Playing Minecraft on a 30 Year Old Macintosh Clone

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Today we're doing the impossible - Minecraft on a computer from 1995!
🍎 Part 1: • Extreme Macintosh Clon...
🍎 Part 2: • A 1GHz G4 Macintosh CL...
🍎 Part 3: • Extreme 90's Macintosh...
🍎 SoNNeT upgrades playlist! • SoNNeT Accelerators!
🍎 PowerPC Tuned Minecraft: macintoshgarde...
Come join the ActionMC Retro Minecraft Server! actionmc.ml/
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💾 Support these retro computing shenanigans on Patreon! / actionretro
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💬 Come talk about old computers on the BitBang Social Mastodon! bitbang.social
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#Macintosh #SoNNeT #PowerComputing

[@cromulence]

This has to be one of the biggest upgrades made to a computer, period. You need to remember that in 1995, your average user was running a 486; if you were really serious about computing and had a lot of money, you could get a Pentium 133 - which would be next to unusable for any kind of gaming in the next 3 or so years; you might be able to upgrade to a maximum of 64MB RAM and a Pentium 166MHz if you were lucky, as earlier Pentium motherboards wouldn't support later MMX CPUs. All in all, these upgrades would push you to around 1999, if you were lucky. This machine utterly decimates that, trading blows with the best of 2001 specced Macs. Being able to play Minecraft on this is miraculous; hell, even being able to play a DVD on this would be miraculous. It's a testament to the chipset design of this machine that it's possible to take a 1GHz CPU and 1GB of RAM without any special tricks. This is truly and absolutely bonkers.

[@luked3172]

I couldn't have said it better!

[@nickwallette6201]

It's definitely bonkers that it supported 1GB of RAM. That's such an obscene amount of memory for 1995 that I can't really fathom why they bothered adding all those address lines. But the CPU... well... it's actually kind of on an island. It has a very narrow bus to the rest of the machine, so the chipset itself isn't really forward-looking so much as the CPU card here is "slumming it" with a state-of-the-art circa-1995 interface. This same thing could be done, more or less, with a 486SX motherboard that had a 487 socket. Or a drop-in Overdrive-like CPU module on any motherboard with a ZIF socket. That PC would likely be memory-constrained, but it would work. It could also boot from SATA, provided the PCI card had a boot ROM BIOS, and USB would also work with an add-in card. The difference is, the existence of the CPU card itself. That is really hard to imagine happening in PC-land, because it would've been _far_ easier to just swap out the motherboard. Likely the only reason this exists in Mac-land is because Apple never made a standard-sized motherboard form factor, so the upgrade market was either a complete rip-and-replace, or these kinds of wacky lobotomies. (* OK, ok, there were a few systems were motherboard swaps were possible, but not many!)

[@johncate9541]

@@nickwallette6201 You can't realistically go to 1 GHz with an x86 PC from the mid-1990s. A Socket 5 board with an adapter that can regulate voltage and a third-party BIOS could possibly take a K6-III+ and run it at 6*75 for 450 MHz if it had a 75 MHz bus setting, but that would be it. The best you could do on a Socket 3 486 board would be to successfully overclock a Pentium OverDrive 83 to 100, or a Cyrix 5x86 to 133, or an AMD 5x86-133 to 200. The last of the three would be the fastest, about even with a Pentium 120 non-MMX. But very few of them would run that fast. A Socket 8 Pentium Pro board from 1995 is another possibility. If you had the very rare PowerLeap PL-ProII and stacked a Tualatin adapter on it (this combo is known to work), you could put in a 1400/100 P3 Tualatin and get 933 MHz on the 66 MHz bus. Whether anyone actually ever did that, I have no idea. It would be horribly constrained by the bus. You might get to 1 GHz that way if you had a rare Socket 8 board that ran at a 75 MHz bus--but to do all that would just have to be someone determined to prove it could be done. This only works with PPC machines because the 603, 604, G3 and G4 all ran on the same bus protocol and Macs were so expensive that a healthy market existed for upgrade cards. The G3 is basically a 603ev that can make far better use of its L2 cache, and a G4 is a G3 with AltiVec.

