Running Modern NVMe in a PowerMac G5!
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- čas přidán 11. 02. 2022
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Today we're going to try running a PowerMac G5 from modern NVMe on PCIe! How much speed gain can we really get from it, and can we install most or all of Linux on the drive for a super souped-up monstrosity of a Power Mac?
LINKS:
🍎 Twitch channel: / actionretro
🍎 Void Linux PPC/PPC64: voidlinux-ppc.org/
🍎 That nice NVMe PCIe controller card: amzn.to/34vvKIP
🍎 WD_BLACK SSD that I used: amzn.to/3GMcvaW
(Amazon links are affiliated links)
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#Macintosh #Linux #PowerPC - Věda a technologie
NVMe is a protocol just like SATA is a protocol... m.2 is the formfactor... there are NVMe m.2 SSD's and SATA m.2 SSD's, the USB/m.2 card combo is a SATA m.2 card... NOT an NVMe card...nvm
😂😅😵💫
Thanks for the heads up
Thanks, saved me from writing the same comment. 😂
NVMe is at the same level and is a better alternative to AHCI. Both of those are above the level of SATA and PCIe. There were AHCI PCIe drives before NVMe. The G5 has AHCI but does not have NVMe.
That USB/m.2 card combo is a SATA m.2 card. When you buy a USB/m.2 housing make sure it can do NVME because those NVME controllers can handle both AHCI-SATA-m.2 and NVME m.2 cards.
Three things to try:
1. The very, very first generation of NVME boot drives had a legacy OPROM that makes them often reverse compatible with older systems. Intel 750, Samsung 950 Pro, and Samsung PM953 110mm drives are the three to try.
2. The AHCI boot is even easier. Try the cheapest SM951 AHCI you can get your hands on.
3. You might actually be able to get full speed out of a SATA SSD with some of the earliest HighPoint SATA III PCIe controllers, like a 642L which even came with G5 compatible drivers.
You're the official mad scientist of PowerPC Macs.
This channel is still way too underrated.
the most underrated. We gotta pump these rookie numbers up!!
seriously, too little subs for this high of quality
I’ve been watching for a while but just now noticed how little views and subscribers he has, he deserves more
I’ve been here when he was at it for a few months; he really deserves 100k by now
This rough technique of bootstrapping for NVMe support works for all sorts of systems that can't directly boot from PCIe NVMe M.2 adapters. I did it in a old Dell R710 with an EFI shim.
Absolutely. Also works well with Hackintosh builds. I've configured many OptiPlex 7010s and HP Elite 8300s in this way. EFI folder goes on a small, cheap SATA SSD; OS and everything else NVMe. Insanely inexpensive, fully functional, relatively fast High Sierra to Catalina Macs. The i7-3770 is still a very capable chip for many purposes, and I've seen many folks shocked at how those babies fly when accompanied by an appropriate GPU, 16-32 GB DDR3, and NVMe storage. 10 Gb/s Type-C support via PCIe (Ablecomm card comes to mind) is also a reasonably inexpensive addition to such systems; Fenvi WLAN cards also.
On "newer" Dell optiplexes you can also modify the UEFI firmware with the official NVME "driver" to add native support, I'm actually running an optiplex booted directly off of a new samsung nvme ssd. There is also a project to add Resizable Bar support to UEFI boards that don't natively support it but I don't have an intel DGPU so I haven't tried it.
You are confounding a few technologies here. The form factor is called M.2. M.2 breaks out into 4 PCIe lanes, a sata connector and a USB connector. NVMe is a standard that uses the 4 PCIe lanes to transmit data. NVMe drives do not need controllers they are complete devices attached to the PCIe bus. They are basically a whole raid controller on a card with the storage. There are also SATA M.2 drives. These drives won't work in your pure PCIe adapter cards because the cards are dumb and contain no controllers, they are just a riser that converts PCIe lanes form factor from the desktop connector to the M.2 connector. So a SATA drive won't work in them.
Exactly. And the speed differences among the different NVMe to PCIe adapters are not the adapters, because they don‘t do anything except physically connecting the NVMe drive to the PCIe port.
