The Best OSX For an iMac G3 is... OpenBSD

[@kiaas]

I'm sure the "Pillow" is because the door needs rf shielding too, and to connect the grounded shield on a moving door it being able to squeeze itself against the metal on the rest of the machine is helpful

[@cellularmitosis2]

Indeed! The pillow is conductive :)

[@randomaccount-rw3bm]

@@cellularmitosis2I charge while I sleep

[@DavisMakesGames]

Fantastic to see just how capable these old machines can be, albeit not at stock...

[@JessicaFEREM]

I assume that the pillow under the latch at 2:47 is for extra shielding. that gray material is metal threaded pillow, sometimes used one motherboard rear IO panels to make a solid grounding connection.

[@stephentidwell2244]

I was just about to say the same thing. Believe Dave from EEVblog did a video about this kind of shielding if I’m not mistaken

[@kjamison5951]

Yes, that’s exactly what it’s for.

[@MegaManNeo]

The 100% load on a 1 core CPU kills me but seeing this working at all also makes me smile from a nerd perspective.

[@rockyhill3]

Its amazing how well designed these machines were! well, except maybe for the brittle bezel but that doesnt take away from this revolutionary little computer. Great video!

[@ActionRetro]

Thanks Rocky!

[@clairekholin6935]

The brittle plastic could be degradation from age, not design flaws.

[@OtterlyInsane]

"ok I have him mostly back together again, albeit without pants". Thankfully the next line was not "like me"

[@yeahthatkornel]

lmao

[@CoolerQ]

The LLVM error you got was a software problem and doesn't mean the webcam is incompatible. See if you can find some other webcam software that doesn't use ffmpeg (maybe gstreamer?)

[@OtterlyInsane]

Could the G5 stream Battlefield by... Streaming Battlefield? Does the Xbox streaming client run on a browser on it for example?

[@ActionRetro]

You read my mind lol

[@snazzybro6799]

Omg you’re a genius

[@JelloPotate]

Beginning a video with a 65scribe reference? Truly a man of culture.

[@amirpourghoureiyan1637]

Orson Welles approves 🥂

[@SirenaWF1]

I know I don't need most of these computers you have, but I love seeing stuff like this.

[@MotownBatman]

This was Awesome! I just acquired a 17" G5 with Massive Cap-Rot for $10.00. I will definitely try OpenBSD. I was still looking for the OS I want when I get this repaired

[@zarcha]

I just used that sata adapter and it has an issue with it not setting up master/slave right. it made the G3 search around for a little before starting and even made coming out sleep take awhile. i changed to an adapter that had a master setting and the G3 likes it a lot more and everything ends up being faster.

[@spelledfunny]

Cable Select doesn't work properly on a lot of these older Macs. You need a drive that has an actual M/S selection. Some Macs won't even recognize drives set to Slave.

[@zarcha]

@@spelledfunny Exactly. I haven't used IDE in so long it didn't even occur to me at first. Spending a little more for a nicer adapter was best.

[@spelledfunny]

@@zarcha I'll never forget how much of a pain it was trying to get IDE drives to work with those early generation IDE Macs. Especially in Performa models and those early iMacs. It was almost as bad as SCSI, but sometimes even sacrificing chickens didn't solve IDE problems.

[@peporgan]

I had to do that too- getting a sata adapter with master/ slave jumpers.

[@draggonhedd]

the "pllow" is a stainless steel mesh pad that contacts the metal chassis inside to close the faraday cage and maintain FCC radio compliance.

[@misfit4816]

i recently took apart 3 of my G3s, all Indigo, 400s and 1 500, 1 gig of ram feels fantastic. I have like 73 half AA batteries

[@Aeduo]

I'd have to guess that LLVM error is something about (software) opengl. I imagine some kind of filter or something (scaler, colorspace conversion, encoder, whatever else) ffmpeg is sticking in wants opengl but LLVM is failing to compile the shader for your CPU. If you can figure out what filter it is and somehow get it to use a fully software implementation, you can maybe get it going without crashing/erroring. Screen capturing might be somehow avoiding whatever filter is being put in automatically just due to some chance of different resolution or pixel format or something.

[@spaceguybob]

Amazing! Are you having a better experience on OpenBSD than debian or void?

