Legacy support (OS X ppc, Windows 9x) still needed?

[Dominus]

Hi all,

I'm wondering how many people are actually running stuff like Exult (or the other Ultima engine projects Pentagram, XU4, Nuvie) on really old machines or OS versions.
It always comes up whether to keep supporting Windows 9x. And now OS X ppc support is being questioned (by myself ), since compiling for Ppc is getting harder and harder and now SDL seems to be dropping ppc support in their upcoming SDL 1.2.15 release (and the satellite libs SDL_mixer, _net...). i can work around this somewhat but it's getting a bit frustrating

So let me hear how you look at this.
And I know this is not going to be a representative poll, I just would like to know how other people think of this

[VisElEchNon]

I haven't used Windows 98 since about 2000, Win 2K since about 2003, Win XP in about 2 years and I never touched Vista... I tend to be a little bleeding edge with my OS though. It's possible that there are a few people out there still using 2000 as their primary OS, but I wouldn't expect it to be more than a literal "few".

I have no clue as to the Mac OS... I don't use them at all...

[Mimu]

Win9x, after sufficient patching, has been a great set of operating systems. I'd still be running a hacked 98 if it wasn't for eventual loss of driver support for working hardware.

I'm certainly keeping 9x support for my projects for probably another decade. But without anyone on the Exult team to keep the flame going, it would most likely be too much to ask. Happily, 98 and ME users can use Unicows and KernelEx to be able to run a surprising number of XP-compatible programs. And really, anyone hardcore enough to stick with 9x today really should be using all kinds of unofficial tweaks.

So, in all practicality, old OS support can be dropped. Serious 9x users can still enjoy Exult, while the developers can simplify the code, and everyone wins.

[Dominus]

Just so everyone knows it's not a decision being made now
Right now at least the Windows 9x support is still in and it'S not going to change anytime soon.

[monotremata]

Im still running it on my dual core G5.. But I hear ya.. More and more people are dropping PPC nowadays.. I cant update alot of my audio programs anymore so my recording studio is basically 'frozen' at like 2007/2008.. My MAME front end I use (qmc2) relies on the Qt libraries, which the last release was a PAIN to compile on PPC but I finally got it built as a Universal library.. The newest release of Qt flat out dropped PPC so no moving forward there either..

To be honest, Exult has worked just fine on my PPC systems ever since I can remember.. Ive beaten both games multiple times from 1.2 all the way up to the last snapshot I have.. As long as 1.4.9 is still available for download I have no problems with ya dropping PPC if need be.

Im starting to look into getting some sort of Intel based Mac finally, whether its a $400 2006/2007 Mac Pro or a Hackintosh system, I dont know yet hehe.. Ive been seeing the early Mac Pros on ebay now for around $3-400 plus shipping lately.. Its kinda making me regret dropping $200 on this G5 last summer when I shouldve just saved a couple more hundred bucks and been done with it.. And now thanks to my new job, Im signed up with Intel's retail program which gives me some GREAT discounts on Intel hardware.. Just last month the special was a Core i7 cpu for $74.. But of course I slept on it and missed out..

[Dominus]

Funny thing about SDL is that the SDL 1.2.15 source happily compiles for PPC but they are dropping PPC from the official framework release. Why? Because then the framework can be bundled with mac app store apps. Apple forbids ppc executable code it seems.
And that the main developer has no ppc machine and/or toolchain doesn't help either...
I offered to make some universal framework for them but didn't have any time yet. And since they want to be app store conform anyway....

So Exult will be fine for some time as we don't use the Framework, same for pentagram and dosbox snapshots. Xu4 relies on the frameworks (sdl_mixer as well) so either I do make an universal framework myself or I'll drop ppc.

Thanks so far for the input (and on aiera as well), next time when the easy way is to drop legacy support I'll point to this thread

[monotremata]

Good to hear that about DOSBox! I like Xu4 but at least I can still play 1-6 on on my dinosaur in DOSBox for the time being hehehe!

[TDI]

>Win9x, after sufficient patching, has been a great set of operating systems.

I'm afraid you might be actually serious about this.

[MegaMike]

"Win9x, after sufficient patching, has been a great set of operating systems."

Not by modern standards. Have fun playing with archaic and inefficient interfaces, obsolete and no longer supported software, and butt-ugly GUIs.

[1crash007]

maybe i should fire up my 16 year old laptop with 98 on it (16mb memory)
and see how exult (1.4 and snapshot) run.

Instead of support for older systems i recommend a faq page to help
people otherwise im up with the idea of dropping support for 9.x

or maybe my laptop has 95? whatever.. sorry just random ramble..

[monotremata]

Good news regarding SDL 1.2.15 for the PPC..

Like Dominus said, it builds from source on a PPC just fine (and for the first time it appears the fatbuild.sh script actually works and builds it universally).

I also decided to fire up the XCode project that comes with the source and by default, the project is set to build the Frameworks as a 32/64bit Universal Binary. Got the Frameworks built last night with no problems, and also compiled it from source.

I just havent done the actual install part yet since I have 1.2.14 installed and I want to make sure its not going to break Exult or SDLMame before I do it..

Looks to me like SDL is still very PPC friendly, they just wanna keep compliant with Apple's App Store rules so you have to do it yourself now..

