Homebrew Apple Is there any Custom Firmware for the iMac G5

[MrCat]

I like to hack everything i own so my old mac is next on my bucket list
I searched for two hours without a result i decided to ask some forums

 

[DKAngel]

what are u actually trying to achieve though? u wont find any "custom firmware"
and it being a powerPC will be limited to running power pc stuff, so either osx or some form of linux/bsd etc

 

[hippy dave]

It's not referred to as custom firmware on that kind of computer, the actual firmware is low-level enough that it rarely needs much in the way of tweaking, but the whole operating system that runs on top of it, OS X, can be endlessly tweaked and customised however you want. Check which version you're running (Google says OS X Leopard is the latest), and search for tweaks and customisation for that. It's an old version but all the info and software will still be out there.

 

[MrCat]

It's not referred to as custom firmware on that kind of computer, the actual firmware is low-level enough that it rarely needs much in the way of tweaking, but the whole operating system that runs on top of it, OS X, can be endlessly tweaked and customised however you want. Check which version you're running (Google says OS X Leopard is the latest), and search for tweaks and customisation for that. It's an old version but all the info and software will still be out there.

i've also heard of Sorbet leopard which is a faster and feature rich leopard is this mac custom "firmware"

 

[tech3475]

i've also heard of Sorbet leopard which is a faster and feature rich leopard is this mac custom "firmware"

I suggest you learn the difference between the firmware and Operating System to avoid future confusion.

On G5 Macs their actual firmware is known as ‘Open Firmware’, AFAIK you should not need to modify this as it‘s really used to just boot the OS and there aren’t any restrictions like there are on modern Macs. It’s effectively to Macs what BIOS is to PCs.

There is a command prompt, which is user accessible, but the only times I’ve seen people use it was when installing Linux (see below).

Sorbet Leopard is a customised version of Mac OS, I’ve never used it but I know of a couple of videos on it:



There is also relatively modern Linux distro I’ve heard of, but I don’t know it’s current state:


The two Youtube channels I link to might be of interest to you as they regularly ‘mess around’ with old hardware, including old Apple stuff.

 

[hippy dave]

i've also heard of Sorbet leopard which is a faster and feature rich leopard is this mac custom "firmware"

I guess it would be the equivalent to CFW for a console, but yeah customised OS in this case. Sounds worth a go tbh, and who doesn't like sorbet...

 

[r1vver]

MorphOS.
Not officially (yet) supported, but it works (when and if).
This case would be called hacking. At least it's more interesting than installing new, more non-boring wallpapers.

 

[MrQQ]

You could turn it into a 360 dev kit