Installing Rhapsody OS on a Homemade SSD

Thanks PCBWay.com - Today we're installing Apple's strange precursor to Mac OS X, which is also the successor to NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP: Rhapsody!
But... we're doing it the hard way, on a PowerBook G3 Kanga running a homemade hand-built SSD from ‪@dosdude1‬
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VIDEO LINKS:
🍎 DosDude1's video: • Custom 2.5-inch IDE SS...
🍎 IDE SSD Github: github.com/dosdude1/2.5-inch-...
🍎 My fixed Rhapsody DR2 installers:
- macintoshgarden.org/apps/rhap...
- www.macintoshrepository.org/2...
🍎 Very helpful article about running Rhapsody: tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2014/...
🍎 The site that convinced me this was a good idea: www.rhapsodyos.org/hardware/rh...
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💾 Support these retro computing shenanigans on Patreon! / actionretro
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Check out my Amazon page with links to my tools, adapters, soldering equipment, camera gear and more: www.amazon.com/shop/actionretro
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💬 Come talk about old computers on the BitBang Social Mastodon! bitbang.social
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#Macintosh #PowerPC #Rhapsody

[@dosdude1]

I’ve always wanted to perform a G4 CPU upgrade on a Kanga. There’s no reason I can see why it wouldn’t work, other than cooling being a little lackluster. Unfortunately I’ve never been able to find a Kanga to test with.

[@ActionRetro]

I was just thinking about if this was possible...

[@dosdude1]

@@ActionRetro You know I’ll do it if you send it in haha.

[@steveg5122]

G3 upgrade a 3400

[@stpworld]

@@ActionRetro So can Apple's Rhapsody OS run regular mac apps to like games as well?

[@socialistsuccubus822]

the crossover we've all been waiting for!

[@dosdude1]

Rhapsody is my favorite! I used to have the Intel version installed on a Dell Latitude CPx, which had a fully supported GPU under Rhapsody (supported color, acceleration, etc). Glad the SSD worked in the Kanga! The drive I sent is actually a 256GB drive, but of course those older machines are only able to see drives up to 128GB. Also, the master/slave works opposite of standard hard disks; jumper set on those two pins is the master configuration, and no jumper is slave.

[@BENDER_TECH]

There's nothing better than a Mac/Unix video on a sunday morning.

[@EmyrDerfel]

@@youtubeisgarbage900 Sean offers actual evidence though.

[@ps5hasnogames55]

@@youtubeisgarbage900 sleeping in is better

[@ps5hasnogames55]

@@youtubeisgarbage900 your body is your temple. not sleeping actively harms it. sleep is godly ;)

[@aljawad]

Ahh, Rhapsody - so many good memories! I was a developer in those day and I actually had the PPC and Intel versions running. Somewhere I still have the CDs (and floppy discs for the PC version).

[@ActionRetro]

Neat!

[@setoth1234]

Please find and upload to Macintosh Garden if it hasn't been done already.

[@RichsRandomRetroReviews]

That error message about the desktop was EXACTLY the problem I encountered whilst trying to play with that version of Rhapsody. I never figured it out. Glad you did as it as driving me nuts at the time. I've since turned my attention to running it on x86 as I finally have compatible hardware to run it on. I've found that the file system is very temperamental. If you hard reboot it either completely corrupts the file system or breaks stuff on it. I couldn't open Configure after messing with video settings. Great video ;)

[@robertofortuni6886]

12:00 yes, "classic" macos included invisible folders desktopDB (which I think were used to keep track of icons and other file metadata) which the OS writes and reads all the time; since you booted from a read-only volume it's complaining it can't modify them (these files get modified when you perform a "desktop rebuild" function)

[@jarms40]

"If you enjoy installing weird, obscure software on weird, obscure hardware..." Yep. Totally describes me.

[@prozacchiwawa]

The long startup post freeze was almost certainly at the place in the unix startup scripts where fsck is run to scan and repair the filesystem. Back in the day with pre-journalled filesystems it used to take ages.

[@fhunter1test]

That almost reminds me - at one point we had lab of 486dx66 machines with linux (hard drives were like 250mb?), and well.... one of the teachers did shut down the lab by master power switch... Let's just say - he wasn't very popular later - next boot took about an hour or so. Full scan of ~250mb of ext2 filesystem on ancient drives was sloooooow.

[@PC4USE1]

I'm not even an Apple aficionado but I always like your videos. The ones that you do on the retro pc side are great as well.

[@bryans8656]

Nice fix on the Rhapsody ISO. I'm impressed.

