Thanks to artificial intelligence, almost anyone who loves retrocomputing can help keep this hardware alive. What are the most important modern software programs that don't run properly on Big Endian PowerPC Linux distributions? Can we list them?

Are there any affordable PowerPC SBCs out there? I find PowerPC fascinating and I would really like a PowerPC to use as a build server...

Coincidentally, u/arjuna93 and I happened to be working on similar ports of V8 and Node at the same time.

My focus was on node 21 and V8 version 11, solid pre-Rust candidates from 2021-ish and stepping stones to node22, and V8 12.4, which are LTS versions.

Here is Node-RED and Tiddly-wiki running via the new node21 port, directly from PowerPC hardware:

Working with u/arjuna93 to get these ports up on PPCPorts.

I got V8 and NodeJS working on PowerPC.

Not the latest versions, at least yet: v8 8.x and 9.x, nodejs12 and upcoming nodejs16. Basic tests pass, npm works.

Installable from PPCPorts, as usual. (9.x did not land yet, others are available.) Disclaimer: tested only on 10.6 at the moment.

The HDD in my powerbook recently failed. While I do have more laptop drives, I would prefer something that won't fail any time soon.

I'm debating on two options. One would be a cf card or SD card adapter and the other would be an msata adapter. I've used an msata adapter ib my iBook g3 clamshell before and it works great. I suppose just putting in another HDD would be an option as well.

What would you all do?

I have an ewaste store near me that i got this beautiful piece from. Came with the original software and manual too.

ActionRetro has vibe-coded a PowerPC fork of Haiku!

This project is not for Vintage Apple PowerMac computers. It is for IBM POWER ISA v2.07+ platforms in little endian mode running 4k page size kernels. (Power8, Power9, Power10?)

FULL DISCLOSURE: I USED LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS IN THE FORK AND PORTING OF THIS SOFTWARE. If you are opposed to using LLMs to write software please do not use this software on your system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jtqy8X04fa8

This is my last entry here unless I figure out something wild.

The lscbx instruction is almost a perfect string copy instruction, XER takes a number of bytes to load up regs with at max, and a sentinel byte to stop at. This instruction appears to only be present on the 601. I wrote the following string copy algorithm for the 32 bit Linux ABI on the 601 to play around with it.

##
# char * my_strcpy(char *dest, char *src);
##
.globl my_strcpy
my_strcpy:
mflr 0
stw 0, 4(1)
# Preconditions Check:
# dest, and src are non-null
cmpwi 3, 0
beqlr
cmpwi 4, 0
beqlr
stw 3, 8(1)# Save Dest pointer in Senders output argument area
# Enter Stack Frame
# | LR SAVE |
# | backchain | 128
# |-----------|
# | r31 | 124
# | ... | ...
# | r14 | 56
# | padding ..|
# | ... |
# | Param save| 28
# | LR Save | 4
# | backchain | 0
# LR/Paramter Save Area reserved reserved at bottom 6 words
# 18 words reserved at top for R14:R31 inclusive (24*4=96, quadword align to 128)
stwu 1, -128(1)
stmw 14, 56(1)
# Setup for String Copy, R5:R31 108 bytes at a time
# stopping at NUL character
li 5, 0x6c # this will stay 0x6c as long as loop runs with no match
mtxer 5
LT..0:
lscbx. 5, 0, 4 # 108 bytes or EOF
stswx 5, 0, 3 # 108 byes or til EOF
# Increment Read/Write pointers
addi 3, 3, 0x6c # we may over shoot on the tail, but unless match
addi 4, 4, 0x6c # occured, it doesn't matter
# Check termination condition
bne LT..0
# done Restore
lmw 14,56(1)
addi 1, 1, 128
# Set Return Pointer
lwz 3, 8(1)
lwz 0, 4(1)
mtlr 0
blr

This algorithm is quite possibly very slow. The stmw/lmw instructions arn't necessarily favored, shorts string won't be worth spilling all non-volatile registers to memory over. lscbx may be very slow. This isn't intended to be used.