[@nickwallette6201]

@@johncate9541 That's kind of my point. If you created adapters (with onboard regulators and some glue logic, and yes, potentially a BIOS patch) you could pull off the kind of thing that the upgrade card manufacturers did in Mac land. But this never happened on x86 because: 1) The performance of in-place upgrades was never equivalent to the performance of faster parts on a faster board (in no small part because you would still be running on a slow legacy bus); and 2) It wasn't nearly as difficult and/or expensive to upgrade entire systems, so there was no incentive to pull off those kinds of heroics for the gimped performance gains you would get. Ergo, such exotic upgrades just didn't exist, because they didn't need to. They _could've_ if money were no object, and sensibility went out the window. But that's not how the market works. :-) And just as well, IMO. I see this, and think, OK yeah, that's cool from a technical hackery perspective, but I have absolutely zero desire to do this to any of my vintage computers -- Mac or PC. If I need something faster, I have decades of options. This is utterly pointless as anything but a "hey! it works!" exercise.

[@araigumakiruno]

when you see a 1995 computer can run minecraft better than your 2007 laptop and its isnt a joke either

[@gavinthecrafter]

Most youtubers when a game hits 40 FPS: "This is sooo slow, completely unplayable" Action Retro when a game hits 10 FPS: "This is actually pretty playable"

[@mkcaplayz6978]

When you Pvp with Macintosh

[@PixelPipes]

In 1995 there were still new computers being sold with Intel 486s. Pretty incredible! Does this count as a sleeper build now? 😆

[@JoaoVitor-cw2vg]

Not exactly

[@Mainyehc]

Maybe as a vintage sleeper build, but a sleeper build in its own right nonetheless.

[@randy206]

My family bought our first pc in 1995. It came with a 66mhz dx2 486. 8 megabytes of ram. A 2x cd rom drive. An 840 megabyte hard drive. Sound blaster emulation embedded sound card. No 3d acceleration. Windows 95 installed from the factory. My favorite games to play on it was the original sim city and the game "journeyman project" which came with the computer when we bought it.

[@theolms8915]

7:55 Where the video starts. HE DIDN’T NEED TO BABBLE ON ABOUT RUBBISH FOR 8 MINUTES!

[@kFY514]

Considering that first 1GHz G4s appeared in 2002, calling it a "1995 machine" is a bit of a stretch ;) Still, being able to upgrade a computer to a 7 year newer processor is insane in its own right.

[@lakojake4215]

Also, 30 years ago was 1992. He's off by a whole decade.

[@1758]

​@@lakojake4215 yeah stupid clickbait. It's 20 not 30

[@v-14415]

@@lakojake4215 uhmmm actually, it's by 11 years, because the video was made in 2021 🤓

[@colddripgaming]

“On this episode, i’m going to do some absurdly dumb stuff just cos i can” I do enjoy your work

[@nicwilson89]

The fact you were getting near 30fps in single player on that machine at all is bloody amazing, whether is was a superflat looking at a house or not. 1995 is the same year Java first released, if I remember correctly

[@MaliciousAlfa]

Nobody: Dankpods: "Oh no my Pkcell"

[@Mainyehc]

No beans in sight, tho… Or are they hidden somewhere in there? I’ll gladly check the server for those ;)

[@hibbiea8841]

או מי ףוקשל!

[@chronic_hemphog]

@@Mainyehc the sony bean or the terrible galaxy beans?

[@Mainyehc]

@@chronic_hemphog all the beans!

[@Mainyehc]

@@chronic_hemphog (especially the bootleg ones)

[@sailcat662]

In 1995, if I built my Sim Tower too tall it would crash my 486DX 66

[@plaguis1391]

Well that just brought back some memories

[@gregcoons7308]

I love this! Very fun video concept taking old computers to their extremes. Next up running Minecraft on a tuned Amiga....

[@DrWakey]

Oh dude, i still want to see Unreal Tournament running on this machine xD

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

You're not a true gamer until you're running games never envisioned by the PC maker. ;)

[@megan_alnico]

I remember having to hack the original Diablo to run from the hard drive and use lower then the lowest possible settings to get it to run on my 486-DX4 100 back in the day.

[@TheOriginalCollectorA1303]

It’s cool to see improvements and additions being added to the PowerPC versions of Minecraft. Hopefully with time there’ll be a dedicated launcher to add mods/plugins to “update” it with newer features from newer versions of Minecraft.

[@6thaltaccountthesequel829]

If you did all the Tiger optimizations that exist (you can Google them, there's several), you could more than likely bring the FPS to new heights as well.

[@CrazyTechReviews]

Wow! It's crazy to watch a computer from the mid 90's be able to play a modern game at decent speeds! It's really crazy just what this stuff is really capable of doing!

[@dassin381]

19:28 Villagers: I’m sorry action but we are going to have fun with your computer 😂

[@AiOinc1]

As a person who used to daily use a 17" PowerBook G4 I can tell you that clock speed still won't get you far in Minecraft...

[@dylanswift5185]

I'd love to see you use this machine to talk about the history of different software made for apple products. It'd bee cool to see old games and productivity software shining on this machine or the other crazy upgrades you have.