But there are some of those adapters coming with a boot ROM for older systems without native NV!e support. So they connect the NVMe directly and add a boot ROM. Of course those won‘t for PowerMacs.
@@jensdroessler3575 PCI-E is nothing, and everything, it's just whatever the card is you put into it. I wonder if you could have a really simple solution. As you gave me an idea here, you could connect the drive to a PCI-E USB C card. Theoretically USB is backwards compatible so it should recognise any drive connected by USB. Open Firmware should, probably, maybe see it.
You don't have to reinstall Linux; you can use dd to copy the drive over and edit fstab (on root) and grub's config (on boot) to point to the new root partition. Reinstall is fine and all, but you don't have to.
Using a NVMe drive doesn't use any sort of converter; it's just a straight adaptation of the PCIe slot direct to the drive. NVMe is a logical protocol that directly uses PCIe physically. There is no controller other than the drive itself.
Your combo card definitely has a SATA controller and USB controller; it must be using a PCIe bridge also to provide both SATA and PCIe to its M.2 slot to allow you to use either type of M.2 SSD. The cards without SATA controllers on them will only work w/ NVMe SSDs on them.
Why is the first card faster? Perhaps it's a better PCB layout with just a bit better signal integrity. Otherwise the higher result was just a random fluctuation.
This, as a rough solution, you should be able to run an install on a regular drive then reconfigure the boot loader to address the new drives. As a complete backstop it should work.
The more Frankinstined this power Mac gets the more I love it. 💪
Sean walks in with another peripheral, the G5 probably sighs XD
Quick note: That AHCI m.2 would not work in the direct adapter card, but it will probably work in the funky usb/m.2 card.
Similarly, that WD card would never work in that combo adapter card since it's NVME and not AHCI.
NVME = PCIe
AHCI = SATA
There are PCIe SSDs that use AHCI, for example those in the 2013 MacBook Pro (they aren't M.2, but I think M.2 PCIe SSDs with AHCI were also made around that time)
@@Drucklufttroete - Thank you! There were early Samsung PM951 AHCI x4 drives (also found in early PCIe HP "TurboDrives"), a few niche gamer drives and SanDisk made a x2 2242 variant for laptop HP "TurboDrives". I had a few of those and they bench at 600-700 MB/s. The PM951s bench at 1,200-2,000 MB/s depending on capacity - there's a 128GB on the lowest end.
If you can, try to see if you can swap the chassis fans for Noctuas - it would probably be quieter
Damn, that druaga1 reference made me realise how long it's been since his last video. I miss that guy.
I didn't notice your T-shirt until the last minute or so of the video, I love it.
The first 3 adapters are all passive connector adapters, all they do is change the connector form factor from full blown PCIe to M.2 M key.
All they do is to connect a NVME or AHCI SSD to the PCIe bus, there is no logic on them just a single M.2 connector.
A NVME drive uses the native NVME protocol over PCIe, an AHCI SSD has a buildin PCIe to SATA adapter onboard.
A SATA M.2 SSD is just like a regular 2.5" SSD in a different form factor that only works on the USB / M.2 combo card.
Omg the quality of your videos is amazing!
Damn! You're pumping out these videos fast!
When I had Linux installed on an NVMe SSD in my Quad, I had the boot partition on a normal 1TB SATA HDD (I think it was a seagate barracuda).
I wonder if a) PPC grub can boot Mac OS and if so, b) install grub on a SATA disk, then use it to boot Mac OS off the PCIe bus?
Yeah, this video has too many unanswered questions for me.... Needs following up
Sean, following your G5 series closely. I have an A1117 2.0GHZ myself that I'm looking to squeeze all performance out of.
And, LOL at your fan noise solution. I have a Coraid 2u 15-bay NAS server running TrueNAS that is kept well away from any occupied spaces in the house and it sounds like your typical server room, even with three fans removed that used to cool the spinning platter drives (I replaced all 15 with SSDs, so no need for extra cooling).
The plural is definitely Linuces (like vertex -> vertices)
there are sata disk on modules out there too. I would try to see how to operate that way if possible and just shove a Sony DRU842A replacement drive for the IDE connector. the power connector on disk on modules can be hit or miss though.