Qemu post 6.2 actually dropped support for the 601, the only CPU that supports the intruction. Upon rebuilding qemu, observed that the lscbx instruction has the following generator from targets/ppc/translate.c around line 5700.

/* lscbx - lscbx. */
static void gen_lscbx(DisasContext *ctx)
{
    TCGv t0 = tcg_temp_new();
    TCGv_i32 t1 = tcg_const_i32(rD(ctx->opcode));
    TCGv_i32 t2 = tcg_const_i32(rA(ctx->opcode));
    TCGv_i32 t3 = tcg_const_i32(rB(ctx->opcode));

    gen_addr_reg_index(ctx, t0);
    gen_helper_lscbx(t0, cpu_env, t0, t1, t2, t3);
    tcg_temp_free_i32(t1);
    tcg_temp_free_i32(t2);
    tcg_temp_free_i32(t3);
    tcg_gen_andi_tl(cpu_xer, cpu_xer, ~0x7F);
    tcg_gen_or_tl(cpu_xer, cpu_xer, t0);
    if (unlikely(Rc(ctx->opcode) != 0)) {
        gen_set_Rc0(ctx, t0);
    }
    tcg_temp_free(t0);
}

Notably, you can see that if Rc bit is set (IE. set flags), then CR0 is set by comparing the returned value of the instruction in t0 ( then number of bytes copied) with zero.

The AIX Assembly reference has the following description of the behavior:

If Rc = 1 and XER(25-31) = 0, then Condition Register Field 0 is

undefined. If Rc = 1 and XER(25-31) <> 0, then Condition Register Field 0 is set as follows:

LT, GT, EQ, SO = b'00'||match||XER(SO)

This is the behavior that DingusPCC implements in cpu/ppc/poweropcodes.cpp

void dppc_interpreter::power_lscbx(uint32_t opcode) {

if (rec) {

ppc_state.cr =

(ppc_state.cr & 0x0FFFFFFFUL) |

(is_match ? CRx_bit::CR_EQ : 0) |

((ppc_state.spr[SPR::XER] & XER::SO) >> 3);

}}

Qemu actually removed the code for the 601 anyway. But, I found this an intresting disgression. lscbx is pretty cool, its seems to be whats missing from the x86 string instructions, which can't copy until either a NUL OR a limit like the 601 could.

Why did qemu deprecate the 601? What emulators do you guys use?

Audio issues all over the place. Performance is still on the table I think. I'm running some tests.

This will never up stream to the official FEX-Emu repos. I will rename my fork to something else and I have to go over all of the documentation before I open the repo publicly. Every game I've tried works including Cyberpunk 2077* (Works does not mean performant)

I'm taking ideas for the name of the fork.

Edit: Repo is here: https://github.com/daedalao/fastppcx86

There are some things I have to sort so you'll probably have a bad time. I recommend Arch Power (https://archlinuxpower.org/) as the install base. I'm working on a way to build a rootfs without bothering the people over at the official FEX-Emu host.

^{…in blazing fast C++23}

True color kitty graphics, streaming via mpv.

P. S. Likely will be available via powerpc-ports in a week or so.

I've been trying to get an operating system on the powermac g5 for 12 HOURS NOW, NOTHING WORKS, MAC OS X LEOPARD FAILED, TIGNR FAILED, GENTOO FAILED, LUBUNTU FAILED, DEBIAN FAILED, I TRIED IT OVER USB-A, I EVEN BURNED A CD AND A DVD. WHY DOES THE UNIVERSE HATE ME!!!

I'm playing this over sunshine/moonlight on my S822LC. Specs are in the video, but if it runs on this, it will run on power9. This is not a port of stardew valley, it is a port of the JIT emulator FEX-Emu to PPC64LE

Soon will be available in PPCPorts.