[@videogamephenomhd]

The frame rate seemed good at 30fps. Still, especially for an old model like that, it could use some new parts on the inside.

[@dirgofserb]

Everything is upgraded to the max. There is a limit to what can be supported on every machine. Especially in the 90's technology was evolving so fast that it's a miracle that it performs as well as it does.

[@draggonhedd]

Who is this notch guy? Minecraft was brought to us from outer space by our lord and savior, Hatsune Miku.

[@ethand4784]

I can't believe the dankpods references all over!! I subscribed to him when he was small so it's kinda nuts seeing him all over the internet

[@djmadmax9486]

I once tried Minecraft on my Voodoo5 5500AGP (amongst other things that shouldnt be running there) ... she did... but... well... lets just say, I'm glad that I have a more modern PC for Minecraft at hand :D

[@xldkxnewyorker8914]

Used to run 1.2.5 with performance mods on a ~700MHZ Celeron rig w/ a GF2 MX400 lol. I don't miss those days either.

[@lukeweeks3470]

Here for the hand gestures! 😃 Would you be able to put Impossible Cat on this computer?

[@mildslope4204]

Are we still going to get that Unreal Tournament benchmark

[@wskinnyodden]

That system has an incredibly unique ZIP drive, those 5"1/4 models are quite rare to say the least.

[@Gmodfan750]

The way minecraft looks like here, it makes it look like a really old unreleased beta version

[@eduardoavila646]

Okay, i'm kinda sad now, a 1995 machine runs minecraft as good or even better than my 2010 hp mini. GOD HOW IT WAS THAT SLOW?

[@startingbark0356]

A 2008 acer aspire slimcase can run minecraft faster then a modern 300 USD prebuilt gaming PC for some odd reason while having windows 10 64bit as OS

[@JohnDoe-ml8ru]

They sold thousands of those G4 PCI upgrades. I had one in my Mach V 9600. At one point they were only $100. You also have to turn off something that I can't remember ATM or it will cause corruption.

[@thatlolguy6799]

Still only 17 years apart from that version of Minecraft a high end PC at the time with the added upgrades from later years should be able to run it

[@flekkzo]

That NeXT Cube is still one of the coolest looking computers of all time. Wish there was a PC case “clone” so I could have one too.

[@shalroth]

Hey bro, just wanted to say, your videos have recently helped me through a deep depressive episode, so thank you so much. I'm really into vintage Macs myself, my oldest is an SE FDHD from 1987. Just one question though - why no Newton stuff? I've got three and I absolutely adore them! I got a PowerBook G3 PDQ about 18 months ago so I could sync them! I replaced the HDD with a CF - IDE adaptor (because it made the devil's own noise) but the RAM and CPU are still stock, but it's fine for my needs. I inherited a PB170 and Duo 230 - sadly my beloved Duo 280C literally caught fire a few years ago, which I'm still sad about, but I've got all three sizes of Duo Dock. I checked with the guys on the 68kmla forums (at your suggestion) and I can't put the display from a 280C on a 230, which is a shame (and I once upgraded a 160 with the display from a 165C... it was a terrible display but it was at least colour). Thanks for listening!

[@ActionRetro]

Hey John, thank you so much do sharing :) I can definitely commiserate with fighting depressive episodes. Glad you're here hanging out!

[@thundercloud2982]

+1 for the extremely depressive group ... Don't worry man, it's been an awful year for everyone.

[@Johnny-es9xg]

If people stop seeing their need for God that is what happens. The thing is even the best of us can deal with life by ourselves. Retro computers is a nice hobby that can bring some enjoyment, but will never bring true satisfaction and fulfillment. Jesus Christ is your friend if you'll let Him be. A scientist or engineer is not going to be able help you when you die.

[@nxtkallax]

2021: 60 Frames per Second 1999: 60 Seconds per Frame

[@DistrosProjects]

Someone needs to beat the Ender Dragon on one of those. You would have to use a server, but it would be cool.

[@TunsaMcHaggis]

capstone: the pinnacle of minecraft monuments

[@alextirrellRI]

I bought a used Sawtooth in late 2004 and over time I put in a lot of upgrades, including a Sonnet 1Ghz G4 -- not the same card as this but the ZIF version. I can't remember if I needed to download something to enable cache! I still have the machine in storage.

[@usernameak]

7:32 - You're actually wrong. Before release 1.3, Minecraft singleplayer was kind of monolithic - you didn't have both server and client running.

