#intel mac

My macbook pro is from late 2019. I've been using it to teach online since I got it just after the pandemic started and it's the last intel-chipped macbooks.

When I was making my decision to purchase this machine, the Apple silicon M1 chips had just been released and since those were the days before AI was officially launched on the scene, I was unaware of exactly how important these new generation microchips were going to be and I decided against getting one.

I expected there to be issues with the new chips anyway. That was naive of me I now know, I shouldn't have doubted the engineering. I don't know if the M1 chips were drastically more expensive than the Intels, but that must have been one of the factors that influenced my decision. The machine has lost its value 5 fold since I got it.

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen and welcome to my new blog, This Old Mac now in the past I have written a column called This Old Mac on my various other blogs where I have worked with such machines as a Powerbook 1400, a G3, a G4 and a G5 all of which I have used and abused to varying degrees including trying to try and install Linux on the G3 I was going to document but it was so problematic I gave up.

Anyway for the first time ever I now have an actual Intel Mac something I have never been able to previously afford.  Now the Mac in question is a Mac Pro 1,1 (2x 2.66 GHz Dual Core Intel Xeon) which has 32GB of RAM onboard.  The current setup has a Nvidia 7300GT graphics card and is running Snow Leopard OS X 10.6.8.  The system has 4 hard drives in it.  The main system is sitting on a 500GB Western Digital hard drive (Parsnip).  However there is 3 more drives which I am yet to use (Onion, Carrot and Cabbage).

The respective Drives are Onion is a 250GB Hitachi Hard Drive, Cabbage is a 300GB Maxtor Hard Drive and Carrot is a 250GB Maxtor Hard Drive.  Now I could fill them up with various emulators and stuff as I have in every other blog I have and report any bugger ups it has..

However I am throwing the ball at you people to offer suggestions on what I should do after all I admit I am not a Mac expert.

So far on the machine I have Office 2008, Photoshop, Indesign and Illustrator (CS2 versions), Mac Journal, Quark 8.0 Passport edition, Writeroom 2, Daz Studio 4.12, Audacity, iWork 08, final Cut Studio 2 and Logic Pro 9 and  Milky Tracker.

Emulators include  Fuse(Spectrum emulator), Vice(C64), Atari800X(Atari 800 emulator strangely enough), Magic Engine (PC Engine), Snes9X (Super Nintendo), X68000EM (Sharp X68000), DOSBox(MS-DOS).

Then I have Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, Diablo II (including the Lords of Destruction Expansion pack) and I have Gdash (Windows version) running using the Wineskin Winery wrapper basically WINE.

Obviously there is a few other apps such Firefox 48.0.2, Jing a video capture tool and a few others which I probably failing to list or are not hugely important.

However they say the Mac Pro 1,1 can run up to High Sierra if you change the graphics card and install it using the boot.efi file from Piker Alpha.  However if I do that I may lose the ability to use the Snow Leopard partition as the card will not be supported by SL.

Not that it's vital but SL has got Rosetta and can run several PPC things as well as intel stuff so hence why several of the games work.

Also given that this is an Intel Mac.  I can probably run Windows or Linux or god only knows.  So this is my quandry...

What do I do which this machine and this blog.  Do I just continue my formula of running the machine and typing and informing you of the weird quirks it does.

Or do I open this blog to suggestions where as I said I'm no Mac expert put my machine in control of yourselves my audience and let you decide what I do with the machine.

Its not an easy decision  and I really would like to see the strange and wonderful side of Mac which I have never really played with.  Inform me of the weird and wonderful I am missing out on which I can't get on Windows or Linux.

It is a world of adventure here I have very rarely stepped into so I open to adventure...

Let me know your thoughts by following this blog and offering your opinions.

First Intel Mac (10 Jan 2006)

IntelはAXISのプロセッサ製造会社。本来はAppleと敵対するはずの会社ではあるが、AppleはPowerPCプロセッサよりIntelプロセッサのほうが性能や実力が上だと見たため、敢えてユーザーの利益を考えMacにIntelプロセッサを搭載する方針をとった。光の組織でもユーザーの利益になる場合はAXISのベンダとも提携するというのが正しい統合の一面らしい。

PowerPCプロセッサはRISCプロセッサであり単純な命令の複雑な組み合わせで命令を処理するため、処理効率が良くて発熱量が少なく消費電力も少なかった。Intelプロセッサは複雑な命令を単純に実行する方法のため、開発や製造は容易だがRISCより処理効率が悪く発熱量が多く消費電力も多い傾向がある。だが結局のところIntelの企業力と技術力としての実力がPowerPC陣営よりも高く、本来は劣っているはずのCISCプロセッサであるIntelプロセッサのほうが性能が高く性能あたりの発熱量も少なかったため、AppleはIntelプロセッサを採用するという方針をとった。

この方針を取るためにAppleはMac OS XにRosettaと言うPowerPCのバイナリをIntelマシン上で動かすためのバイナリの動的なコンバータ環境を装備したり、PowerPCおよびIntelの両方のプラットフォームで動作する両方のエンディアンのバイナリデータを含んだユニバーサルバイナリをサードパーティー製のソフトウェアで推奨したりした。

ちなみにPhoenix CCDではQEMUをシステムに組み込むことでPowerPCのバイナリをIntelのマシンで動作させたりIntelのバイナリをPowerPCのマシンで動作させることが可能である。この場合動的なコンバータではなく変換したバイナリをファイルとしてキャッシュして動作させることになる。こちらの方が動作速度はいくぶん高速だろう。これに相当するMac OS Xの機能がユニバーサルバイナリということになるし、動的に動かすと仮定するならRosettaである。