[@michaelheimbrand5424]

Probably. OpenBSD is the most "just works" OS ever. For PowerPC I only tested it on PowerMac G4 12" some years ago. But it was the usual deal of typing in user name, host name and pressing enter a few times.

[@spaceguybob]

@@michaelheimbrand5424 yeah, I wouldn't know personally I've only used a limited selection of computers but thats cool to know

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@michaelheimbrand5424 I tried FreeBSD on old PPC before and it installed very easily, but I had to compile everything. It looks like maybe I would do better to try OpenBSD.

[@Chris_403]

I entered 7th grade in 2001 and my Jr High computer labs were chock full of these beauts. We had user names and passwords for the school server we had to remember!

[@Castaa]

Those Orson Welles' wine ads need their own video series.

[@robsquared2]

"If you need to print PCBs, and honestly who doesn't?" *Dead stares at camera*

[@nickanderson3878]

This is really neat. It has inspired me to go out and find one of these old macs.

[@3rdalbum]

Action Retro inspired me to buy a vintage Mac too, but then my wife gave birth and I haven't really had time to play with the computer for the last 10 months!

[@steventechno]

That's pretty amazing how well that runs for what hardware it's given. I wonder if there are any GNU/Linux configurations that would run just as well on older systems? We all know none of the 'buntu's, Arches, or Fedoras can. well, maybe if you trim them hard post-install. Talk about complete system resource savings. It's no wonder that Sony's Orbis OS is based on BSD.

[@chidaruma_]

To capture audio you should unmute the microphone, the command should be: sysctl kern.{audio,video}.record=1 and maybe try video again after that command? cool video, I love bringing back old computers to live with OpenBSD, was usining it on a very old i386 compuer with 256 Mb and it was really cool.

[@LuisMercadoorg]

This is tremendously cool! Any plans in doing the same experiment with the Quad G5? I bet that’ll be actually watchable.

[@prasertpromvong3031]

I'm love this model so much. I worked with imac g3 in 2001-2005. And still keep with me by buy with my ex boss.

[@MaxOakland]

I love this iMac’s design

[@Chimpur]

Maybe a FW iSight camera would work? Or just an old usb 1.1 webcam.

[@tylerfrankel5374]

I remember a G3 being the first computer I ever bought as an 11 year old kid more than a decade ago. Back when they were just ewaste and not old enough to be retro and cool yet. There was barely anything like this on KZbin about them at the time, took a lot of trial and error for me to learn the ways of that machine lmao

[@greatquux]

You are absolutely insane and I love it.

[@ActionRetro]

😂😅

[@joeltyler3427]

Maybe a firewire camera could work?

[@netzbasis]

For video and audio capture be sure to enable "sysctl kern.video.record=1" and "sysctl kern.audio.record=1"

[@shermanikk]

I actually have a snow white 700Mhz G3 with 512MB RAM, I definitely will have to try OpenBSD on it!

[@ActionRetro]

Woah cool!

[@shermanikk]

@@ActionRetro I bought it years ago to play all my favorite of classic Mac OS games since it was the fastest G3 iMac, especially the GPU. Runs Harry the Handsome Executive like a dream!

[@arielsaulog6796]

If your iMac has a FireWire port and a Open BSD driver for Firewire try using a FireWire camera (an old mini DV cam) for streaming.

[@motheroats]

Truly every video you and the other mac guys make and collab on- fulfills a dream I didn’t even know other people cared about too. I would love to see us evolve all this, with technology now- who knows we could fund a G6 processor and get the PPC architecture into 5nm. Or recreate older G5 CPU’s in lower nm node to solve the heat issues.

[@deneb_tm]

PPC64 is alive and well in the server market. IBM POWER10 (which would probably be "G11") is on 7nm and launched this last September.

[@Kyle-xv5kv]

Oh Gawd I have one with the same spec, this is going to be like one of those "cook along" tv shows, where the video has been perfect and I'm left with a mess!

[@juancriolivares]

I noticed ls listed video0 and video1. Are you sure video0 was the right device? Any luck with video1?

