Small update on my Macintosh SE FD/HD.
I managed to revive one of the two original hard drives using some tips I found online. It’s not perfect, and around 10% of the data seems to be lost, but most of it was still readable.
With a BlueSCSI, I was able to copy most of the drive, and now the Mac boots and runs stable.
Next thing to fix is the analog board/display issue, because the image is still shifted.
I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the OCLP developers and all contributors to the project.
I own a 27-inch Retina 5K Late 2014 iMac, and without OpenCore Legacy Patcher, I would likely have retired this machine years ago. At one point, I expected it to become outdated, slow, or unsupported by modern versions of macOS. However, this has not occurred.
Instead, the system remains fully functional and continues to serve as an integral part of my daily workflow.
Notably, I am now running macOS Sequoia via OCLP v2.4.1, and the performance has surpassed my expectations for a machine of this age. Hardware released in 2014 remains practical and usable in 2026. I have upgraded the RAM to 32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 and plan to install a SATA hard drive or fusion drive with a 1 TB SSD.
The iMac continues to perform reliably across a range of tasks, including web browsing, productivity applications, media consumption, and moderately demanding workloads. Although Apple has officially ended support for this model, OCLP has extended its usable lifespan in a meaningful, practical way.
I value not only the ability to install newer versions of macOS, but also the broader philosophy underlying the project. OCLP challenges the assumption that hardware becomes obsolete solely due to software support limitations. It provides an alternative to the typical replacement cycle, encouraging continued use of devices that remain fully capable.
It is also notable that I have been able to run light gaming on this system. Although it is not designed for gaming, it performs better than expected for its age and can still run older, less demanding titles satisfactorily.
Naturally, there are limitations and occasional quirks when running modern software on unsupported hardware. However, these issues are minor compared to the overall stability and usability that OCLP enables.
I extend my sincere thanks to everyone involved in developing, maintaining, testing, and documenting OCLP. The effort and expertise required to sustain a project of this nature are considerable, and the impact is substantial. OCLP has extended the practical lifespan of my iMac by years and has helped prevent a fully functional device from becoming unnecessary electronic waste.
Beyond the technical achievement, OCLP represents a more sustainable, user-focused approach to computing that prioritizes longevity and user choice.
My late 2014 27-inch iMac continues to perform reliably and remains an essential part of my setup.
2014 → 2026 and beyond.
Thank you, OCLP 🖥️🍎
with a freshly installed SSD and tiger 10.4, shout out techtronics in Manhattan! as it turns out the fuse had blown out.
do you guys think it's a good idea to run wifi/Ethernet on this and browse the web or no? 😅
Hello all! As the title states, that’s exactly what I’m doing. I have all of the hardware I need (a working Mac plus, the midiman Macmam interface, a sampler, drum machine, and synth that are midi capable, along with the appropriate cables etc. My biggest issue is that I’m still new to the vintage Mac sphere and I’m not entirely sure where to get the software I need and/or how to make it work. I have a bluescsi for the Mac, and I think I know what software I need (Master tracks pro 4, and some variety of Opcode’s TX7 patch editor), but I’m stuck on how to go about this! Any help/walking me through it/links to software is greatly appreciated!!
I finally got the complete set! Until now I only had the one single update CD.
Ma petite installation vintage autour d'un Macintosh Classic de 1991. Le disque dur a été remplacé par un BlueSCSI et system 7.0 installé.
PowerVLC, your VLC3 fork is now getting its third major updates since its launch. New features, as always, and countless hours spent in bugs fixing ensuring the experience is closer to perfect than it ever was. Welcome to the retro future.
On the Video I show some of the key features running on my 10.6.8 Mac Mini Core 2 Duo that has the Broadcom Crystal HD 1080p decoding card, but PowerVLC is still compatible starting Jaguar 10.2, GNU Linux (tested on real hardware for the first time and confirmed working on my Intel Atom N270 Netbook \ _ / ), and Windows XP SP3+.
I announced in some place "1.2.1", but I decided to not do it and go directly to the "1.3.0" considering the amount of things I am now happy to be ready to deploy right now.
Intel i386 build confirmed working great on a real Acer Aspire One Atom N270 laptop. Can play HD content just fine with software decoding on AntiX Linux.
