tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1015214236289077798.post4186182059510312087..comments2024-03-24T17:13:53.855-07:00Comments on TenFourFox Development: A semi-review of the Raptor Talos IIClassicHasClasshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17331846076856918359noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1015214236289077798.post-8438239661490380502022-01-06T13:55:08.774-08:002022-01-06T13:55:08.774-08:00[Three years later...]
How does the Talos II fare ...[Three years later...]<br />How does the Talos II fare against Apple's M1 Mac's? :-DAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1015214236289077798.post-45982000698761444372018-12-30T20:22:06.083-08:002018-12-30T20:22:06.083-08:00awesome. Id love to get my hands dirty on a system...awesome. Id love to get my hands dirty on a system that has less OS breakage. Have I longed for the years of this again. If its not hardware- some dumbarse changes the OS to force new proprietary hardware on people. Thats wrong. Id like to see Ubu or debian(option now) on it vs fedora. MOL and BE to LE (or back) was my line of thinking(powerG5 emu). As per AMD- 9590 or Ryzen cpu instructions- more seems to be a ryzen competitor) on QEMU is probly your best bet.(If we can emulate core2 and coreQuad, on AMD, we should be able to go the other way. Old school AMD I believe is a CPU QEMU option-see virt manager) KVM thru and thru will fix most of QEMUs issues- and keeps it open sourceUI w virt-manager. I think its less of a hassle than shoving buster on an old iBook...I hated switching to Intel- that was apples serious flaw,IMHO. Now this- you cant fix jack- crap...RX480s are no joke. Im working out some QEMU issues on github.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1015214236289077798.post-21603867781474241072018-07-12T12:33:11.350-07:002018-07-12T12:33:11.350-07:00What kind of power supplies does the Talos II use?...What kind of power supplies does the Talos II use?<br />I've been thinking about getting a motherboard to build my own system inside the case of an old IBM dual-CPU netburst Intel server with an Extended ATX board (I'm relatively confident that if it can handle two 3.6GHz netbursts, it can handle POWER9!). What standard (if any) is followed for them?wyatt8740https://www.blogger.com/profile/03261447641991419739noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1015214236289077798.post-42991151494942725482018-05-30T16:14:27.036-07:002018-05-30T16:14:27.036-07:00Fantastic. You can try Debian testing or unstable....Fantastic. You can try Debian testing or unstable. There is Linux 4.16 there. Debian supports both ppc64 and ppc64el and powerpc (32 bit), but from what I see, only ppc64el have installation media available, and this one is probably only officially supported. You can install Debian testing weekly installation cd.<br /><br />I really hope you manage to backport various Firefox fixes upstream. Please! :)<br /><br />AMD Polaris is still newish. It should work, but be sure to have Mesa 18 too. You might need to play with some kernel parameters, and make sure to use amdgpu module. I see on your screenshot "llvmpipe", which is a software rendering pipeline, which is slow (even if llvmpipe uses Altivec and co.).<br /><br />For the sound I highly recommend small USB DAC (good ones are around 150$, if not little less), and they are actually superior (lower noise, better amplifiers for headphones, better DACs, easy to access volume knobs, etc) to internal PCIe sounds cards or ones usually found integrated on board. (You do not want to waste PCIe slot for so low bandwidth device).Witek Barylukhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12428843843234198274noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1015214236289077798.post-80406045500280718452018-05-26T12:41:22.907-07:002018-05-26T12:41:22.907-07:00Fantastic post! I have been waiting for something ...Fantastic post! I have been waiting for something like this since the PowerMac G5. I’m a really big fan too of the POWER/PowerPC architecture, and very glad to see that there is some alternatives to “real people” and not the only IBM ultra expensive options.<br /><br />It would be really really appreciated if you post some real world benchmarks to compare the performance with other processors/architectures. I’m very interested in buying one, my main work is for 3D modelling and render, so if you have time and you desire to do some Blender benchmarks with “Cycles Render” it would be fantastic. For example the old and trusty BMW Benchmark: https://www.blender.org/download/demo-files/<br /><br />If you are using Fedora 28, I think Blender is in the official repositories in the ppc64el branch, so in theory you can install Blender in a few seconds.<br /><br />So congratulations for your new machine, I think you will have fun with all that POWER!!! : )Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06901557835173209144noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1015214236289077798.post-7352900854752192002018-05-17T05:29:03.931-07:002018-05-17T05:29:03.931-07:00I wonder what impact would have on Phoronix perfor...I wonder what impact would have on Phoronix performance tests if they would be compiled by IBM XL C compiler.<br />https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/downloads/r/xlcpluslinux/index.html<br /><br />Back in a day, IBM XL C almost always produced considerably faster and smaller PowerPC binaries.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1015214236289077798.post-2640175400071259162018-05-16T21:40:36.370-07:002018-05-16T21:40:36.370-07:00In the interests of accuracy: I kept writing Micro...In the interests of accuracy: I kept writing Microsemi, but this is actually the LSI SAS card. Not sure what I was thinking at the time.ClassicHasClasshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17331846076856918359noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1015214236289077798.post-63260137283367359692018-05-14T22:11:26.670-07:002018-05-14T22:11:26.670-07:00Yes, KVM (with proper kernel support) can do bit-s...Yes, KVM (with proper kernel support) can do bit-swapped guests. I'm using this to do some very limited LE test runs on a G5 (970), which of course only supports BE mode in the firmware. I'm told it's just as easy to do it the other way.awilfoxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15374657761222061006noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1015214236289077798.post-91873991438703773322018-05-14T17:41:25.267-07:002018-05-14T17:41:25.267-07:00Fedora 28, on a DVD. I'm just old school like ...Fedora 28, on a DVD. I'm just old school like that.ClassicHasClasshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17331846076856918359noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1015214236289077798.post-79672739358967383092018-05-14T17:40:51.118-07:002018-05-14T17:40:51.118-07:00Maybe, or see if I can get KVM-PR to run a BE gues...Maybe, or see if I can get KVM-PR to run a BE guest. I haven't played with this much yet.ClassicHasClasshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17331846076856918359noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1015214236289077798.post-43714895754334370962018-05-13T02:37:35.197-07:002018-05-13T02:37:35.197-07:00I'd like to know what OS you installed and wha...I'd like to know what OS you installed and what media you used. Did you go with the Fedora 28? And did you burn it to a DVD?