[@agizm0]

I have the latest version of ffmpeg compiled on 10.5 PPC through macports. The problem now is capturing the screen. All the guides today say to use avfoundation as the source. But avfoundation didn't exist until 10.7. I've not researched deeper to find if there is another way. One idea I just thought of was to use one of those cheap USB capture cards that show up as a generic web cam (UVC) device.

[@Aeduo]

If you do ffmpeg -devices, it might list the available screen capture sources.

[@agizm0]

@@Aeduo I did more investigating today. By default, ffmpeg compiles with only the "lavfi" (Libavfilter virtual input device) device on my G4 PowerMac. "qtkit" was the device interface available before avfoundation, but I haven't found the last version of ffmpeg that supported it yet. If ffmpeg can be built with qtkit then it may be possible to capture the screen or a UVC device like those cheap USB-HDMI capture cards from Amazon. The USB capture device I have appears in Photo Booth, so that shows promise.

[@Aeduo]

@@agizm0 looks like it was removed in 3.4.

[@ww21943]

Hahaha so I heard the beginning of the video and immediately looked for Orson saying “ahh the French.” Before I posted it, I saw that you beat me to the punch!!!

[@raughboy188]

MacOS's kernel named darwin is based on original bsd kernel.

[@LostieTrekieTechie]

I wonder how well Linux supports FireWire webcameras

[@dcfuksurmom]

Linux usually has decent support for cameras, and it seemed to support the firewire card in a pc i was messing around with, but i didnt have any firewire devices to test with, but this is BSD (unix), similar, but not the same.

[@peporgan]

You can find old usb 1.1 webcams on eBay. You might want to give one of those a try!

[@SylveonTribe]

MLVWM with the Mac OS 8 theme would have really fit the iMac G3 for OpenBSD

[@DerekWitt]

I once had a MacOS-like theme for FVWM running in Solaris 2.5 when I was in college. It looked like a cross between 7.5.1 and 8.x. I don’t remember whether I started with MLVWM or not.

[@eMorphized]

WindowMaker and/or other GNUStep things would work really well if themed correctly (I think Étoilé is a good recreation of Aqua, but WindowMaker is way more reliable).

[@DerekWitt]

@@eMorphized I liked WindowMaker. Simple and directly inspired by OpenStep. :)

[@travosk8668]

How usable is this bsd machine? as in how does it hold up when used for word processing and light web browsing? I'm obsessed with bringing old computers back to life with linux/bsd

[@turbolenza35]

Can I install openBSD on my powermac dual G4 450mhz?

[@morganaldridge3077]

Yes.

[@eMorphized]

I think that's the OpenBSD reference machine

[@turbolenza35]

@@eMorphized didn't work... I have some cpu99 error....

[@eMorphized]

@@turbolenza35 Maybe FreeBSD will work better, since there's more developer support in general?

[@mediocrefunkybeat]

The fact that this even works is just... astonishing.

[@Techokami]

Personally I've found the tray-loading iMacs a lot easier to get into, just a few screws and a cable to pull the entire guts away to work on. But at least you're not trying to get into an eMac... 😬

[@deltara2106]

Maybe the pillow like thing is useful to not damage the RAM sticks. I really can't think of another reason except for just being cool looking.

[@yjk_ch]

Newer USB devices will work with older computers, though it may not work 100% correctly due to lack of bandwidth. That LLVM error looks more like a software issue.

[@damian9303]

The lack of bandwidth is due to older computers having an version of USB (2 or 1.1 in contrast to 3.X) which comes with it slower transfer speeds. They still should work correctly and you can even reinstall OS X using a flashdrive, given it's the size of the DVD

[@highvoltage12v]

Maybe try a FireWire iSight camera for the g3

[@EbenezerScroogeMcDuck]

several questions. 1- does snes9x exist for openbsd for ppc? currently using version 1.43 for os 9 and os x, has terrible mouse support (later fixed in 1.6x) however mac never went above 1.43.. 2- is there a way to get mac games to work on openbsd through some compatibility layer? pajama sam, oxyd, sufflepuck, basically all mac classic games... 3- does ps1 emulator exist? connectix vgs is great for os 9, but no way to create a virtual drive in os 9. you can mount iso, but they are only as folders, and still, there is no way to mount PS1 iso without some weird error. if on openbsd, a ps1 emu exists, hopefully it can open the iso directly.

