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Mac OS 10.7 PowerPC Architecture Support

I recently upgraded from 10.6.8 to 10.7.5. I received the following error

message when attempting to execute an executable program "xxxxx.e" in the X11

mode

Launch of "xxxxx.e" failed:the legacy PowerPC architecture is no longer supported.


The program was created by linking Fortran object source and should not

depend on PowerPC code or Rosetta.

Posted on Mar 7, 2017 8:24 PM

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Posted on Mar 7, 2017 8:53 PM

Guess what? You are wrong. The PPC Fortran compiler produced code that would run on a PPC processor. That code cannot run on the Intel processor. To get the program to run on a modern Mac the Fortran source code would need to be re-compiled by a compiler that could produce the Intel binary.


What Rosetta did was translate the PPC code to Intel code live. However, when Apple moved to the Intel processors they chose not to have Rosetta redone. The original Rosetta was purchased by Apple from third-party developers. No one but Apple knows the reason for that decision.


From 10.7.x on Macs only run on Intel processors so none of the older PPC apps can work.

2 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Mar 7, 2017 8:53 PM in response to gtbeagle

Guess what? You are wrong. The PPC Fortran compiler produced code that would run on a PPC processor. That code cannot run on the Intel processor. To get the program to run on a modern Mac the Fortran source code would need to be re-compiled by a compiler that could produce the Intel binary.


What Rosetta did was translate the PPC code to Intel code live. However, when Apple moved to the Intel processors they chose not to have Rosetta redone. The original Rosetta was purchased by Apple from third-party developers. No one but Apple knows the reason for that decision.


From 10.7.x on Macs only run on Intel processors so none of the older PPC apps can work.

Mac OS 10.7 PowerPC Architecture Support

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