Iâve been given an imac desktop. It is some kind of PowrrPC running OSX Leopard. Works beautifully but too old to update, and no deceloper tools. I donât suppose thereâs an okd version of Pharo that would run on it?
I asked CLAUDE about power PC, see below. I installed a linux on a power pc. I am not sure if that would help. On the other hand, a Mac Neo would be happy to run Pharo for $599 (or less with a .EDU discount) https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/ ⯠a user writes "Iâve been given an imac desktop. It is some kind of PowrrPC running OSX Leopard. Works beautifully but too old to update, and no deceloper tools. I donât suppose thereâs an okd version of Pharo that would run on it?" ⺠Great question! The short answer is: *Pharo itself will be very difficult on PowerPC*, but *Squeak* is a great alternative that should work. Here's the situation: *Why Pharo is tough on PPC:* - Pharo uses the Cog VM, whose JIT compiler only targets x86/x64/ARM â there was never a PowerPC JIT - Even the non-JIT "Stack VM" variant wasn't routinely built for PPC - You'd need to compile a VM from source, but you said there are no dev tools on the machine - Pharo 1.x (2008-era) used older Squeak VMs that *did* support PPC, so in theory Pharo 1.4 with a classic Squeak interpreter VM could work â but finding those builds is an archaeology project *What will actually work â Squeak:* - Squeak's classic interpreter VM had solid PowerPC Mac OS X support - *Squeak 4.x or 5.x* should run on Leopard with the pre-Cog interpreter VM - Check http://squeak.org/downloads/ â they archived old VM builds - Squeak and Pharo share the same lineage (Pharo forked from Squeak 3.9 in 2008), so the environment will feel very familiar *Other options:* - *GNU Smalltalk* â command-line Smalltalk, might be available via MacPorts/Fink if you can get those installed without Xcode (some PPC binary packages exist) - *Squeak 3.9* â the exact version Pharo forked from, definitely had PPC VMs, and is close to early Pharo The PPC iMacs are lovely machines. Squeak 4.x or 5.x is probably your best path to a working Smalltalk environment on it without needing to compile anything. ----- Original message ----- From: Richard O'Keefe via Pharo-users <pharo-users@lists.pharo.org> To: Any question about pharo is welcome <pharo-users@lists.pharo.org> Cc: Richard O'Keefe <raoknz@gmail.com> Subject: [Pharo-users] IMac Pharo? Date: Friday, March 20, 2026 6:15 PM Iâve been given an imac desktop. It is some kind of PowrrPC running OSX Leopard. Works beautifully but too old to update, and no deceloper tools. I donât suppose thereâs an okd version of Pharo that would run on it?
(Thinking really out of the box hereâ¦) IFF youâre really into getting this baby running, you could have a look at the following post. A dude is writing a Rust compiler for the PowerPC in order to run Firefox. Once you have Firefox, you could run SqueakJS with a Pharo image (from very old to more recent). If youâre okay with doing lower level stuff yourself, you could see if a PowerPC implementation of CogVM is possible, but I think it will be even more challenging. ;-)\ \ https://dev.to/scottcjn/i-built-a-rust-compiler-for-a-20-year-old-mac-borrow-checker-and-all-37n7\ \ Source code of the Rust compiler:\ https://github.com/Scottcjn/rust-ppc-tiger
participants (3)
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Aaron Wohl -
erik.stel＠gmail.com -
Richard O'Keefe