Sorry for the lack of polish until then, but I plan to continue to eradicate bugs to deliver a high level quality on all 3 major desktop platforms.
An ergonomical clip creation mode, to easily select parts of the current audio/video you are playing & export quickly (no transcoding needed) a lossless cut of your content.
Mac OS X (Legacy + Modern) is now on-par with Qt:
And on all platforms, it's now possible to preview the pictures just by hovering on the seekbar with most formats/containers. This new option is disabled on slow machines by default though for performance reasons.
A new option to hide all controls of the window after the mouse is outside of it during 3 seconds. Just double click, and controls will be back. On 10.6+, even the title bar hides so it feels like true Picture-In-Picture if you also enable the "Always on top" feature.
On Windows, XP is enough to enjoy it fully.
Detects automatically the black bars of the content you're playing to find the real aspect radio of it. Works also on IPTV/adaptative streams. Combines very well with the Picture-In-Picture mode for maximum immersion.
You can now archive videos from the Invidious instances if you wanna archive & watch them later. Though be aware you need ffmpeg to combine audio + video streams (PowerVLC will automatically call it, but you need it in your path). You can also decide to download just the audio of a video alone for musical contents.
Translations will finally work so PowerVLC will adapt to your language.
Full changelog is available there: https://github.com/Olsro/powervlc/blob/main/CHANGELOG-POWERVLC.md
GitHub: https://github.com/Olsro/powervlc/releases
MacintoshGarden: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/powervlc
Patreon (donations welcome): https://www.patreon.com/Olsro
I wanna thank again the community for all the warm messages & feedbacks, allowing me to fix as much bugs as possible to improve the quality of PowerVLC for everyone
If you find any problem, please file an issue on GitHub: https://github.com/Olsro/powervlc/issues
Enjoy
No AI was involved in writting this post. I'm sorry if it is not perfect, I am french native
was able to get my hands on an adc to dvi adapter and connect this monitor to my mac mini while my power mac g4 cube is in the repair shop, absolutely loving his display!
as for powering everything up, i'd highly recommend grounded wall outlets or a power strip with at least 1500J surge protection
other cool hacks i found, this lets you use the apple pro speakers on newer mac systems, no soldering required!
All tested from my iBook G3 and guaranteed usable on Jaguar 10.2. Any better machine will lead to faster experience. As always, PowerVLC is universally compatible on desktop machines: Linux (arm64/intel64/intel32), Mac OS X (10.2 Jaguar to Tahoe 26), Windows (XP SP3+)
https://i.ibb.co/4wZkfZzf/Screenshot-2026-08-09-18-00-20.png
YouTube is important, it hosts so much knowledge and content. It's the main freely available video bank in the internet and we all know how painful it now behaves with old machines because of all the JavaScript to run.
I couldn't manage to find any satisfying way to integrate YouTube directly, so I tried to think out of the box and the best compromise right now in my opinion is to access it through a super-powerful proxy : Invidious
The Invidious ecosystem seems dynamic right now with several public instances available 24h/24.
With Invidious APIs integrated properly into PowerVLC, the Tube is now back and quickly accessible even with the lower G3's in town.
Of course you can also use yt-dlp and PPCMC, this new plug-in is one more option
A completely integrated Jellyfin client/front-end that can connect through HTTPS using the modern gnuTLS integrated in PowerVLC.
Can find content, filter, search, handle auth, request transcoding from the server to the quality of your choice (if your server supports it of course).
I took all the knowledge that I got from developing JellyDinosaur (a plain HTML/JavaScript ES3 compliant Jellyfin Front-End that I plan to share soon... when I find time). JellyDinosaur was finished weeks ago but PowerVLC is eating all my free time so I couldn't find time to share it to the community.
Anyway, directly integrating the spirit of JellyDinosaur gives even a better experience to the end user. It is more ergonomic & fast, you don't even need a web browser and to bother yourself with TLS and all the kind of quirks that comes with web based solutions and it saves your precious RAM.
Auth on your server or one of your friend directly from PowerVLC. Find, search, stream music with gapless playback & download music directly from any Subsonic server.
Find & discover new podcasts directly from PowerVLC conveniently using your mighty indestructible almost 30 year-old G3. No bullshit, no notifications, fast & distraction-free experience using a machine that never let you down.
