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For those who are not familiar with the author of this blog, he is a PowerPC enthusiast and the maintainer of TenFourFox, a Firefox port to PPC OS X. He's also currently working on a new PPC JIT for (modern) Firefox on Linux (a project for which he is looking for volunteers to assist him[1]) to bring it to speed parity with Chrome on PPC (which already has a PPC JIT). [1] https://www.talospace.com/2019/03/pitch-into-…
As fun as this is (and as much as I appreciate putting good old hardware to use and as much as I like PPC): the power consumption alone wouldn't make this a winner :( I have a PowerBook G4 DVI, iBook G4, B&W G3, GbE G4, Dual G5 here, I want to get rid of them but I like them too much. Yet I can't run them for fun all day long either because the amount of power they eat >:( The problems of a hardware connoisseur.
For those who are not familiar with the author of this blog, he is a PowerPC enthusiast and the maintainer of TenFourFox, a Firefox port to PPC OS X. He's also currently working on a new PPC JIT for (modern) Firefox on Linux (a project for which he is looking for volunteers to assist him[1]) to bring it to speed parity with Chrome on PPC (which already has a PPC JIT). [1] https://www.talospace.com/2019/03/pitch-into-…
Author here. Thanks for the kind word. :)
As fun as this is (and as much as I appreciate putting good old hardware to use and as much as I like PPC): the power consumption alone wouldn't make this a winner :( I have a PowerBook G4 DVI, iBook G4, B&W G3, GbE G4, Dual G5 here, I want to get rid of them but I like them too much. Yet I can't run them for fun all day long either because the amount of power they eat >:( The problems of a hardware connoisseur.
o_O Compared to what? G3s and G4s are pretty light on power usage - IIRC they use around 10-15w? The G3s were even less. The i7 in my desktop uses at least 95w, and some reviews suggest it's more like 140w lol. Edit: Unless you're pairing them with CRT monitors...
As fun as this is (and as much as I appreciate putting good old hardware to use and as much as I like PPC): the power consumption alone wouldn't make this a winner :( I have a PowerBook G4 DVI, iBook G4, B&W G3, GbE G4, Dual G5 here, I want to get rid of them but I like them too much. Yet I can't run them for fun all day long either because the amount of power they eat >:( The problems of a hardware connoisseur.
Author here. Power consumption on this unit is about 21W. Is the CPU/watt ratio less than later units? You bet. But it's not bad, it's free, it's not in a landfill, and it's more than enough grunt for the basic tasks it's doing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Author here. Thanks for the kind word. :)
Why the obsession with PPC? Don't you feel you could put your time + effort into something more modern that isn't dying?
As fun as this is (and as much as I appreciate putting good old hardware to use and as much as I like PPC): the power consumption alone wouldn't make this a winner :( I have a PowerBook G4 DVI, iBook G4, B&W G3, GbE G4, Dual G5 here, I want to get rid of them but I like them too much. Yet I can't run them for fun all day long either because the amount of power they eat >:( The problems of a hardware connoisseur.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why the obsession with PPC? Don't you feel you could put your time + effort into something more modern that isn't dying?
PPC is far from dead. You can buy brand-new POWER9 workstations with up to 44 cores (with SMT4 for 176 threads) from Raptor Computer Systems. They are also about as open as a modern computer can be with board schematics included with every system and only one component with closed firmware (the BCM5719 network controller, which is currently being reverse-engineered so an open firmware can be developed).