[@illustriouschin]

It seems like it would be a good idea to shoehorn a modern SBC into certain old laptops since they often had ergonomic and aesthetic features not seen today. It would require custom monitor and peripheral circuits and drivers though but that's much easier to do today.

[@radish64]

Some people put modern motherboards in old ThinkPads, I haven’t heard about that for Macs though unfortunately

[@virtualtools_3021]

and you cant really get 4:3 on newer laptops either

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

Or worst case scenario the Hard Drive bypasses click of death and goes straight to garbage disposal mode lol Witnessed a school computers deathstar drive do just that in the class one day lol

[@MaxOakland]

I love the way Rhapsody looks. It’s like Mac OS 9.5 I’ve always wondered if it has live window resizing but so far no one has ever resized a window in one of these videos!

[@brianarmstrong234]

Rhapsody (while it was running the Display postscript server) did not support live window resizing. That support arrived once display postscript was swapped out for quartz.

[@MaxOakland]

@@brianarmstrong234 do you know when DPS was swapped to quartz?

[@brianarmstrong234]

@@MaxOakland If I am remembering this right, Mac OS X Developer Preview 1 was the last version of the OS to use DisplayPostscript and was swapped for Quartz in Developer Preview 2. Although DP2 still had an OS 8 Platinum style UI you could still verify Quartz through the translucent drag select of multiple items. The big accomplishments of DP1 was the 1st build of the Carbon Libraries that devs could take for a spin and getting the OS off of Mach 2.5 based Kernel that NeXTSTEP and Rhapsody used and onto the Mach 3.0 based Darwin Kernel. Big milestones in and of themselves. Hence Swapping out Display PostScript would have to wait till DP2. DP2 was also the first build to have the initial version of the Carbon based Finder. DP1 still used the NeXTSTEP derived Workspace Manager

[@MaxOakland]

@@brianarmstrong234 Thanks for the details! I learned several things. Very interesting

[@Zomb1eDude02]

You just helped me find the actual laptop they used in this one anime I watched, whole time I thought it was a powerbook 3400 that they wrote "powerbook g3" on when they animated it, but it turns out it actually was a product! now to be on the lookout for a reasonably priced one on ebay or in my area

[@ashcrimson1314]

Which anime? I’m intrigued, ever since I noticed the computers in RahXephon run IRIX (has me thinking maybe SGI hardware was used for some of the animation?) I want to check out every anime that references specific retro computers.

[@Zomb1eDude02]

@@ashcrimson1314 The anime is "You're Under Arrest" There's a 4 episode OVA in which a PowerBook 180c is used, then there's a tv series after that, I can't remember if it's still a 180c in the tv series or replaced with a generic laptop. After that there's a movie where the PowerBook G3 Kanga is used, and after the movie theres 2 more seasons of the show but I can't remember if they had an accurate powerbook or just a generic laptop.

[@ashcrimson1314]

@@Zomb1eDude02 Thanks!! Will definitely give it a watch.

[@TechwithStefan]

that SSD is nice, thumbs up for Dos1dude, also very good work to fix the installer and make it work :)

[@HisVirusness]

Dude, I've been watching your videos for a long while now. So much so, that you're on my recommendeds every day. I just now noticed that I wasn't subscribed, so I fixed that problem.

[@aswxwing]

You're insane Sean. And I love it. When I was a teen I installed Rhapsody onto my Wallstreet Powerbook G3, it was a huge painn but it was fun at the time.

[@ShearWater509]

I LOVE the dry humor in this. Absolutely love it.

[@stefandriesner5026]

I always love seeing your videos, because I know they will be ridiculously nerdy and fun.

[@cmantac6588]

This is a great video and I love seeing more Apple content creators coming together! Sending love from Pittsburgh! ✌

[@stevencarlson5422]

love to see an update video on the lcd screen issue, glad you have extra parts to make the video work, I would love to mess around more with old macs and upgrades but most are just way too pricey for my tastes guess I'll just have to enjoy my bog standard macs, I do have an old power book that could use a modern solid state drive like that, the old clicky drive worries me too much that it'll quit so I don't use it much

[@fsfs555]

If you read the tops of most modern (Y2K or later, usually 4GB or larger) hard drives, you'll see a statement such as "RATTLE NOISE IS NORMAL." The rattle is caused by the passive armature lock that they use in most ramp-loading hard drives. Some drives (notably Hitachi DK23CA through DK23FA drives) used active armature locks and they don't rattle. Fujitsu was the last laptop drive manufacturer to use CSS, ending with the MHL (12mm, 30GB) and MHM family (9mm, up to 20GB), and they don't rattle, but the MHN and later ramp-loading drives do.

