Installing Windows NT 4 on an iBook G3 Clamshell!

[@betaswithWack0]

why is it always these types of videos that give me the interesting bug reports?

[@DistrosProjects]

@@betaswithWack0 I’m not sure, probably people who make them share the non-critical issues they experience, whereas bug reports tend to be for more critical stuff. This project is amazing though!

[@betaswithWack0]

@DistrosProjects btw, I knew about the last known good configuration issue, that just happens to be the lowest priority issue to exist lol

[@DistrosProjects]

Understandable

[@betaswithWack0]

@DistrosProjects by the way, thanks for the bug report about the partitioning menu wraparound, I just committed a fix :)

[@DistrosProjects]

you’re welcome!

[@CalledTurnAGundam]

All that's missing now is installing a copy of Windows CE, Windows ME, and then you'll have the CEMENT System everyone feared.

[@PiddeBas]

I hope whatever you're going through personally gets better!

[@200percentmicky]

15:06 that is exactly what the boot screen is suppose to look like. there was no boot screen for windows nt until windows 2000.

[@Sugar95]

Welcome back!

[@sajtcraft3473]

reverse hackintosh

[@DistrosProjects]

@@sajtcraft3473 So true

[@NJRoadfan]

I was actually pleasantly surprised how easy it was to get NT 4.0 on my Lombard G3 using the initial release. The biggest problem I had is that the keyboard is flaky and I was having problems with the "s" key not always working! The 20 year old hard drive also gave up the ghost shortly thereafter.

[@David_Phantom]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! 5:36 Never in my life have I heard someone so excited to see the Windows NT Setup screen. Must be a worlds first! Alongside installing NT to a Clamshell iBook G3. The Linux Open Firmware frame buffer does work! Just poorly. 13:05 Okay, maybe _this_ is the most excited anyone has been to see the Windows NT Setup screen. The input devices not only working, but working well, _and_ having things like control-click built into them is amazing. Like incredible attention to detail on Wack0's part. Nice choice of background music, btw. Canyon was a good surprise. Makes me wonder if something like Cuberite could be bade to run on this. I hope 2025 is a good year for you!

[@DistrosProjects]

Linux' Open Firmware framebuffer has been broken since about 6.2 or 6.3, see bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217328 I admit I was definitely dramatic during this video, I was just in a good mood and was motivated despite also probably having COVID when I filmed this. I don't want to be in a bad mood all the time either. I feel like the stuff I've been doing with low level Windows made me even more excited as I know how difficult all this stuff was.

[@David_Phantom]

@DistrosProjects Very glad you were in a good mood! Sorry you probably had covid. Glad you're better now! And I didn't know the frame buffer was actually broken. This is what I get for not updating Gentoo on my iBook G4.

[@betaswithWack0]

the control-click as RMB was basically *required* for me to implement since I'm personally testing purely on laptops with only a single mouse button

[@David_Phantom]

@@betaswithWack0 Great job with the project!

[@danielktdoranie]

HE’S BACK!

[@FlintG]

Dude you should take this to like an apple store to see the reaction from the people that work there lol.

[@LKComputes]

cool video, thanks john distro

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

Fun thing about NT 4.0 on non-x86 architectures - it has x86 emulation! But only 16-bit, not 32-bit. So you can't run Windows NT 4.0-Intel apps, but you *CAN* run Windows 3.1 apps! I have Internet Explorer 5.0 and Microsoft Office 4.3 on my PowerPC ThinkPad. They're the Windows 3.1 versions, but they run and work fine.

[@DistrosProjects]

I heard about that a bit after I made this video! I could definitely try that but getting software on the machine will be extremely annoying since the HDD is not easily accessible and USB doesn't work. I'd have to burn a ton of CDs.

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

@DistrosProjects Hah! I just bought a new spindle of CD-R specifically to make getting files to old systems easier.

[@betaswithWack0]

this isn't quite true: MS wrote something called "wx86" for running 32-bit x86 PEs on RISC NT. However MS's emulator is quite slow, Insignia ported their one for PPC NT only and Motorola included that with the rest of wx86 in "Motorola SoftWindows 32 for PowerPC", which you can find on the Internet Archive. Additionally, there exists Word 6.0 and Excel 5.0 for PowerPC NT, although currently only Excel has been dumped. (basically there were two different releases of Word and Excel for NT, the earlier one is x86/Alpha/MIPS only, the later one was released with NT 3.51 and includes PowerPC version)

[@Joshfarmpig]

cAN iT rUN cRYSIS???!?!?!??!?!

[@DistrosProjects]

Probably not, it can probably run Doom tho because there is x86-16 emulation

[@mj-x4416]

Nice one !

[@fnjesusfreak]

What does the boot screen look like on x86 NT4? Exactly what you saw.

[@DigiSpaceProductions]

How did you burn the disks? I tried this a couple days ago, and had CONSTANT issues, never making it past the 2nd hardware selection stage

[@DistrosProjects]

@@DigiSpaceProductions I used Xfburn on Linux with a janky SATA DVD-RW drive inside of an old hard drive enclosure. Try a different disc drive or discs. Also make sure that you’re using the correct version for your machine; for post-1998 machines you have to use the pre-release Mac99 version found on the GitHub release page.

[@Constantlace-t3r]

Can you install on this thing Windows 2000 or Windows Neptune or NT 5.0 (beta builds) or Linux.

[@DistrosProjects]

I can't run any newer version of Windows because there's no PowerPC version of those OSes. I can and have run Linux on this.

[@Constantlace-t3r]

@DistrosProjects I have an better idea you build your own Linux on this Thing

[@davidb636]

Very sad, that USB does not work. Is it possible to use atleast the CD drive in this device to put data on it?

[@DistrosProjects]

Yes

[@andresbravo2003]

Man, how did you do that?

[@TonyCR1975]

Why this dude is no popular? Looks like shadowban or something like that… Have you considered an alternative account?

[@DistrosProjects]

@@TonyCR1975 I’m not shadowbanned, I just don’t post consistently. My views are pretty good for my sub count.

[@DistrosProjects]

Also this video is the best performing video I've ever made so far, currently has 502 views on my private analytics (it's a bit less on public view count)

[@GUCFan]

If this works on the clamshell, i wonder if it works on the redesigned iBook G3 now? That would be pretty cool to get that running on my iBook G3.

[@DistrosProjects]

It should, I have it running on a G4 from 2004 so it probably does

[@kotcraftchannelukraine6118]

Cool! Can this iBook boot from USB flash drive? It would be so cool to boot a macOS 9.2 installer from USB

[@DistrosProjects]

@@kotcraftchannelukraine6118 It can, Mac OS 9 can supposedly boot from USB but I never tried.

[@MotownBatman]

It's NOT a New Err0r It's an EASTER EGG!!!

[@tstahlfsu]

11:29 All I could hear was MichaelMJD's music lol

[@zeep-yt]

Wow. That sounds painful.

[@Joshfarmpig]

POGGERS!!!!!