19:12
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    sailor
    Posts: 357 from 2019/5/9
    From: Central Bohemi...
    Quote:

    jPV wrote:
    I don't know about Peg2, but I recently did some debug via FireWire between two different Mac setups. First between two PowerMac G5 machines and then between Mac mini and Powerbook. It worked in similar way in both cases.

    As the FireWire support has been enabled in the boot.img since 3.12, I had to disable it on the machine I run ohci1394_mon, because it doesn't seem to work if Helios is running. To disable it I gave "fwdebug" (or shorter "fd") argument to the boot.img. If FireWire support isn't enabled in boot.img on Pegasos2 but only on Macs, then this step can be skipped. But in any case the FireWire support must be turned on on the "source" machine you want to get the log from, and turned off on the "destination" machine you want to get the log to.

    I didn't get ohci1394_mon to work by any other way but in the "interactive mode". So I started it by "ohci1394_mon ia", and then used the "dl" command to view the log in real time, or "dl ram:fwlog.txt" to save the log to a file. Don't use plain "dl" before "dl file" if you want to get the full log, because "dl" clears it to the point it displays it.

    I needed to get the debug at boot time, so I also gave "ed=init" argument to the boot.img. Not related to this case, but I'll document it in this post if needed in the future ;)


    Many thanks! It works.
    Pegasos2 don't need fwdebug argument. The thing is INTERACTIVE mode on iMAC, and not SERVERMODE which I tried before.
    AmigaOS3: Amiga 1200
    AmigaOS4: Micro A1-C, AmigaOne XE, Pegasos II, Sam440ep, Sam440ep-flex, AmigaOneX1000
    MorphOS: Efika 5200b, Pegasos I, Pegasos II, Powerbook G4, Mac Mini, iMac G5, Powermac G5 Quad
  • »29.11.19 - 19:26
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  • Acolyte of the Butterfly
    Acolyte of the Butterfly
    Flash
    Posts: 105 from 2019/11/1
    Nice to see my released dhrystone and whetstone apps were useful :-)
    There's no doubt PowerMac G5 quad is fastest Amiga ever seen until now.

    I hope it will be fully supported as soon as possible.
    Best strategy to increase MorphOs user base is to support all powerpc macs.
    Even full QEMU MorphOS compatibility could be a great option, virtualized hardware will live forever and in few years it will be the fastest MorphOS powerpc machine :-)
  • »29.11.19 - 19:53
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12058 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    > Best strategy to increase MorphOs user base is to support all powerpc macs.

    I hope they won't do this as pre-G4 Macs wouldn't bring anything worthwhile to the table. Likewise, trying to support PPC Macs with non-exchangeable Nvidia graphics would unnecessarily bind too many resources.
  • »29.11.19 - 20:42
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    sailor
    Posts: 357 from 2019/5/9
    From: Central Bohemi...
    FAN ISSUE SOLVED!!!

    - when booting MorphOS via Openfirmware (cmd+alt+o+f) or Startup Manager (alt) fan runs at 100% and after booting to Morphos the fans continue full speed.

    - if I set enviromental variable boot-command + path to morphos boot, then it starts directly to MorphOS, and fans remains quiet.

    Easy.
    Powermac G5 Quad have not this issue - also with boot via OF or StartupManager after booting to MorphOS fan speed goes down.

    [ Edited by sailor 29.11.2019 - 22:23 ]
    AmigaOS3: Amiga 1200
    AmigaOS4: Micro A1-C, AmigaOne XE, Pegasos II, Sam440ep, Sam440ep-flex, AmigaOneX1000
    MorphOS: Efika 5200b, Pegasos I, Pegasos II, Powerbook G4, Mac Mini, iMac G5, Powermac G5 Quad
  • »29.11.19 - 20:52
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    BatteMan
    Posts: 282 from 2003/2/24
    From: France
    Hi !

