Powermac on Apfel hammer

Strange behavior of my PowerMac G5 - it doesn't boot anymore

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Anyone who reads my blog from time to time is familiar with my PowerMac setup. I have two SSDs connected to the internal SATA ports: a 512 GB SATA SSD for Mac OS X 10.5 and a 128 GB SSD for Linux. I also have an NVMe SSD connected to the internal PCI Express x4 port.

The 128 GB SSD for Linux runs Debian 12 SID, and its primary function is to boot the actual Linux distribution from the NVMe SSD. The PowerMac, specifically the Open Firmware, doesn’t have drivers for NVMe, and neither does Mac OS X. Therefore, it boots Grub from the internal SSD to load the correct kernel and partition from the NVMe SSD.

Long time not seen...

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dear friends of PowerPC Linux, Unix and especially the Powermac G5, I’ve not written since quite a time. The reason was my other Webproject [¹] which I managed to melt with another Website and beside that, move it into a Docker Container and run it and adopt everything and so on and on and on… you know - from stick to wood like someone says. :-)

But what I want to say is that I am using Arch POWER ppc64 Linux now for quite some time every day and while I am listening to Navidrome streamed MP3 [²] in my TerminalDrome Client or do some Webstuff with Firefox or sending Mails via Calws-Mail, I am absolutely happy and it never crashed or something like that. It works so well.

Speed of light - NVMe SSD in a Powermac G5

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I told you the other day that my PowermacG5 owns an NVMe-SSD-Adapter as a PCI-Express Card with a 1 TB NVME-SSD. That runs great, here is the Benchmark:

[arch@ARCHLINUX ~]$ sudo pacman -S hdparm
Abhängigkeiten werden aufgelöst …
Nach in Konflikt stehenden Paketen wird gesucht …

Pakete (1) hdparm-9.65-2

Gesamtgröße des Downloads:             0,10 MiB
Gesamtgröße der installierten Pakete:  0,24 MiB

:: Installation fortsetzen? [J/n]
:: Pakete werden empfangen …
hdparm-9.65-2-po...   101,0 KiB   394 KiB/s 00:00 [######################] 100%
(1/1) Schlüssel im Schlüsselbund werden geprüft    [######################] 100%
(1/1) Paket-Integrität wird überprüft              [######################] 100%
(1/1) Paket-Dateien werden geladen                 [######################] 100%
(1/1) Auf Dateikonflikte wird geprüft              [######################] 100%
(1/1) Verfügbarer Festplattenspeicher wird erm...  [######################] 100%
:: Paketänderungen werden verarbeitet …
(1/1) Installiert wird hdparm                      [######################] 100%
:: Post-transaction-Hooks werden gestartet …
(1/1) Arming ConditionNeedsUpdate...

[arch@ARCHLINUX ~]$ sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/nvme0n1

/dev/nvme0n1:
Timing cached reads:   2258 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1129.63 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 1384 MB in  3.00 seconds = 461.12 MB/sec

Yes, 1129 MB/Sec, bäm!, this is what PCIE 1.0 4.0 Slot can do. :-) Nicenstein, in a 2005 Computer.