<br /><br />Because I just spent four hours learning a lot more than I wanted to know about Anaconda, Dracut and Systemd tonight, heh.<br /><br />I came to the conclusion that no one has tested a USB key installation of PPC64 Fedora in a long time. I don't see how it can possibly work because the kernel command line on the installer doesn't have enough arguments to boot on anything but CD/DVD/Bluray. As far as I can tell.Zan Lynxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17837281633089631019noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1015214236289077798.post-37387221921537164952018-05-08T23:56:32.152-07:002018-05-08T23:56:32.152-07:00Hi good to finally see an open box on this. Been i...Hi good to finally see an open box on this. Been itching to plunk down the money for one but wanting to see some reviews first.<br /><br />Just wondering if you may experiment running a big endian Linux on it through KVM, and then running MOL on top of it. That way you can run your old MacOS app on it and properly test its performance vs your old G5, on a more like for like basis?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12262605956847663717noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1015214236289077798.post-54870178632804405322018-05-03T18:34:12.866-07:002018-05-03T18:34:12.866-07:00Hey, congrats! Hope you like it as much as I do. J...Hey, congrats! Hope you like it as much as I do. Just one CPU?<br /><br />I'm heartened to hear all the interest in keeping it BE, though I'm surprised there isn't a ppc64le FreeBSD (I'm not up on FreeBSD, I'm mostly a NetBSD dweeb). I certainly hope you document the porting process, I'm interested to hear how that goes.ClassicHasClasshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17331846076856918359noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1015214236289077798.post-25549737168100971582018-05-03T07:55:09.512-07:002018-05-03T07:55:09.512-07:00Now I know this will sound like herasy, but with a...Now I know this will sound like herasy, but with all the power you have to spare on that, it really seems like a quality Emulator is the thing to work toward. QEMU is OK, but I wonder if there is a way to go for more of an OpenSource Parallels/Virtual PC solution. I have a crappy old Pentium D 820 (slowest one), that can transcode a DVD on LXLE nearly as fast as my brothers Mac Pro with Quad Xeons.<br /><br />I just wonder if it is easier to bridge at the higher-level, or at the bit-swap level. QEMU always seems so slow compared to Virtual PC, there has got to be a better emulator with the kind of power you have there to burn. If you can get a sandbox going that thinks it's AMD64, then the world really opens up and with bit-swapping going on, that surely must disrupt cache-picking exploits.artphotodudehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14625170205541427471noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1015214236289077798.post-84050914458102506232018-05-03T07:54:13.127-07:002018-05-03T07:54:13.127-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.artphotodudehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14625170205541427471noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1015214236289077798.post-61783248325198143952018-05-03T07:44:20.668-07:002018-05-03T07:44:20.668-07:00My Talos just arrived yesterday (got the single bu...My Talos just arrived yesterday (got the single bundle, 18-core CPU), so I'll be spending time setting it up over the next several days, and then get started porting FreeBSD to it. My hope is to have FreeBSD working on it reliably, if maybe not optimally, by June. Oh, and FreeBSD on PowerPC is big-endian only.chmeeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15601204803374423591noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1015214236289077798.post-68632394425414723542018-05-02T12:33:52.241-07:002018-05-02T12:33:52.241-07:00Thanks for posting updates on the talos. As usual,...Thanks for posting updates on the talos. As usual, a new, different system is a lot of fun in the beginning.<br /><br />No, Linux distros definitely don't feel snappy in comparison to mac os, especially on PowerPC. Personally I got tired of GNOME and all the metapackages that are part of standard distros quite fast. Last distro I used was gentoo and though it requires heck a lot of patience(source install), you can at least entirely configure the whole system install. That could be a possibility since 4.16 is the recommended kernel. That's quite the long way compared to fedora, so maybe not.<br /><br />I expect PPC64LE to be less prone to breaking drivers than big endian.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1015214236289077798.post-17334610203487292262018-05-02T08:04:41.861-07:002018-05-02T08:04:41.861-07:00Yes, it certainly can be run in BE mode, though I ...Yes, it certainly can be run in BE mode, though I don't envy the task needed to get everything to work together. I'm sad to lose BE, but everything else is going LE, so it's sensible for IBM to go that way too. I'll be interested to see how your distro fares on the Talos though I'm likely to keep this system LE for the foreseeable future.ClassicHasClasshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17331846076856918359noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1015214236289077798.post-256714539797848122018-05-02T02:27:07.106-07:002018-05-02T02:27:07.106-07:00Tiny little comment that the Talos II can run big-...Tiny little comment that the Talos II can run big-endian software, and our distro Adélie is targeting ppc64 specifically; not ppc64le. We have Firefox and Otter (a Qt WebKit-based browser) and KDE and LXQt all running on G5s with no issue, and when I get my Talos II in, I'm going to be working on the kernel bits to make it run well on 4.14 (the LTS branch of Linux).<br /><br />So it's not all little-endian out there, and a lot more is working on ppc64 than it seems if you go with a distro that tunes for PPC first :)awilfoxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15374657761222061006noreply@blogger.com