    Same iMac G5@2,1GHz here and I confirm the "no bootlogo" (grey screen and Ambient screen but no bootlogo).

    For the fan problem, I reset PRam and iMac boots automatically on MorphOS, so no fan at 100% but, some friends have same iMac and iMac shutdown after some minutes/hours because temperature of CPU is too high (fans seem to not start...).
    I don't have this problem here for the moment, but the BatteCave (my "MorphOS/Amiga room" ^^) is a bit cold (15°C).

    Thank you MorphOS Team for this great unsupport support ! ;)

    --
    /me will register this iMac asap !

    [EDIT]
    iMac registered ! (key received 5 minutes after my payement ! Incredible !)
    [/EDIT]

    [ Edited by BatteMan 29.12.2019 - 08:18 ]
    Proud user of MorphOS since 2003 !
  • »29.12.19 - 09:00
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  • Just looking around
    Posts: 19 from 2019/12/31
    I have the same situation with fans. After 20 minutes of working E-UAE temperature rise till 87degC, and iMac freezes. So i think that fans manage on iMac A1145 is incomplete yet.
  • »31.12.19 - 15:12
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  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    beworld
    Posts: 588 from 2010/2/10
    From: FRANCE
    Same here with fans...

    I have another little buyg. I put 2Go memory DDR2 5300 on my iMac anec Morphos reconized 1.5G....

    Would anyone test it with a 2GB memory ?
    IMac G5 2.1,PowerBook G4 1.5,MacMini 1.5, PowerMac G5 2.7 died !!!
    My MOS ports
  • »10.01.20 - 08:15
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    Kronos
    Posts: 2231 from 2003/2/24
    MorphOS will never show more then ~1.8GB regardless of HW.


    Also, after adding a 2GB stick you have 2.5GB installed ( 512MB on the mobo).

    Or maybe your stick was just 1GB giving you a total of 1.5GB.
  • »10.01.20 - 11:16
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  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    beworld
    Posts: 588 from 2010/2/10
    From: FRANCE
    yes i know that... i will test another memory.. maybe i will have more chance
    IMac G5 2.1,PowerBook G4 1.5,MacMini 1.5, PowerMac G5 2.7 died !!!
    My MOS ports
  • »10.01.20 - 11:31
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    BatteMan
    Posts: 282 from 2003/2/24
    From: France
    For the memory, I tried an "avail h".

    I have 1,5 Go available after the boot, but 155 Mo are used and you can see maximum memory is 1,7 Go.

    So, all is good, no ?

    imac-memory.png

    --
    /me thinks this is normal.
    Proud user of MorphOS since 2003 !
  • »10.01.20 - 15:48
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  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    beworld
    Posts: 588 from 2010/2/10
    From: FRANCE
    ok... my memory is DDR2-6400U... so not compatible....
    sorry it's my fault :-)
    IMac G5 2.1,PowerBook G4 1.5,MacMini 1.5, PowerMac G5 2.7 died !!!
    My MOS ports
  • »10.01.20 - 16:05
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  • Just looking around
    Posts: 19 from 2019/12/31
    I have exactly the same as BatteMan.

    @beworld - you can try 4200U or 5300U - in my iMAC 5300u (Kingston) working without any problem

    [ Edited by Kwiatki75 10.01.2020 - 16:15 ]
  • »10.01.20 - 16:10
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  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    beworld
    Posts: 588 from 2010/2/10
    From: FRANCE
    yes i put 1Go 5300U == it's working :-)
    IMac G5 2.1,PowerBook G4 1.5,MacMini 1.5, PowerMac G5 2.7 died !!!
    My MOS ports
  • »10.01.20 - 17:01
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  • Just looking around
    Posts: 18 from 2017/10/7
    Do you know if it works as well in 17" model?
  • »13.01.20 - 03:33
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  • Moderator
    Kronos
    Posts: 2231 from 2003/2/24
    Only the 20“ iSight atm.
  • »13.01.20 - 03:52
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