[@GarrettCrespo]

I haven’t seen a PowerBook G3 like that in YEARS! Every time I think I add something obscure to my collection, you always have something even rarer! I’m so jealous! Very nice!

[@clickpond7825]

9:00 bro pulled up with the takamine for some queen Loving the content as always man, keep it up, I love seeing the wacky stuff you do to this old hardware!

[@keithws79]

Thank you so much for making these videos and letting me relive my glory days in the late 90s!

[@BrianMartin2007]

Future reference: IDE/PATA drives *MUST* have a Master or slave jumper set - if the drive even supports it, sometimes no umper means CS "Cable Select" which means the middle of the two drive cable means slave, and the very end means Master. That being said, most IDE controllers WILL NOT see a drive without a M/S jumper set especially older hardware

[@UpLateGeek]

When you actually fixed the screen and the installer without creating more issues, I thought this video wasn't going to be cursed at all. Thankfully I wasn't disappointed, although it was more an issue of Rhapsody not being designed to run on a PowerBook.

[@CodeProfessor]

Wow. I had forgotten about this and seeing you use it, I remember installing it when I was about 15 years old. ❤

[@bad_collector]

nice job fixing the installer! i got rhapsody installed on a 9600 and the challenge of successfully doing it is kind of where the fun stops

[@GalenlevyPhoto]

A glimpse of pre-OS X on a older Mac. Cool! Moving the window around works like in OS X.

[@BrassicGamer]

I ran Rhapsody in a production environment back in 2001 because AppleShare IP kept crashing. I had no idea it could be installed on one of these G3s - I thought it was just the PowerMac G3 Server and the very first G4! Awesome. The best feature of it was being able to perform user and share admin via the built-in web server. It was a cool OS at the time.

[@sonyericssoner]

This crazy person needs mutch more subscribers!

[@onigvd77]

this is actually a really cool idea, thanks for the video Sean! The PowerBook G3 is a bit of weird beast but a welcome one. Its a bit unusual that it was only sold for 6 months, I am assuming not a lot of R&D went into it given the short window of availability?

[@eugiblisscast]

The last part is gold

[@LazyBunnyKiera]

If DOSDude can get PCBWay to populate those SSDs, he could mass produce them. Though i could see having to ship them some of the components. I actually need some, like in the 128GB-256GB range, but obviously i can't be spending $100+ each. Since i can get some 256GB sata SSDs for pretty cheap and some IDE to SATA adapters. Even IDE to SATA m.2 boards aren't too expensive. Just compatibility can be hit'n'miss.

[@destroyer6470]

I work weekends so I always watch a fresh episode with my lunch

[@mllarson]

Hmmm, wonder if one of those SSDs would work in a Playstation 2? No funky SATA -> IDE interposer. Can't remember if the IDE pinout between a laptop and desktop are different but could probably modify things on the board.

[@chadmasta5]

They are different (44 pin vs 40 pin) but there are cheap passive adapters that can adapt between the two. Using it in a ps2 was my first thought as well.

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

I remember buying the 2300c and the Duo Dock when they were brand new. Considered an awesome machine at the time. A few years later I was a tech lead on a software project when Rhapsody came out. Apple was planning to have no hard drives on the desktop. I emailed Steve Jobs and said Apple was making a mistake. He shot back "Boy, are you wrong".

[@nucflashevent]

Speaking of the Kanga G3, it was always in my opinion something of a "dirty trick" that Apple specifically would **not** support it in regard to forthcoming G3+ Mac OS versions. I get that it was really an older generation machine than the "proper" G3s, but I always thought could have generated some easy goodwill by making special enablers to support it (considering it was one single model, it wasn't like they were being asked to support nubus machines or anything truly ancient by that point.)

[@GeoStreber]

There's a bunch of IDE SSDs. Transcend still sells new ones. They come in sizes about 16-64GB, and the price for them is usually fair considering how nieche their market is.

[@ActionRetro]

I think those are MSATA SSDs on adapters sold as IDE SSDs - at least all the ones I've seen are.

[@dosdude1]

@@ActionRetro Those Transcend ones are actually real IDE SSDs, but they’re horribly expensive. Like over $100 for a 64GB drive. And I believe 64GB is the largest one they make.

[@GeoStreber]

@@dosdude1 I saw one recently for 30 bucks for 32 GB. Considering how little the amount is, that's pretty fine for me I guess.