I love that for the experimental boot that you remove the complexity and then...
... add back all the complexity! :D
Wow you have totally done what I've suggested in the comment xD nice. When using nvme on an unsupported PC I'd just make a boot USB with clover and boot windows from nvme through clover on USB stick plugged in permanently
I had always wanted to see how a Mac ran Linux during the era of a Power PC. I was never into buying a mac because of the expense but I though it would work so much better. I am having fun watching these.
hey smokers...
Druaga1 here!
This video reminded me that I have an old AHCI PCIe x4 SSD that I should try in my G5 Quad.
I love your fixes for somethings, Computer to noisy put it a dozen or so feet away and run cables. You sir have the same method as I, simplest thing that works and we can get away with. Love it
That WD Black SN750 is an underrated (and typically underpriced) gem. I've got one in my work laptop and it's been rock solid. I was torn between that and the Sabrent Rocket and very glad I went with the WD.
MVMe is a drive standard. The connector that NVMe drives use is called M.2
When you said that the AHCI drive is recognized by OpenFirmware, what that means is that OpenFirmware can see M.2 drives, but not NVME M.2 drives. AHCI is SATA, which means that you can get a PCIe M.2 SATA card, and install an M.2 SATA SSD. This will give you an M.2 SSD with the maximum possible speeds that is recognized in OpenFirmware.
I support "Linuces" as the plural
I liked this video by the end of the intro. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
This might have already been mentioned but, I think you would need both the mac boot partition as well as the Linux boot partition on the IDE drive to stand the chance. You have to have the Linux kernel loaded to have access to those drivers that would make the other stuff work.
That sounds about right. Basically everything but the root partition and home partition need to be on the IDE or SATA bus.
And by root partition I mean for basic programs, you need to make sure that the Linux kernel gets loaded.
Love this. Your like a modern version of druga 1
About to have a shenanigasm!
I liked this channel, but the fact you use Void Linux makes me love this channel
So interesting to find your videos. Didn't realize anyone else was interested in these sorts of things. In 2018-2019 I spent so much time working with G5s, early Mac Pros, various m.2 SATA/NVMe/AHCI drives, drivers, eventually architecting a solution that enabled me to boot Tiger on a Quad from an AHCI blade as well as full-on NVMe boot solutions in the Mac Pro 3,1.
Correcting a minor error in your video. The USB combo card that you show at the 9-minute mark is not at all NVMe. That slot is B-key m.2 NGFF and will only support a m.2 SATA blade, totally unrelated to NVMe. NVMe uses PCIe lanes (as you know) while m.2 SATA is simply SATA using a different form factor. There is no NVMe nor SATA controller on that card, and no "adapter" as such. It's directly pass-through (the m.2 SATA card is wired to the pins on the SATA connector on the opposite edge of the card). Speeds are limited to 6 Gb/s SATA III, as that's the native raw bandwidth of the drives that it is compatible with. Because it is an x1 card, essentially aside from the "drive carrier" functionality, it's necessarily limited to USB 3.0 speeds on the external ports (both Type-A and Type-C USB ports).
Also, as an aside, I've worked with all of those specific carrier cards, and the first one that you show us (the one with x4 pins only) works fine with AHCI drives as well. Haven't tried that particular one on a PPC unit, though, but can confirm it does work OOB with (very specific) AHCI drives on Mac Pro 1,1-3,1 and is bootable after some tweaks.
Awesome video, my man. New fan here.
1st generation PCIe is limited to 250MB/s of bandwidth per lane, a 4x drive on 1.0 lanes should be able to approach 1GB/s, and you're getting half that, which suggests the drive is only getting access to 2 lanes. Its possible having the video card in that primary slot is taking up too many lanes and preventing other slots from having full access to the potential bandwidth; if its possible you could try swapping card order around and see if performance improves.
I'm glad you mentioned Druaga1! I'm a big fan of him
Hope you try fitting more SSDs to vintage macs!
Pulled a ghostbusters and played this back at 2x and it saved a lot of time, keep on with the hacking, not sure that what 200$ nvme drive it worth it on that g5 but keep on rocking, would Debian be more current with kernel mod's? perhaps USB bootloader to onboard nvme?