[@SFGiantsBweezy]

Will Sorbet Leopard work on a G3 Mac like a iMac G3?

[@rigues]

Pretty cool! I have an idea for some "shenanigans", and this might be the right place to ask: I have an original iMac G3 233 MHz, and I'm thinking about replacing the motherboard with something more modern, like a Raspberry Pi 4. Question is: is it possible to interface the internal monitor with anything other than the original board? Did some googling, but haven't found an answer yet.

[@PuffyRainbowCloud]

With the original iMac G3, you can! It has a connector inside which connects the motherboard to the monitor. I don’t know how the power supply is connected, but I know there are mods to turn your iMac G3 into en external display. Following one of those and whacking a Raspberry Pi or heck an M1 Mac Mini should absolutely be doable.

[@rigues]

@@PuffyRainbowCloud I found the connector, but could not get the monitor to turn on. Maybe I'm missing an extra signal or something.

[@PuffyRainbowCloud]

@@rigues I suggest you Google and find a guide, I don’t have an iMac with the internal connector so I can’t help you.

[@clairekholin6935]

This just goes to show the plateau that Cathode Ray Dude speaks about is much lower than we might think.

[@brostenen]

The translucent plastic was cool for six months, back then. Then everything down to salad bowls and desk lamps used it, and I just had enough. To this day I still hate that look. Personally I like the design of the PowerPC 6100 better. That is to me the ultimate vintage Apple design, as every detail just match perfectly together.

[@RobotnikPlays]

The screen on the CRT looks slightly rotated. Have you messed with the yoke or something?

[@gozgeek]

You can join Twitch chat over IRC, which means you can install Weechat or Irssi and then chat, on stream, to your Twitch. 😁

[@RBMK1500]

the pillow clearly is made of metal and connects to the rest of the faraday cage that encloses the rest of the electronics for shielding.

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

Ohhh Action Retro found a Emachine eOne... Oh wait it's just the G3 copypastia ;) 7:23 Me almost chocking on chocolate milk 😖. I really gotta stop eating/drinking while watching KZbin...

[@Nymunariya]

"right version of ffmpeg through ... tigerbrew". *cries in Jaguar*

[@TheBasementChannel]

The pillow is there in case you need a rest halfway through a RAM upgrade

[@EirikrTinkerTries]

Does this work with the Xfree86 ATI / Radeon driver for Rage128? (This has a Rage 128, right?) also - is there a performance boost by going with NetBSD instead of OpenBSD?

[@Isabel369]

The first time I took one of those iMac computers apart, I found dried blood inside the shield from the last tech that opened the iMac, True Story by the way.

[@caillousdad5786]

Good for a G4 too right? Any emulation on the power pc scene for freebsd? PS1 and SNES would be great. SNES9x for Mac has poor mouse support (cursor stops mid-screen until you shake it around)

[@BBHexKey]

O.o when did you start going in front of the camera?

[@strawmanfallacy]

Are you related to Technology Connections? If not you guys should get together.

[@DavidStahlOLDHAPPyMACs]

well that debunks the myth you cant stream on A PPC mac great video and info Sean

[@bokexd3173]

find some other icewm themes, there are many on gnome look i believe, i just typed icewm themes and i got the stuff

[@orange_light_pictures]

I was wondering? Did you try to get hold of an iSight Webcam, (maybe Mac84 has one) as the iMac has two FireWire 400 ports? Would this not be better and also have sound as well.

[@iceowl]

does setting $DISPLAY to a different IP not work anymore? :/

[@rkmugen]

Wait... so, did you give up on Adelie Linux on the iMac G3?

[@scoutglobal6758]

If anyone knows if Mac OS X panther 10.3.2 can be used in an iMac G3 tray-loading. Pls tell me

[@ww21943]

Can I partition a drive that has Volumes for OS 9, OS X, and BSD? Or does BSD need to populate the entire drive?

[@cooperschwartz318]

Can you make a guide on how to install it

[@UpLateGeek]

Oh yeah, those slot loading iMac G3s are so much easier to work on than my eMac. But I guess that's by design, considering the eMac was meant to be used in computer labs, you wouldn't want students being able to steal parts from the computers with just a common screwdriver.

