Apple Power Mac G4 Quicksilver (M8493)

Apple Power Mac G4 “Quicksilver” and “Quicksilver 2002”
 * Apple Model Number: M8493
 * Apple Model ID: PowerMac3,5
 * Specific models (order numbers):
 * QuicksilverLEM:
 * 733 MHz (Desktop: M8359LL, Server: M7948LL)
 * 867 MHz (Desktop: M8360LL)
 * 800 MHz DP (Desktop: M8361LL, Server: M7949LL)
 * Quicksilver 2002LEM:
 * 800 MHz (Desktop: M8705LL)
 * 933 MHz (Desktop: M8666LL, Server: M8649LL)
 * 1.0 GHz DP (Desktop: M8667LL, Server: M8650LL)

Technical specifications can be found either from Apple or at EveryMac.com. Useful information about all Power Macs can be found at LowEndMac.

Specifications
The following listing is from a stock Quicksilver 733 MHz model with an nVidia GeForce2 MX400: lspci -nn Except for the AGP graphics card all PCI peripherial devices should be identical in all Quicksilver models. The Quicksilver 2002 may have newer revisions of these devices.

/etc/make.conf
Before you start compiling anything you should set the appropriate compiler options.

Most “Quicksilver 2002” models are equipped with the newer PowerPC 7455 processor, which is from the software point of view identical to the PowerPC 7450, so this setting will work for all Quicksilvers.

Kernel
Use the sources of your choice and create a symlink to /usr/src/linux. The following is just an example:

You can either copy the .config from the kernel on the Gentoo LiveCD for your own kernel configuration and modify it, or create a new one using defconfig:

Processor
The PowerPC 7450/7455 processor does not support frequency scaling, so there is no need to activate this feature. Additionally all stock processors don't feature temperature sensors, but it may well be that third party upgrades do.

Floppy disk drive
If your Power Mac has a build-in floppy drive, you may also want to activate it:

Hard disk drive
For access to your hard disk drive you will need either the older IDE driver, or the newer libata driver that is available since Kernel 2.6.32. The later is highly recommended:

With this selection the devices will be named, e.g. for the Apple Partition Map (APM).

If for a really good reason you wish to go with the older IDE driver, the devices will be named, e.g. for the APM.

Device drivers
All Power Mac G4's that have AGP graphics cards are PMU based so you can safely skip the CUDA support. The hardware clock support has been included in the newer Generic RTC driver.

yaboot
If you followed the Gentoo PPC handbook you should have yaboot already installed.

The following is an example of how to setup yaboot. For this, simply edit /etc/yaboot.conf with your favorite editor:

This specific configuration assumes:
 * 1) /dev/sda2 is your yaboot bootstrap partition
 * 2) /dev/sda7 is your Linux boot partition (/boot)
 * 3) /dev/sda9 is your Gentoo Linux root partition (/)
 * 4) * The boot partition and the root partition may be the same on your system.
 * 5) You compile your kernel using the  package and create an initramfs.
 * 6) Your primary kernel is  and
 * 7) Your previous (fallback) kernel is  and
 * 8) * The filenames for the kernel and the initramfs may be symlinks and can be automatically created using.

For your specific system:
 * Use to find out where your partitions are.
 * Get your /etc/yaboot.conf set up accordingly.
 * Don't forget to run to commit the changes to your yaboot bootstrap partition.

Sound
The Quicksilver uses a TAS3001C sound chip, that is well supported by the ALSA module. The ALSA device will be called “PowerMac Tumbler” and may have a constant white noise once a sound has been played. This is a known issue on the Quicksilver Power Macs and affects every installed operating system. (Mac OS and Mac OS X show the same behaviour.)

As a workaround it helps to mute the PCM channel and unmute it again. The white noise will be gone only until the next sound is played.

You do not need to activate, which is for newer Power Macs.

Your ALSA configuration file should look similar to this:

The following might only be needed for out-of-kernel ALSA drivers:

Open Firmware frame buffer
For the text console the Open Firmware frame buffer driver works well and has the advantage of being independet of the actually used video card. This makes it easier to transfer an installation across different Power Mac machines. On the down side this driver is very generic and video output isn't very fast. Since most users will use X11 anyway and the text console is only required as a failsafe/backup system (“if something should go wrong”), using is a good and safe choice.

There are also accelerated console drivers available for ATi as well as nVidia, which will make text console video output faster especially for higher resolutions.

This is to set up the Open Firmware framebuffer in your kernel:

You can set the desired resolution by passing the appropriate line to your kernel command line (e.g. in your file), for example: kernel command line option

To confirm that the frame buffer is working, you should see a line like this in your dmesg output: dmesg Alternatively, looking in /proc/fb will show the used frame buffer driver: cat /proc/fb

For the text console with specific frame buffer drivers for ATi and nVidia, use these settings:

nVidia
All you need is to include the nVidia driver for X11 in your configuration.

After installing X.org X11 you should not setup at all. The driver will be selected automatically and should work correctly out-of-the-box. Currently there is no support for hardware acceleration.

ATi
Some ATi Radeon cards are very well supported. One example is the ATi Radeon 9000 Pro which is found in many stock Power Mac G4 “Mirrored Drive Doors”. If you have such a card in your Quicksilver, choose a graphics driver from those available for your card and follow the linked guide.