[@golfguy25]

Wow, it's so weird seeing Tiger running on that 90s beige box

[@DerexArchives]

as a cs student this was a pretty nice glimpse at the past

[@four20team]

When I saw the thumbnail, I thought it said "INCONCEIVABLE" and I thought of princess bride lol

[@TeraunceFoaloke]

Impressive getting this to run even if it's only 25/26 years old actually. Still impressive for a computer over a quarter of a century old.

[@Mario-mx1uh]

Je suis en admiration devant cette maison et cette passion. Great job !

[@thenightcorecrafter]

minecraft 1.2.5 has no internal server yet that came in 1.3 it does need to load the world and that does affect performance

[@paulj.thaddaios]

That OS doesn’t look that old but maybe so! I am actually impressed with the GUI!

[@HuntersMoon78]

Still a better framerate than Castle Master/Driller on the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum

[@poble]

that's an oddly specific statement

[@akcjaxd7863]

SQUARESPACE - we're sponsoring entire YT!

[@destroyer6470]

Here we go again!! I still cant get into the Actionmc server though.

[@minkispacebirb]

Nice. My username and program got into a video!

[@eirinym]

If the board bus speed were higher, the performance could be much better. I wonder how much, though.

[@WLM1212]

Awesome work man👍

[@zacharysamenfeld2487]

You've inspired me to try and get my old G4 Mac running to play on the server with you guys, the power supply is dead and I'm wondering if I can hack a regular ATX power supply into it.

[@zacharysamenfeld2487]

Also the hard drive didn't work with any of the readers I tried, so that was potentially failed too

[@RisingRevengeance]

I really couldn't play the game like this but it is really cool that it even works as well as it does

[@Sylwek2004]

15:53 so not only me is watching your channel from polish

[@dgajtx1929]

Finally! A server that I can play on with my 2008 fujitsu!

[@zaxchannel2834]

I recall that there was a way to disable shadows in OSX, I did that when I still had my G3 it helped some

[@morecrappysketches]

Nifty! Just to note: There is a faster video card you can put in there, but it's absurdly hard to find: A PCI Radeon 9100. You'd have to find the ROM for it and flash it, and you won't get acceleration in OS 9 (the Radeon driver doesn't like it), but it works fine in OS X. I ran one in a B&W G3 eons ago. It's marginally faster than the 9200, but it probably wouldn't make much difference on the PCI bus. But if you enjoy hunting down those little things, then see if you can find one. The only other option would be an Nvidia Geforce 6200 PCI, but I don't think anyone has been able to get Nvidia cards working on old-world ROM Macs. You'd need a B&W G3 or later.

[@virtualtools_3021]

9100 is fastest than 9200? Is it a situation like 5500xt faster than 6500 XT or what

[@morecrappysketches]

@@virtualtools_3021 On paper, yes. The 9100 was basically an 8500, much like the 9200 was basically a 9000. It was really just tweaked rebranding. In reality you probably wouldn't notice much of a difference.

[@ToTheGAMES]

I love the purple cards and heatsinks. Very classy! What do you think, do I like them because I lusted after them back in the day, or are they really that good lookin'? ^^

[@ToTheGAMES]

"Yes"

[@jfidel3943]

Awesome! I play this version on my Dual 800MHz PowerMac G4 and it actually has *worse* performance than yours. I'll try joining that server you showed, as well.

[@akamadman203]

1:33 omg I love that so much

[@Mr_happyface]

I'm totally impressed how smooth it runs!

[@Maxwell7601]

When your Potato PC beats you from a 30 year old computer:

[@strawberrylemonadelioness]

Minecraft is becoming the new Doom, seeing what it can run on

[@vladtherussian23462]

now i want to get that Server on my iBook g3 and use my main machine to move to reasonable easy to live spot, sign spec wall and build a retro apple store and make more dankpods refference since im admin on one of the dankpods fan minecraft server

[@aa-au]

Nice completion to this Sonnet G4 1Ghz upgrade series on your PowerComputing computer. I just saw a Sonnet Crescendo PCI G4 1GHZ / 2M PPCG4-1000-2M card on eBay for a measly C$1499.99 (Sep/21) - so one of the remaining 199 of these cards that are left...

[@sixteenbitify]

I was the one who bought that card. Not my proudest moment.

[@bumblebeecrucifix897]

So this nugget can run minecraft but my laptop that is 20 years newer cannot

[@saleboat]

If playing something like this, I would recommend setting various optifine settings to their lowest value or off (Render Distance 2 chunks, using the low quality textures, etc)

[@TaijanDean]

If only it were possible to get Minecraft on something as old as... say... a Mac Plus.