[@nebular-nerd]

Liked for the guitar solo 🎸

[@userperson5259]

Super awesome.. for history's sake if nothing else. Totally normal computing!

[@lindoran]

Watched his build video :) very cool

[@kalenreilly9349]

I stumbled upon dosdude's ssd assembly videos when looking for an IDE SSD that had a zif connector for my Microsoft Zune, would love to try one but unfortunately do not yet have the know how or tools to assemble one. Zune is very picky about drives it accepts, only ssd I know of that works in it is the kingspec 120gb zif ssd

[@ast3663]

..old Macs and their IDE master/slave/cs pins..always a pleasure ...great to see your Kanga, I#d love to see an own episode about it..also, wahts up with your 2400, toasted?

[@Kafj302]

3:08 could have said "and our handdandy notebook SSD replacement" making a reference to blue's clues,

[@yelowpunk]

I still absolutely love this theme.

[@PhirePhlame]

That IDE SSD could be useful for my nostalgia box, which is my genuine childhood PC!

[@RadiiRadium]

That was an unexpected bohemian rhapsody joke, and now I want a full ver of the guitar cover lmao

[@TheCj71984]

Dosdude is my hero

[@CarlosOsuna1970]

Just remember that’s it’s Rhapsody what’s inside iOS and iPadOS, not OS X. Why? You might ask. Well the reason is that Craig Federighi and it’s team ported NeXT step to PowerMacs and then forked everything to create OS X including a switch from Display PostScript to something akin to Display PDF and finally Cocoa. The iPhone project didn’t had the luxury of such a high end system so they basically started with Darwin, which was the text version of Rhapsody and moved upwards. Today the codebases share lots of stuff but you can still feel the difference between them.

[@RedditStoryGuy371]

Wife: what did you do today at work Me: Oh, nothing just took apart a very rare 90s laptop

[@breestandard1318]

Just received an order of PCBs for the IDE SSD.

[@treyparker8303]

This works well, I was using my Sun Ultra 5. At least it seems like you aren't torturing macs quite as much now.

[@nickfries4317]

Awesome. An ssd like this would be nice for my 2400c.

[@shidoengie9503]

I haven't watched the whole video but i did notice that the kenga display was indeed displaying something! Its almost unoticeable but something is there!

[@Raletia]

Yeah, looked like no backlight and the picture was drifting vertically in a loop.

[@dh2032]

so could PCBway make the fully populated board, probly not connector on it side but that's any easy bit of soldering the flat pack chips, needing hot airs station, and all sorts to work with? or would you still have 5 or something?

[@eg1885]

@8:09 you can faintly see the happy mac logo appear just before you unplug it. I suspect it's a faulty backlight issue.

[@ejonesss]

i remember when the operating system came on floppies and you could build the system folder by dragging the system folder from the floppies and then install the other system files from the other floppies copied to the new system folder. you often had a system disk, printer drivers disk and a fonts disks. i am not sure when apple moved to using compressed tome files and had an actual installer to where you could no longer build a system folder. as of the delay in releasing the video you could released 2 videos one main video and a followup or appended/amended version to replace what you had before.

[@danailkiller]

Great video as usually! I was inspired by those Power PC Mac's and bought a Power Mac G4. Managed to add a SATA drive and even installed the latest Mac OS 9.2.2 last night. But I have a really unusual problem - I've looked for old software on the internet and there is plenty. But it's dsk, sit, or img, or toast format which I don't have a way to open without already having StuffIt, Toast.. which cannot be installed because they are in the same format as well?!? I've tried to mount some dsk files with Disk Copy, with no luck - error -38. Any advice on how I can install the basic software without having the floppy disks and CDs?

[@3rdalbum]

IMG format should work natively in OS 9. I have a PowerBook G4 with OS 9 and I think I installed Stuffit from the IMG file.

[@madcrowmaxwell]

Rhapsody has always been such a cool system. The interface took the best bits of MacOS 8/9 and Nextstep while the underlying system was quite solid too. Sadly, Adobe's super high fees for Display PostScript killed it as a mass market product (though it did ship for a few years as OS X Server). A surprising number of NeXT ISVs actually had ports of their stuff available for Rhapsody too, some of whom never got around to porting over to consumer OS X.

[@badshroom]

Thank you

[@wojiaobill]

Rhapsody? Sounds good!

