27 votes
Accepted

Are PowerPC processors still manufactured and used in desktop computers?

PowerPC CPUs are still produced, mainly for embedded applications, e.g. the Qorivva MPC55xx MCUs. As far as I'm aware, the only currently-produced (for some value of "produced") desktop ...
Stephen Kitt's user avatar
21 votes

How and why did Intel make the PCI bus "CPU Agnostic"?

Short Answer: At the time PCI was devised, the x86 bus had already gone a long way toward being less chip specific. PCI is maybe a clean design, but some choices for signals are still 'intelish' ...
Raffzahn's user avatar
  • 222k
19 votes

How and why did Intel make the PCI bus "CPU Agnostic"?

The early-to-mid 1990s was a time where the future of the Personal Computer was very much up for grabs. Both the "Wintel" monopoly as a whole, and each part individually, where not at all ...
Jörg W Mittag's user avatar
18 votes
Accepted

How and why did Intel make the PCI bus "CPU Agnostic"?

Nobody has really covered the technical aspects of the PCI bus. Until then most busses had been mere extensions of the CPU's memory bus. Zorro was essentially an extension of the 68000 memory bus, S-...
user's user avatar
  • 15.2k
15 votes
Accepted

How do I run PowerPC Applications on an Intel Mac

You can "bring Rosetta back" by installing an older version of Mac OS X which supports it — Tiger, Leopard or Snow Leopard (on the latter it's an optional component). Rosetta was removed from later ...
Stephen Kitt's user avatar
10 votes
Accepted

Was there a dual-core PowerMac G5?

You should open the case, or check the "About this Mac" dialog in the Apple menu: there's a fair chance your G5 has two processors, as in two complete packages. All series of G5s were available in ...
Stephen Kitt's user avatar
10 votes

Are PowerPC processors still manufactured and used in desktop computers?

Not a desktop PC, but the Nintendo Wii U is still manufactured and contains a Power PC processor. Also the recently discontinued Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 consoles ran on Power PC too. If you ...
JMK's user avatar
  • 201
8 votes

How to mount Macintosh Performa's HFS (not HFS+) Filesystem

It sounds like you've done what would be immediately logical, but are misunderstanding some concepts to diagnose the problem. If could be that the HFS code in the kernel is no-longer working, but its ...
sibaz's user avatar
  • 189
8 votes

How and why did Intel make the PCI bus "CPU Agnostic"?

There are a few details with x86 inheritance in PCI : Little Endian only. Big Endian CPUs (such as PowerPCs as default) had to adapt to that bus by using reversed endian instructions, or bus swap ...
Grabul's user avatar
  • 3,637
7 votes

Which generations of PowerPC did Windows NT 4 run on?

In general, NT3.51 for PowerPC should run on all PReP machines (Specs) from IBM or Motorola (*1), as long as it features an ARC bootloader - that's why it won't come up on CHRP PowerPC Macs with Open ...
Raffzahn's user avatar
  • 222k
7 votes

Are PowerPC processors still manufactured and used in desktop computers?

There are single board computers ("SBCs") available with Power architecture processors that could possibly double as desktop machines, e.g. this one has USB and can apparently be configured with a PCI ...
Jules's user avatar
  • 12.9k
6 votes

How and why did Intel make the PCI bus "CPU Agnostic"?

The answer to your question 1. is YES. Their rationale was a simple and effective business strategy. An approach that sacrificed proprietary control in exchange for market penetration. To illustrate ...
A contributor's user avatar
4 votes

Timeline for PowerPC CPUs from various manufacturers

A lot of that information can be found on Wikipedia: G4 was introduced in 1999. Designed by IBM and Motorola, manufactured only by Motorola. PowerPC 970 (only Apple referred to it as 'G5') was ...
Venner's user avatar
  • 1,684
4 votes

Multi-GPU PowerMac G5?

I’ve got a 2005 PowerMac G5, Dual 2.3 GHz with a stock Nvidia GeForce 6600 running OSX 10.4 Tiger AFAIR that's a plain 6600, right? Would adding a second GeForce 6600 from another PowerMac work or ...
Raffzahn's user avatar
  • 222k
4 votes

How to mount Macintosh Performa's HFS (not HFS+) Filesystem

Linux has native HFS read/write support. Most distributions do not include it by default, but if you install hfsprogs and the kernel modules, you should be able to mount the disk, or an image of it, ...
RETRAC's user avatar
  • 13.6k
4 votes

Are PowerPC processors still manufactured and used in desktop computers?

Are PowerPC processors still used in desktop/home computers, or has Intel processors taken over? If I wanted to get a PowerPC computer, is there a place I can still get them? They have pretty much ...
phuclv's user avatar
  • 3,592
4 votes

Are PowerPC processors still manufactured and used in desktop computers?

You can run Rosetta (Apples PowerPC support on Intel platforms) on a Intel mac running Snow Leopard. You can now run Snow Leopard in a VM. That's a lot of hoops to run through, but might be worth it. ...
coteyr's user avatar
  • 247
3 votes

How do I run PowerPC Applications on an Intel Mac

As far as I know, there's no way to bring Rosetta back - so your only option (providing you have OS X install discs with PPC support), would be to set up PearPC - which emulates an entire system. ...
robc's user avatar
  • 321
3 votes

Are PowerPC processors still manufactured and used in desktop computers?

Power PC still essential to the US Mars program. Thanks to the fact it is radiation hardened 40x normal CPUs. Helps to avoid catastrophic loss of computing power due to cosmic ray interference. ...
John O'Driscoll's user avatar
2 votes

Timeline for PowerPC CPUs from various manufacturers

Freescale which is now part of NXP, made quite a few PowerPC chips. Look up the Freescale MPCxxxx parts and the QorIQ P-series and T-series parts. To my knowledge T-Series is was the last of the NXP ...
vxWizard's user avatar
  • 121
1 vote

How do I run PowerPC Applications on an Intel Mac

Assuming that your host computer has an Intel CPU and you wanted the most recent version of Rosetta, then you could run Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on VirtualBox. Unfortunately, just having Rosetta may not ...
Retro Gamer's user avatar
  • 2,435

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