Wow... without the hardware to bang on... that is a tall order. I can try... I will need a LOT of information on the hardware itself. pastebin.com <=------- one of many places to put this info I need: cat /proc/cpuinfo cat /proc/meminfo cat /etc/issue ls /dev/js* lspci -vvn I would like to know what the actual model number is, and if /etc/issue is not available, I need to know what version of what you are running atm... generally /etc/issue is avail... on almost everything.
OK. http://pastebin.com/1HSiEJQv < cat /proc/cpuinfo http://pastebin.com/4cy8JcVa < cat /proc/meminfo cat /etc/issue: ls /dev/js*: (access to /dev/js* not possible: file or directory not found) http://pastebin.com/desAzTQB < lspci -vvn I can also tell you that my Debian distro at the moment is Wheezy. As for model number, I'm not sure what you mean. The system is the quad core G5, pretty much the last generation of Power Mac G5 to be produced. I think the CPUs are 970MPs (it has two cpus with two cores each).
Alright... I didn't catch that you were not running mac OS. Yeah 7.0 would be wheezy... that will make things a lot easier. Gimme a little time to look it over and ruminate.
Yeah, I couldn't stand sticking with Leopard. It's just getting too out of date. This hardware is capable of more than that system would permit it to do, and I never had any luck getting modern X-based apps to compile or install from Mac Ports under that system either. So, away went Mac OS. I diddled around with Fedora and even FreeBSD, but only Debian has proven reliable and really usable. The only thing I'm missing is the MATE desktop environment, which remains unavailable in the Debian repos and is not compiled for PPC in the MATE repo. So, I'm making do with Gnome 3 running in "classic" mode. I have qemu set up with the aqemu GUI, so I can at least run emulated x86 systems if I want, though pretty slowly. I would love to have QEMU running some version of Mac OS in its emulated PPC environment, but I can't get it to boot a Mac install disc.. It does boot Linux PPC disc images, but then it won't even boot from the virtual HD after installation. I think it's supposed to be possible to get that emulator to run Mac OS, but I dunno - I've never found very good info about doing that.
Have you tried bochs? http://bochs.sourceforge.net/ I would drop Gnome 3 like a snake. Probably run xfce on that. Probably improve performance greatly. I am installing mate now because I haven't seen it before... but until I look at it I can't say if I can make mate go on ppc. I will look through all of the changes and install params for the sheepthing... then paste the source changes... it will be slow going. If I still had a ppc around I could compile on the dev box and test... which will be a lot faster for me than you. So... you are originally German?
No, though a portion of my family is Swiss, and a temporally more distant portion on the other side is German. I was born in Minnesota to monolingual parents, but encouraged to study German at a young age and I took to it like a fish to water. Hm, Bochs.. I never have run that. It doesn't seem to have a nice, simple interface akin to AQEMU, so I haven't been too tempted to do so. Is it better in some way than QEMU? MATE should work on here - I think that Mint, including Mint for PPC, offers it. I just have no interest in trying to install it in place of Debian. Lots of trouble, no guarantee of success and no guarantee that it wouldn't be a downgrade in some respect or other. Also, since MATE is basically a fork of Gnome 2, it has a history of running on PPC there. Gnome 3 in its "classic" mode, i.e. fallback mode, is fast, and I HATE LXDE and xfce with a passion. Heck, one or both of them isn't even any good at doing keyboard layout switching. The least evil available to me is Gnome 3 classic, followed maybe by the GNU OpenStep desktop, though that one is really weird Maybe if it were capable of launching Mac OS X .app bundles on here, I would run that. For that matter, is it capable of doing that? It uses similar frameworks and all, and has .apps of its own, but I don't know about launching some OS X application on Linux with it.
I am unfamiliar with openstep... so I could not answer the question atm but without flat emulation I would doubt it. xfce is ugly but never had an issue with it functionality wise... shame you do... that would be very light weight. There is another gnome 2 ubuntu derivative out there called gnome remix... it actually comes with its own gnome 2 fork and gnome 3... Bochs doesn't have a nice interface, but its architecture is such that it should use PPC correctly, rather than emulating a broken PC, which is basically what quemu is doing... and why its performance is so terrible. Once you have the commands/settings the way you want, you can just launch a script from desktop and it might work a lot better for you. Bit of a learning curve, sure... but for the chance at good performance it would be the way I went... anyhoo... looking at the sheepthing.
I don't know why you think I need a "light" desktop.. Even Gnome Shell performs just fine, Nouveau-related graphical glitches aside, but I just don't care much for that interface. So you think that bochs would serve as a PPC virtualiser? I've only ever read about it emulating an Intel-compatible PC.
You have enough ass behind it to run the 2d interfaces, no doubt... but once you start dealing with threading and virtual environments... I would expect a bit of lag... nouveau notwithstanding. I am not sure if bochs will work as I expect it to... it would just be the first one I tried.
Bochs didn't look too impressive. It apparently doesn't even do threading, so it wouldn't benefit from my four cores. Neither does it emulate anything except Intel-compatible virtual systems.
... what are you looking at that suggests this? I am not saying it is not the case... "doesn't thread" would actually explain its architecture neutrality... in a way I hoped not. What it emulates, being intel compat... was its advantage.