These new shortcuts are available by default from the PowerVLC radios browser. You can then copy these shortcuts to your media library, and it will play a different radio each time:
This way you can conveniently discover new stations & new music.
Works with PowerFox ♥, Basilisk, and anything based on the XUL platform*
You can install this browser extension quickly from the "Help" menu, it will supercharge your browser so you can:
Now all ATI Rage G3 should be supported too, which includes many CRT iMacs so these can now join the party of hardware-accelerated decoding, which means full speed DVDs playback with low CPU usage, low eat, and perfect smoothness. In the heat-waves we're suffering right now, you don't want a heater in your room.
I also fixed the support of animated DVD menus, they were not hardware-accelerated at all before this update.
All tested on my Mac Mini Core 2 Duo where I replaced its wifi card with the BCM970015 card. PowerVLC is able to detect if your Mac has this acceleration card at launch and offers a convenient dialog to install the kext all automatically, you never need to run commands in the terminal by yourself or use a dead old XBMC version to use your Crystal HD acceleration card on Mac OS X.
PowerVLC will always try to use it when it can, it's transparent when you play format that is compatible with what you card can decode. This card is very efficient & gives smooth h.264 1080p decoding even on very weak machines like hackintoshed Intel Atom N270 netbooks.
Enjoy faster decoding performance on your G4 and G5 macs.
You can now change the quality manually using menus to fit your needs, and select any quality offered by the streamed content
Optimizations were done to reduce the binary sizes. The universal binary has been drastically reduced while keeping compatibility with all Macs. The G4e build was not relevant (+0.5% of performance measured) so it was abandoned completely also.
All documented in the full changelog. I heard community feedbacks I got during this week to make PowerVLC the best fast, old machines friendly, & no bullshit product I can gift to the community.
GitHub (contains the complete changelog): https://github.com/Olsro/powervlc/releases
MacintoshGarden: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/powervlc
Patreon (donations welcome): https://www.patreon.com/Olsro
I hope you enjoy this massive overhaul, making my vision taking place of what my dream VLC is.
I wanna thank also the community for its warm messages & feedbacks, allowing me to fix as much bugs as possible to improve the quality of PowerVLC for everyone
So I haven’t stopped with the 08 iMac and bought this rare 2007 17 inch MacBook in almost like new condition except for the scratch on the top lid. When I turned it on I was amazed by the screen and overall look with the keyboard backlight. Lion is such a good looking OS and fits really well with this body style. I’ve seen 15 and 17 inch aluminum Pros on eBay and most of them are not even close to this condition. Not a single dent! Even the charger looks good.
Here’s the situation. I have an old Performa 6400/180 with files written on the hard drive that I’d like to save and remove before I sell this unit. I had a read/write CD connected via SCSI, but when I unboxed it from storage it had since died. Without having USB ports or a CD burner. How can I remove the files I want saved? I hope someone is able to help me. I’d hate trashing years of work. 🙏
I may actually lose my mind over this beautiful machine. I've been trying to get it working for ages now. Found it in a charity shop in Sweden, came completely boxed, even the polystyrene packaging is barely damaged, this thing has clearly been looked after.
Quick backstory: booted it up when I first got it, worked fine, but there was no hard drive fitted at all when I went to install the OS. Opened it up and confirmed it, genuinely nothing there, previous owner must have pulled it at some point.
Bought an IDE to SATA adapter for an SSD, tried it, only got a grey screen and nothing further. Then bought the exact same adapter as someone in a video who has the identical model working. Same result.
The CD drive boots and works completely fine on its own when the adapter is unplugged. But the moment the adapter is connected to the IDE cable, even with no SSD attached to it at all, everything stops. No startup chime, just a grey screen. Holding Option or C does nothing. Holding the mouse button to force-eject the disc doesn't work either.
The adapter's jumper is set to Master.
I've attached some pictures of the drive and adapter setup, plus a bonus photo of a lovely G5 while I'm at it.
Genuinely stumped since someone else has the exact same hardware combination working fine. Any ideas what could cause a bare adapter, with nothing even plugged into it, to hang the whole machine like this?
An incredible history of the Apple Network Server (running AIX on PowerPC), along with network IPC via AppleTalk to a 68k.