[@elihulee5367]

I hate to admit this, but I check my KZbin feed everyday hoping for a new video! One of my favorite content creators! Awesome channel! B-)

[@bibasik7]

Minecraft never crashes on Mac.

[@DavidStahlOLDHAPPyMACs]

Very Impressed Sean Runs Good

[@rider68-12]

I just got a G4-450 mac. I only paid $10 for it. The computer is awesome and has been kept clean. There are a few marks on the case but its in great condition. Could you do a series on that model??

[@kargaroc386]

In 1.2.5, the FPS display *slows down the game*

[@midlander4]

Next week... Minecraft running on Charles Babbage's difference engine.

[@ryanwakebradtelle8682]

You should see if any other of these systems exist, and then invite the owner for a Minecraft lan party

[@nerdyaviator732]

I’d like to see this running Sorbet Leopard with the sierra theme. What are your thoughts on that, could it happen?

[@Baoran]

I am sure you know that if you upgrade a computer with newer part it is not going to be that old computer from 1995 anymore. It is the parts that make the computer even if you keep some old parts like the motherboard.

[@newlyperfect6552]

Well, this is much better than my school's computer.

[@ct1660]

Meanwhile in the PC gaming world, if it’s not at least 60FPS it’s considered unplayable, some saying 30FPS is the bare minimum. Considering how old the clone is, surprised it can even run minecraft.

[@ViewpointUnique]

Absolutely bonkers...I love it!

[@supercattelephone]

this reminds me of being a kid playing 1.5.2 on my old pentium 4 HT, it would sometimes take up to 20-30 minutes before things started to smooth out and load in properly but it worked! around 10-30 fps

[@wiredmind]

I see "supported systems: playstation 2" on that page and that would make an awesome video.

[@6thaltaccountthesequel829]

I bet if a skilled programmer were able to port the Fabric mods that current exist that optimize Minecraft down to this older version of the game, I bet we could reach at least 60 on this machine. Heavy OpenGL optimizations would be pretty helpful.

[@alfonsojon1997]

It wouldn't work - the newer versions of Minecraft require a newer version of Java that PowerPC Macs don't support

[@virtualtools_3021]

@@alfonsojon1997 yeah they do (only in Linux tho)

[@andrew8293]

Kinda funny how this 1995 PowerPC G4 desktop runs Minecraft 1.2.5 better than my budget Intel laptop from 2012 did.

[@canidsong]

saying that old mac clone was 'running minecraft' is a bit like saying the broken down old buick skylark that isn't running is pushing the tow truck but this is still incredibly fun. fwiw this is about as well as minecraft 1.9 ran on my old intel atom desktop board.

[@julianstechsation]

Just incredible to say the least

[@draggonhedd]

Hey What if we put linux on this thing? How modern can you get? I want to see what this thing is like. MintPPC, Debian Sid, Adelie (for lower end systems), Fienix, or Void-PPC. Lets also see some UT99 on this thing. I'm gonna be making a UT99 server for old systems soon, so i can play with my PowerCenter Pro. Once i get it set up, i'd be ok iwth making you a mod on it so we can have an action retro UT99 server

[@steveg5122]

I need to get my 800mhz 2003 ibook g3 into 10.4.11 to try this out, will 640mb of ram be enough for the g3 edition

[@supericeg5913]

A friend of mine plays 1.18.2 on a MacBook from 2008 😄

[@ryanwakebradtelle8682]

Would it be possible to push the storage any further, maybe dedicate the fastest Port of the machine to an nvme drive.

[@JapanPop]

Mad props. Never played Minecraft, NGL. But looks cool!

[@Rabbit_AF]

Now that PCI to PCI-E adapters exist, do you think you can install a PCI-E video card? I remember being upset with myself for choosing a B&W to max out, 1ghz G3, and being stuck with only PCI video.

[@darcyooh5543]

Very cool work!

[@icanrunat3200mhz]

20:06 It looks like it's 7 blocks deep; if so, it's 12x7x7=588 blocks of TNT.

[@samsungtelevision695]

Great video 🔥🔥

[@Kramechop]

macs from around 2010 ran minecraft smoothly for some reason, but a windows computer from 2010 with similar specs ran alot worse

[@jbognar222]

i have a question can you play the minecraft server (and the program itself) on a 2006 imac? (an imac g5 but with an intel processor)

[@randy206]

Would it be possible to install an early Nvidia, ATI rage, or voodoo card in this system and see if that helps Minecraft run any better?

[@Angelgreat]

Have fun in VCFMidwest Sean!

[@alexanderivankovic8966]

This thing runs minecraft better than mine.

[@BBHexKey]

Dank: MY POKCELL!