[@ratmdex]

My man got that hand action goin like an Italian :D

[@PixelatedH2O]

As a lifelong Windows user who just loves retro tech I found it funny to know there's a MacOS server edition. What small percentage of servers might actually be running it? This is neat to see nonetheless.

[@eduardocarrasco8830]

I’m genuinely surprised of how this OSs from Apple visibility looked at the time. Is just so ahead of it’s time. I see a lot of things there still present on todays OS.

[@ScarlettStunningSpace]

You know what they say about computers. You ask it to do something and then you wait for it. Well worth the wait!

[@zushiba]

Heeeey neat! I think I have one of these machines in my garage somewhere. I need to dig that guy out. I use to run OS9 on it. Remember OS9?

[@connorsteffan8958]

3:16 I think the computer was having a seizure.

[@SaulVector]

I Hope one day see a Power Macintosh 5500 it would be awesome!!!

[@emmabentley7945]

Timey Wimey stuff... officially the new Action Retro way to tell time.....

[@orektez]

you might want to take those batteries in green wrapping out of that.. i had a bad experience with those in a old dell laptop unless they're some new replacement?

[@ShearWater509]

I never heard of Rhapsody until today. Looks like early Mac OS X versions.

[@williamlafrance2514]

I don't know what Rhapsody DR2 is. But I need to install it, NOW.

[@bbqgiraffe3766]

Can't wait to get one of these, the IDE drive on my 1998 Inspiron sounds like a diesel engine and doesn't boot half the time

[@marcinkowalczyk647]

any updates on the industrial system? did You manage to fix the screen with a new polarizer ? @Action retro

[@mattsword41]

are the ssds shown sold anywhere prebuilt? would be great for my mac mini g4!

[@chezsnailez]

We actually bought a 4 gb SSD to try and install in our PowerBook 5300c. No dice. Same thing could install in our PowerBook G3 (Wallstreet).

[@SevenDeMagnus]

Rhapsody? That's a new Apple OS- interesting. God bless.

[@Vlad-1986]

I am grateful those devices exist to replace dying drives, but I really, really miss the sound of old hard drives

[@brendanhoffmann8402]

I wore my 'born to break computers' t shirt to the mall today! My Mum came with me, she has been the recipient of a 2015 MacBook Pro that I fixed up at Christmas time. She doesn't know how close I came to breaking the touchpad ribbon! It works fine though! (I replaced the battery and installed a 1TB nvme drive with an adapter).

[@ActionRetro]

Haha amazing!

[@bobbleczar]

I wonder if this might work with a Gen 1 ipod. They've been notoriously hard to flash mod.

[@greypatch8855]

PCBWAY is the way

[@computertown968]

In the Hotline days we all knew about adding the "Desktop folder" to the install CD. Funny how that detail got lost over the years.

[@SimonQuigley]

I have a 5300, and the internals look identical, including the screen connection and cable. Might be somewhere to source another cable or screen

[@gulfELAl9155]

Despite: without being affected by; in spite of.

[@tech34756]

At some point I'd like to see an ODE for IDE with CDDA support. It would save allot of hassle.

[@RowanBird779]

I wonder if this would work well in my Acer Travelmate 280 from 2002

[@Da40kOrks]

IDE SSD's have been around a long time. They are more expensive but are available new.

[@steveg5122]

I tried Mac os X server 1.2 on my kanga, no patches required. I need to check the buttons on it.

[@RWBHere]

02:45 - That image was a very bad advertising choice by Apple for a server OS! Those gears are completely inoperative. 🤣

[@charleshines7282]

A compactflash card can be used as an IDE SSD. There are also IDE SSDs but they are not common and unless you know someone who buys odd rare things from the internet you probably don't know someone who has one.

[@VladoT]

You forgot the *THUMP Batman style prompts! I miss those.

[@calin3086]

W

[@univon4892]

Ong

[@calin3086]

Respect for your pfp

[@univon4892]

@@calin3086 thx

[@jceggbert5]

...of course dosdude designed an SSD

[@lokelaufeyson9931]

Its not the goal that counts, its the journey towards it.

[@ArlenMoulton2]

I notice that Rhapsody OS has X86 support, how about a period correct hackintosh that runs it?

[@robsquared2]

Mmm, homemade SSDs, just like mom used to make.

[@ShearWater509]

Do you have a flex cable? I have a 3400c screen with the flex cable included that you can have if you want it. I'm planning to come to VCF East this year, I can bring it with me. Let me know.

[@icedteaaddict4842]

Hey, I would honestly take a look at that cap and any other ones on that screen, perhaps that could be causing the issue because it needs to be replaced.