[monotremata]

Hmm also interesting.. Latest source for 1.3 builds a UB framework just fine too..
And all the 'deprecation' messages that show up while building 1.2.15 are gone as well..

[Dominus]

Don't pollute your system with 1.3 SDL yet. They are planning to make it a 2.0 and name it different so not to crash the party for SDL 1.2x users. Until then I would only put SDL 1.3 in a special prefix.

Exult will not compile with latest SDL 1.3 currently. Lanica *recently* (last summer) added some way to compile Exult with SDL 1.3 but since then SDL 1.3 changed to need "named threads" (if I remember correctly) and we don't do that yet. Adding to that Lanica didn't fully port Exult to 1.3 but went the way of the SDL 1.2 compatibility layer of SDL 1.3. That one is supposed to go the way of the dodo as well. So sooner or later Exult will need to be fully ported to SDL 1.3...

[bl0ckeduser]

I know that this is an old thread, but...
please take note that SDL never dropped support for PPC.

As the SDL author Sam Lantinga writes,

"[SDL has no PPC binaries] Because I don't have a PPC machine or a toolchain to build it.

If you contribute .dmg files with PPC universal binaries I'll be happy to host them, but I can't build them." (http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.sdl/55035)

There have been no official binaries for Mac OS 9 (which is, btw, PPC) since 2007, but is still perfectly possible to compile bleeding edge SDL on Mac OS 9 (I have recently; all the tests worked).

Also, SDL-1.2.15 was released yesterday.

[bl0ckeduser]

> but is still perfectly possible to compile bleeding edge SDL on Mac OS 9 (I have recently; all the tests worked).

[that is, bleeding-edge SDL-1.2; SDL-1.3 dropped OS 9 support]

[Dominus]

Yes, if you look closely you will see that Sam was replying to me
What I meant is that the release binary dropped ppc support.

[monotremata]

Theyve released the official SDL 1.2.15 now, and there is a Framework up there for PPC/OS X 10.4-5 machines.. But then again that doesnt really affect us Exult folks since we dont build against those anyways..

[Dominus]

Oh, the framework is for ppc as well? Haven't checked yet.

[monotremata]

Yeah one of the SDL MAME guys posted it up this morning and what do ya know theres one underneath the Intel only releases..

So, does this mean I can get rid of 1.2.14 now and install .15?? Exult and everything should be fine no??? I still have it sitting in my dev directory all compiled and waiting to be installed, just didnt want to break anything hehe..

[Dominus]

I've been using mercurial of SDL for a while now for making the snapshots. The snapshoits are only missing the latest fixes from the last two weeks.
So yes, get rid of 1.2.14

Now I see what is up with the ppc framework. It's not quite what I'd expect since the one with ppc is ppc+intel for OS X 10.4. Not a true threeway (32/64bit intel+ppc) universal framework as it was for SDL 1.2.14. One can lipo it though from the two frameworks

[monotremata]

Whenever I build QMC2 (my front end for SDLMAME), I always error out during the build if I select 32/64-bit Universals and Im building against the 10.4 SDK.. To build with the 10.4 SDK, you can only compile the standard 32-bit UB.

But if I change it to build off the 10.5 SDK I can compile the 32/64 bit one..

[rekuli]

The "keep the 32bit stuff" issue is the same question as with "keep arch ports"... keeping them makes only sense as long as the required libs support them, too. I favor PPC64 and still prefer using my Linux-Mac, but when support drops everywhere --- since PPC-Macs aren't built and sold anymore, as are m68k-machines like my good old amiga1200 --- , it makes no sense to keep unused code overhead in future releases. Historical snapshots which include code for those platforms should be preserved and archived, by all means. But new ones should concentrate on the 64bit-architectures of Intel-PC and Intel-Mac (and, maybe, ia32-netbooks).

Fact is, if you try to support the people that continue to use "outdated" machines like a PPC Mac (no insult intended) and use the most recent (often outdated) libraries for their architecture, you'll have to split development *and* take care of having developers for recent libs with, eg., legacy Windows or PPC support. If you have the manpower, great. If not, drop legacy Windows, m68k, and PPC.

[monotremata]

Just did my taxes yesterday and am getting close to $1000 back... With patience I WILL get me a used Mac Pro for around $5-600 and be off and running...

Looks like the Core and Core2Duo ones are out of my price range so I hope those dual and quad core Xeons will keep me going for as long as my PPC Macs have!

[monotremata]

And BOOYAH!!! Not that its breaking news or anything but Im so stoked..

Won a 2x dual core 2Ghz Mac Pro last night on ebay for $500!!!!
4GB ram, comes with a 300 and a 250GB HDD, Lion installed, etc..

It may be the first generation Intel Mac but at least now I feel somewhat up to date and 'modernized' WOOHOO!!!
Not to mention for about $200 I can pop in a couple of quad core Clovertown CPU's and go from 4 cores to 8 and keep it going!!!

Come friday I will bid farewell to my G5 and wont have to annoy Dominus anymore with PPC compiling!!

Not to mention I can finally update most of my recording studio software beyond 2008 hah!

[Dominus]

Nice! Congrats and have fun with Lion

[monotremata]

So far so good. Although I was a bit irritated to find my Library folder hidden as well as my version of Logic Pro won't run under 10.7!