from Hacker News

NetBSD on the last G4 Mac mini and making the kernel power failure proof

by UkiahSmith on 6/29/19, 2:16 PM with 40 comments

• by MrRadar on 6/29/19, 3:41 PM

  For those who are not familiar with the author of this blog, he is a PowerPC enthusiast and the maintainer of TenFourFox, a Firefox port to PPC OS X. He's also currently working on a new PPC JIT for (modern) Firefox on Linux (a project for which he is looking for volunteers to assist him[1]) to bring it to speed parity with Chrome on PPC (which already has a PPC JIT).

  [1] https://www.talospace.com/2019/03/pitch-into-firefox-jit.htm...

• by mikece on 6/29/19, 3:26 PM

  Somewhere there are chip designers thinking they can create the first processor on which NetBSD cannot run. Have fun kids: many have tried that and failed!

• by oneplane on 6/29/19, 6:34 PM

  As fun as this is (and as much as I appreciate putting good old hardware to use and as much as I like PPC): the power consumption alone wouldn't make this a winner :(

  I have a PowerBook G4 DVI, iBook G4, B&W G3, GbE G4, Dual G5 here, I want to get rid of them but I like them too much. Yet I can't run them for fun all day long either because the amount of power they eat >:( The problems of a hardware connoisseur.

• by microcolonel on 6/29/19, 3:03 PM

  The fire extinguisher on the desk is a nice touch; though I'm not sure that's enough volume to extinguish a G4 fire.