One other to add, Microsoft Security Essentials. It isn't available for Windows 8, but it's available for Windows 7 and older. I've used their software since it was known 'Windows Live OneCare'. It protects against trojans, spyware, ad-ware, and all of those other awesome things. I also second your recommendation of 'Hijack This' for malware. A great piece of software. However, fore warn that you can do some serious damage to your PC if you're not careful. It can give you some great information on what is running on your computer and you can do the due diligence in determining if the program running is safe or not.
/me is of the opinion that if Microsoft could secure its OS from malicious code it alone is susceptible to... it would... and there would not be a multi-billion dollar industry taking up the slack...
Agreed, but if there are issues that come up (IE: Exploits), I'll be the 1% who reports it to Microsoft. Lol, not saying they care or anything but my wife needs an OS that is simplistic and works (Hence why I got her an iPhone). Am I saying Windows is the best OS or close to it? Ha, I'd shoot myself in the foot if I dared say something like that. My OS of choice would be on the lines of UNIX/Linux flavor but probably balanced tipped more so towards Ubuntu. I've created a VM on a Windows XP machine before, Ubuntu was definitely a step up on anything Windows could produce. However, just because I figured you'd would get a kick out of these pictures (I laugh at myself when I see stuff like this), this is how I would imagine most people see most geeks as:
Ctrl, I've been having some occasional problems with windows crashing (blue screen) on start up. Sometimes it takes 3 or 4 times before it "takes"....I asked my somewhat savvy brother about it, and he asked if I had a registry cleaner installed...I don't. Do you recommend any free downloads, or should I purchase one....if so, which one? thanks, webby
Webrockk, Not to intrude on your question for Ctrl, but one you might consider is CCleaner. They offer a free edition, as well as a couple paid editions. I began having the same issue as you, on an old machine a couple years back. Installed the Free Edition, and it worked perfectly. Needless to say, it's now a permanent fixture for me. Great little program in my opinion. http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download Best of luck with whatever you decide.
Thanks, Angedras.....I'll give it a spin and report back. Like I said, the problem is intermittent...I shut it down last night, and it booted up perfectly this morning... I did have a registry cleaner "subscription" (I think it cost $30.00 a year) on my last machine for a while, and it did seem to speed the thing up, but I can't remember which one..... and I was looking for a "freebie" to try first this go around. I was reading up on free downloads, and there were some ominous warnings about some of them...hence my advice seeking from someone who knows more about these things than I.
Web, It's a good little program. Easy to use. And allows you to define it's actions. Only thing, as with all free software, it does not auto update, however, you can set it to notify you when one is available. If it help ease your mind about trying it... I know a fellow that has ran a successful computer shop for several years, and he uses it, and adds it to customers machines when he does a reformat. Regards
I just completed the download and scan. so far so good....I'll let you know when and if the start up crash occurs again. thanks again, Angedras
I am not a fan of registry tweakers. Ccleaner is an awesome little tool however... just removing invalid entries. It does a host of other things though. In addition to your windows version, if you can write down/take a CLEAR pic of the screen, I can tell you what it is related to. Typically this is a bad driver or problem hardware. When hardware this is usually related to RAM I find. A dying hard drive will do this too as it corrupts data...However if I can get the cryptic error message/stop code we can narrow it down pretty quick. The relevant parts of the screen are the error code, a possible file source causing the error, and a stop code... so for instance here... Error = PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA File = SPCMDCON.SYS Stop code = 0x00000050 <=--- is the important one... the ones that follow in parentheses are sometimes helpful. Windows 8 BSOD is terrible from the look of it. All BSOD's create a dump file as well... however depending on the version it might take a second to find it.
Thanks, Ctrl. I installed the CCleaner (thanks again, Angedras), which seems to have sped things up, but I did have another "episode" of blue screens. This time though, when I clicked the "find solutions" (I think that's what it said) prompt in the "unexpected shutdown" box, another (black, I think) screen (eventually) popped up where Windows was doing some kind of a "three step" scan and repair. Took about 10 or 15 minutes, then it ultimately terminated at the normal password window. Since then...knock on wood....it's been working perfectly. I've cycled it through full shut down / start up at least a dozen times with no problems....( I was going to "hibernate" to avoid the blue screen issue...only fully shutting it down occasionally over the past month or so ) If the blue screens return, I'll post the pertinent data for you. Thanks again, webby PS. apologies for all the "high tech" terminology.....I'm clueless. lol
PC is on LinuxMint so no registry problems. Laptop is dual boot Win7 and Ubuntu (not Unity). I have just started trying out http://www.puransoftware.com/Puran-Utilities.html in Win7 so I'll see how it goes but for the moment it looks pretty good.
Hi Margot, Are you by chance referring to Google Spell Check, as part of their toolbar? If so, it is an issue being reported in various countries worldwide. People are reporting the check button disappearing, when reset via Options > Settings, it disappears again when page is refreshed. Attempting to check spelling in text fields, results in seeing the following message... "Unable to connect to Google spell servers. Check the internet connection and try again." Unfortunately, many have also written that when attemptiog to send a report to Google advising of the issue, the following message is returned... "Unable to connect to page" Seems like a major issue. Hopefully they will have it resolved soon. For the time being, perhaps this online checker will be of help to you.... http://www.spellchecker.net/spellcheck/