Is there a model or part number for the PCIe Adapter with the USB ports included? Looks interesting and might be useful for a project I have here 😀
I wonder if a similar setup might work on the iMac G3: boot partition off of the hdd and then hack some kind of a connector for an ssd or even another NVMe. Then again it would depend on if you could get Linux working on the G3.
There's no PCIe on the iMac G3, so NVMe isn't a possibility at all. There isn't even SATA.
Streaming from a G3 "better" than you expect? More like surprised and dumbfounded it works at all. It is a sight to behold.
Would love to have seen if you could get this working at all under OSX!
Fwiw: two Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro 4xPCIe cards officially work in PCIe G5s and deliver up to 1710MB/s read / 1320MB/s write speed on four drives (Mac Pro numbers, G5 are probably lower because of PCIe 1.1)....
Do you are can put some noctua fan to make more sillent ?
A lot of IDE to SD adaptors have a firmware bug. First primary partition should be FAT32 at the beginning of the disk to avoid it.
Shame you couldn't get any of the NVMe drives to boot into OS X. I have a SATA 3 PCIe card coming in the mail for my quad G5, hopefully that'll boost the speeds a bit for my SSD which is currently connected to the default SATA-I connectors onboard.
I wonder if the old Samsung SM951 ACHI PCIe SSDs can be seen in open firmware?
WOODER...
Iconic accent of a philly local, lol
Met you at VCF
SATA was certainly a thing in 2005, in fact, my 2005 Windows XP machine predominately used SATA
Now do a RAID0 array using all the PCIE slots with NVME. Got to see that ancient beast get 1GB/sec
Hell just 2 should do it, assuming the FSB on it had enough bandwidth
Would love to see you replace the stock fans with some Noctua ones to shut it up a bit, assuming that's possible!
The Power Mac fans use a different control scheme than regular PC fans. It would be easy to get Noctua fans installed if you rewire the connector, but harder to get control over the speed.
Just in case you ever do this type of testing again, KDiskMark is a great CrystalDiskMark alternative which would give you much more and detailed information.
I was able to talk via PCI registers to an NVMe card on my powermac G5. There's a lot more to do, but I can't think of any reason why you couldn't type in an NVMe driver into any OpenFirmware-based platform with PCIe support into NVRAMRC and boot directly from the NVMe card.
2:51 And that's how you know Action Retro is from the Philly area
wasn't the pci express on the g5 different than pcie?
Minor Nitpick, but you pointed to the iMac G3 when mentioning the Powermacs, which could give the misleading impression that iMac G3 was a part of the Powermac family when in fact it as not. While the iMac G3 used the same CPU as the Powermac G3 it was never a classified as a Powermac by Apple. The Powermac G3 (and later the Powermac G4) came only in a tower form, never in an all-in-one computers form.
I would love to see the script you used to stream to twitch. I imagine that it can be repurposed to stream from most low power linux machines that don't have support for OBS due to OBS not working with older GPU's/integrated chipsets. I really want it for my old Core 2 Duo Toshiba Satellite xD
Good idea! I'll toss it up on github once I tweak it a bit
Super timing, just buying a G5 after your last videos 😂
Can you do a video on ReactOS on ppc mac?
MORE POWA FOR THE PPC!!!
Yeaaahhh flameshot!
I wonder if you could use Mac On Linux to run the mac bits in Linux, but from the NVME ?
Hot plug of HDDs existed before SATA.
I had a workstation in 1999 with removable scsi drives that supported hot swap and RAID.
Yes, but then you run into the issue of daisy chaining.
Can you run sheepshaver or another Mac emulator under Linux on this machine... and run OS 9 with the NVMe drive?
i recommend using 100gb nvme (installed linux in nvme )then installed in pc n turn it on im sure u find way into it dont need double plug in
if u still hitting pole then go in bios settings im sure u will find it there if u dont know
it quick n easy just boot in linux (when u turn it on n boot in then reboot them pushing esc u will catch it pop up black screen with letter on there n go down to bios settings it take it u into it if u dont see bios settings then u may find it in pro.... else i adjust u try it
this vid go hard
dont know what to comment but i know comments help the “algorithm”
I would have used a small HDD for the boot partition and the NVMe storage for the rest of the install.