[@Txm_Dxr_Bxss]

If the inner plastic bezel didn't fall apart by just looking at it...

[@tubularmonkeymaniac]

Oh God the intro killed me

[@ernestoherrera703]

I remembered my G3 to be very picky with memory as well.

[@jasonhill8696]

You could probably get even more frames on your twitch stream by switching to a more minimalist window manager like windowmaker

[@ThePeter567]

U should install Lubuntu! It has a power PC version, and is really lightweight and modern too :) Maybe won't in a G3 though. I've seen a video of lubuntu on a G4 however

[@marksmith9566]

Can you twitch a prerecorded video file.

[@electromatic138]

Action retro what do you think about plainrock124 (KZbin channel) ?

[@thejapanprogrammer1644]

now- time for NetBSD :)

[@R_Squared933]

Just joined and subbed to your twitch channel...

[@DerekWitt]

Pantless Mac sounds like a weird Apple code name for an unreleased Mac!

[@amoledzeppelin]

Now try streaming directly from the framebuffer console onto ffmpeg. Uses much less RAM, of course, but still about 100% CPU.

[@kungfujesus06]

Llvmpipe rendering your desktop probably is eating a fair number of your CPU cycles. You also likely could pick a less challenging codec.

[@Aeduo]

How flexible is twitch with codecs? But yeah messing with profiles and presets and other settings might lighten the encoding load at the cost of some encoding efficiency (which at such low frame rates, shouldn't be an issue at all.). Also maybe going down to 640x480.

[@RetroSwim]

@@Aeduo Sadly for this exercise, Twitch is not flexible at all. H.264 or bust.

[@Stjaernljus]

Next challenge stream from MacOS 9

[@eMorphized]

If it has an h.264 codec, it can produce Twitch-compatible video.

[@aswarmofdeadinsects]

Ah yes, 65scribe. A man of culture I see.

[@Ironapple09]

You gotta get a iSight FireWire webcam

[@BEAT.SWEATS]

you look like a cooler mark ruffalo

[@dustinschings7042]

Let's see you give that a try! Stream from OS X!

[@kutchiekutcharitaville]

That’s cool I’m trying to get a g3 so I’m watching a lot of videos about them cool video tho

[@Txm_Dxr_Bxss]

I recently got one for very cheap, but it got destroyed in shipping. My advise is to buy one locally if you can.

[@GuyJames]

DHSS = Department of Health and Social Security - so that computer was probably sold in the UK.

[@mici01]

or DHHS = US Department of Health and Human Services

[@Rabbit_AF]

It's time for an Action Retro Mac version Halo server, so he can stream Halo.

[@TechFan-di8ds]

Now that it's possible to stream from an old Mac computer, I wonder if you can stream to Twitch from a Windows XP computer?

[@TrackDayMaker]

That would be a walk in the park compared to this.

[@amnottabs]

thing is, there's not a "Windows XP computer" per se, you can go all the way up to like a Sandy Bridge i7 system with a GTX 550ti and install XP on it and it could probably stream at 720p 60fps

[@TrackDayMaker]

@@lgibson02 ffmpeg exists on every conceivable platform and OS.

[@carltonleboss]

The real challenge would be to stream to Twitch from a Win9x system

[@a4e69636b]

@@carltonleboss That would be interesting.

[@bobpegram8042]

You skipped the part i wanted to see - the steps to install OpenBSD and a desktop on a G3. I have one of the Blue and White Tower G3s with 1 Gig of RAM so this iMac is very similar. I have decided to install the enlightenment desktop because it is polished, but still relatively small. Plus it looks sort of like the Mac OS. They have added a lot of software (Enlightenment Foundation Libraries) to make is a desktop, not just a window manager. Added later: turns out Blackbox desktop with MacBox theme is even more like the Mac than Enlightenment and probably uses less RAM. I need to learn how to install it using CLI though. Haven't found the instructions yet. Too bad Sorbet OS X doesn't work on G3.

[@systemchris]

Possible on the cursed Mac?

[@flyicestormpluto]

"Not wearing any pants" 😆

[@andresbravo2003]

OpenBSD on the iMac G3? well, good.

[@aviumcaravan]

Of Course It's BSD®

[@fnjesusfreak]

That webcam looks like a Logitech C615...which is what I use.