Trying to make Universal Tiger setup

Question

Trying to make Universal Tiger setup

I have some old PowerBook G4 Titaniums I'm trying to setup to lan old games on.

I was running Leopard on them, but it won't let me use OpenGL on the 400 and 500Mhz ones, even if I install the Rage128 kexts from Tiger.

I want to switch those ones to Tiger so I can use OpenGL, but, the PowerPC version of Tiger doesn't have IO80211Family.kext, which I need to support my Broadcom 4328 and 4329 Wifi cards.

If I try to copy the IO80211Family.kext from Intel Tiger to PPC, it won't run, claiming it has some sort of superclass error.

So, I made 3 partitions on an external drive:

1. Tiger PPC

2. Tiger Intel

3. Tiger Universal

Installed Tiger PPC and Tiger Intel and updated both 10.4.11, PPC and Intel respectively. Then I imaged PPC onto the Universal partition. Next I imaged the Intel one over that.

Booted it up on my 800Mhz Titanium and it worked! If I run software update, it gets Intel updates now, but it all seems to work, including the Wifi card.

Then I tried it on my 500 and 400s, and it gets stuck at the loginwindow almost everytime. Maybe one boot out of 10 it will load to the desktop and work fine, including the Wifi card, but most of the time I just get a blue or gray screen, and in verbose mode it sometimes has a line about loginwindow.app on a black screen.

I also tested OpenGL on the 500 and it isn't working, even though the Rage128 kext is loaded.

My next step is going to be putting Intel kexts into the PPC Tiger install one by one and seeing if I get anywhere with that, but I thought I would see if anyone had any tips. If I could get OpenGL on the Rage128 on Leopard, then I'd like that the most.

Posted on Feb 21, 2013 3:33 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 24, 2013 1:29 AM in response to Stephen Ferris

Well, I got to the point where I "found" a copy of 10.4.7 Server Universal, and even it won't get past the loginwindow.app, so it looks to be impossible.

I tried adding a minimal amount of Universal 10.4.11 kexts to a PPC install, but you end up having to replace the PPC IOPCIFamily and IONetworking family, which appears to be just the start of what breaks the Rage128 drivers from working.

At the end of the day, I've discovered that it is at least possible to run a broadcom 802.11n wifi card on Tiger PPC with my initial cloning method, as long as you don't have or aren't stuck with a Rage128 Mobility card. I suspect that it would work on a desktop Rage128 card, otherwise why would 10.4.7 Server Universal even include the Rage128 drivers.

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Answer 2

Mar 5, 2013 10:13 AM in response to Stephen Ferris

Well OS X 10.4 server is going to include those drivers since it is a server operating system. Also being a server OS, you will definitely NOT want it on the PowerBook even if it does install, it's not going to run anywhere near as good as a standard install of Tiger.

As for the OpenGL, I don't think it's drivers fault or the computers. The Rage 128 card flat out does NOT support OpenGL mostly because of its age. The closest you'll get for those cards is using DirectX on MS Windows which you can't do on a PowerBook G4 (outside of emulation).

Loginwindow.app is a crucial part of OS X that is always running in the background and allows you to login and control the userspace/groups. A blue or gray screen at startup is usually a kext (more than likely the outside one you put in from the Intel copy of Tiger) interfering with loginwindow.app. Booting in safe-mode (by holding down shift at the boot chime) should work if that's the case. If it doesn't boot fine then, you're copy of the operating system is corrupted and most likely unstable.

As for the lan gaming and wifi cards.. just go for an old AirPort card. The titaniums all supported Apple Airport, the only downside is that the cards for those machines are going to be older and therefore slower. But they will also work without any software installation, and with the clock speed of the machine itself, you will definitely never noticed the wifi's slower speed.

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Answer 3

Mar 5, 2013 9:31 PM in response to tanner1294

Thanks for the response tanner1294, but it's bugging me for a few reasons.

One, 10.4 Server includes Rage 128 drivers because it's designed to be able to run on many G3's and G4's which came with Rage 128s. I'm willing to bet that if I wanted to, I could run 10.4 PPC (non Universal) server on my Rage128 PowerBooks just fine. I think the issue is an incompatibility with the universal version of one of the PCI bus drivers, and the Rage128 Mobility, although I have yet to test it on a desktop with a Rage128. Again, my Radeon 7500 PowerBook runs both my experimental 10.4 Universal Client setup, and 10.4 Server Universal just fine. It may be worth noting that the Rage128 kexts only have PPC executables in them, while the Radeon ones have both PPC and x86, which is true on Universal Server as well.

Two, Rage128s most certainly do support OpenGL, how else would I be able to play Quake3 on it? It just doesn't work in Leopard because the 10.4 drivers aren't completely compatible with 10.5 (10.5 doesn't have it's own Rage128 drivers), and it doesn't work in any Universal version of 10.4 for basically the same reason. But they run OpenGL just fine in Mac OS 9.2.2 and Mac OS X up to 10.4.11 for PPC. Surprisingly well actually.

Three, Airport cards suck. You acknowledge that they're slow, but they're also way overpriced for what they are, can't connect using some modern encryption types, and often fail. Not only that, but when I copy files using the WPC600N cards, it's noticeably faster than the 100 baseT in the Rage128 'Books (the Radeon ones of course having gigabit).

Anyway, I'm just running 10.4.11 PPC on the 500 and 400 now, and I ordered a WPC54gs. With the WPC54gs you don't have to worry about which version you get like you do with the WPC54g, since they all have broadcom chips. They also have speedboast, and most people sell them for about the same price. It should also work in Mac OS X 10.2.8, which I run on my 233 Wallstreet, which, BTW also runs OpenGL on it's Rage II video.

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