"Linuxi? Linuxes?", maybe "Linux distros"? 😉
Though I enjoy whenever you ask this 🤣
😂
"Linuxar" (Swedish, Linus Thorvald's native language :-þ )
You're from NJ, arent you? "Right out of the WA'DER" LOL
Is it the 8GB drive partition limit?
Waiting on that graphics card vid, my 6600 isnt cuttin it anymore!
is it possible to create an x86 VM under KVM on PPC linux? if so you should totally try to get a monteray VM running on that. even though im sure the performance would stink
Edit: out of sheet curiosity I made an x86 debian VM on my raspberry pi. So it's certainly possible. No promises on usability. But it would be interesting!
Heh, no wonder why this video was released. There was a clue in the previous one! (OMG ITS NVME mount point at desktop)
Did you try mounting sda1 as /boot and nvme1 as / then allowing GRUB to install onto the IDE drive as well? If the thing is already booting grub then there's no reason why grub cannot bootstrap another install from another drive, that's literally its job.
Try doing
"sudo su"
then
"mount /dev/nvme1 /mnt"
"mkdir -P /mnt{/boot,/home}"
"mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot"
"void-installer"
then when you get to this partition screen choose something else, check what is shown matches what you did and let it install. When it comes to grub point it to /boot and finally check /etc/fstab to make sure grub is pointed to nvme1 by UUID as the root partition.
Edit - or an even easier test. Reinstall the working IDE, install void onto nvme1 as normal then edit /etc/default/grub on your working IDE install and add the NVMe install as a new line. Finally grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg to write the changes and you should be able to boot the nvme from grub off the ide.
just curious, isn't there a nvme pci-e 8x adapter?
That's not the problem, the problem is getting Open Firmware to see the disk in the first place if you're going to boot off it.
Most older people aren't Twitch? Can you dual live stream to CZcams as well?
You wouldn't have an old fat play station 2 with a network adaptar laying around would you? Its been bugging me since I watched this video, whether you could plug in a disc on module in the ide hard drive connector, since there are some mods to boot games off of the hard drive with free mc boot lol
Is there a PC accessory in recent years that has not been advertised as “gaming”?
Have you tried installing FreeBSD?
I have a 512mb USB storage stick that came in the mail one day. It had H&R block software on it but I removed that.
I think the real issue is will the operating system destroy the SSD? Obviously if you're running Linux everything is fine but if you loaded the Mac OS on it and it was an older Mac OS the it wasn't properly programmed for ssds they can do way too many rights or no particularly good reason and quickly run down even a modern SSD. It makes it kind of tricky to run Windows XP on an SSD. You can still do it and it's probably fine if it's not your daily driver and you're just playing some old games on it but back in the day you wouldn't want to do it
It's probably unlikely it would do "too many writes", and SSD controllers have features to compensate for some SSD-unfriendly practices.
Ironically, some difficulty comes from when the OS supports more SSD feature than Windows does. SSDs have sometimes advertised to the OS that they support features that they do not really support, and any OS that is foolish enough to believe the SSD will quickly corrupt its data by sending valid commands the SSD doesn't understand. Doesn't cause a problem on Windows because Windows doesn't support that feature either, but this was a problem on Linux and Mac OS a few years ago with several drives, making it quite difficult for Linux users to buy SSDs with confidence!
nice
REPLACE THE TERMALPASTE ALREADY!
YOUR KILLING IT!
Hello all , I also have a PowerMac G5 dual , as a daily driver , (maxed out as posible) and was interested is there anything I can upgrade with new weerd stuff on the market today - usable under osx 10.5.8-9? (I don't care upgrade-ing to intel , for that I have a Dell Precision). G5 has 8 gb of DDR400Mhz , one 4 GB Seagate SSHD(hybrid drive) SATA , and one 2 TB WD SATA . Externally I use a USB-to-usbC 6TB LaCie Porsche w/ seagate inside , works pritty well. I have a wifi module , can the slot hold any SSD? Howabout a MVMe to firewire adapter? that should be fast enough for Mac OS X 10.5.8 to load or 10.5.9. Anything else I can do? I don't want to give up my Acrylic apple cinema display panel so I use a FX5200 w/ ADC... I tested a Orico M2 to mSATA 512gb kingstone ssd & adapter to SATA in a MacBook , but it did not help visibly performance , so I pulled and mounted a classic sata hdd disk. Any interesting suggestions to upgrade to (working under osx ) is highly apreciated. ( I am pritty much stuck on upgrade front , except for extenall devices) Is there any hack-upgrades on CPU or FSB or AGP ADC card's you can suggest & we can try? On software fronts there are stuff we can do, even in OS X , but I preffer sticking to interesting Hardware upgrade's. (I even was thinking of upgradeing the DVD-RW to a IDE Blue-ray writter , is it worth it ?)
Have your experiments so far included putting the actual /boot partition with the Linux kernel onto your CF card? I'm not familiar with the Linux on PPC boot process, but the bootloader for getting from Open Firmware to the kernel (GRUB, it looks like?) will definitely need to be able to see the device where the kernel lives, and if Open Firmware isn't finding it, the bootloader probably won't either. As far as I know, GRUB isn't really able to scan the bus and find devices itself, but generally relies on what the system firmware provides.
Correct, ish. At least on PC, GRUB _usually_ doesn't scan and use devices itself. But it can if you run the nativedisk command first. However that's just a nuisance. You'd need a configfile containing the nativedisk command on the system-recognized drive and at that point it's just easier to have the whole regular /boot there as well.
The problem with a Mac is that it has to boot into Open Firmware first (think of it like the EFI or BIOS chip on a PC) you CAN put a boot loader into Open Firmware with Linux, I did this on Old World Rom PPC chips back in the 90s. Your problem is that everything has to be seen by Open Firmware first.
whats the 411 on using a newer gpu like a hd6870 /6770 or 5770 in this machine ? on void . id loveto see
You read my mind on that one 😂
@@ActionRetro just curious I want to see what you get going .
There is a possibility firmware could see NVME SSD with a boot rom. I think Samsung 950 Pro has it (not evo).
The 950 Pro does have a boot rom for the x86 PC BIOS, that rom isn't going to run on a PowerPC CPU
@@SwitchingPower It's probably possible to reflash the drive's option ROM with a PPC OpenFirmware variant. The problem is finding such an OROM but I'm sure it could be written by slightly mad hackers.
PC EFI is completely different to Open Firmware.
hello everyone, I have a few questions,
what so far is the best upgrade video card?
has anyone installed windows?
what is the best performance OS installed?
Any repurpose projects?
anyone still use it for video editing?
anyone use it for music editing?
is 8GB the max ram?
Some of this im actively researching via search engines, the more info the better.
Thank you for your time.
Bytes vs bits. 469gb is correct when remeasured in what the computer uses.
i waqnna see you try and run windows on one of these things
they do sata versions of the disc on modules SSD 2GB Transcend TS2GSSD25H-S SATA Flash Dom SSD Disk on Chip Module Serial-Ata
1:07 3.5 SSD?
Wooder. My fellow Pennsylvanian. 😁
So, did you try running Mac 10.5.7 with the NVMe?
Ubuntu 22.10 LTS on Power Mac... If not, the first Mac Pro
NVMe becoming the dominant storage standard is all well and good, but the CPU manufacturers aren't keeping up. Modern CPUs don't have anywhere near enough PCIE lanes to accommodate a modern GPU (16 Lanes by itself!), an NVME for your OS (another 4 lanes), and extra storage for your files/game library/etc. (4 lanes per 2TB currently.) I know you can buy HEDT platforms for more PCIE lanes, but those chips tend to not be great for gaming due to lower clock speeds.
Just like The 8-Bit Guy said using a g5 mac pro for every day things is like using a pick up truck to go shopping or however he said it
careful man or you'll go straight to "PLAID" just like Spaceball 1 did when pursuing Lonestar's Eagle 5 after the latter rescued the princess
Could you do it by installing a bootloader?