XBMC for Linux port to PowerPC (PPC) CPU-architecture?
#61
davilla Wrote:What the current status of the ppc patches. Are they in svn now? If so, then I can start trying a 10.4 ppc build and see what shakes out.

No, but in the meanwhile you can get my complete sources here: http://www.4shared.com/dir/7875132/7...a/sharing.html
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#62
cedric Wrote:No, but in the meanwhile you can get my complete sources here: http://www.4shared.com/dir/7875132/7...a/sharing.html

URL is not expanding for me ;(
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#63
davilla Wrote:URL is not expanding for me ;(

Sorry, my mistake.

I cannot upload files bigger than 100MB, so the archive is split in 5:
xbmc_ppc.md5
xbmc_ppc.tar.bz2.000
xbmc_ppc.tar.bz2.001
xbmc_ppc.tar.bz2.002
xbmc_ppc.tar.bz2.003
xbmc_ppc.tar.bz2.004

You can extract it with
Code:
cat xbmc_ppc.tar.bz2.* | tar -xvj
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#64
Smile 
@cedric (and araldor?), please submit all your patches as diffs (seperatly per 'feature', I think?), see:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=HOW-TO_submit_a_patch
http://trac.xbmc.org

...it makes it much eaiser to review each patch invidually which means they get reviewed sooner

Nod
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.
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#65
PPC (PowerPC) emulators could possibly make porting easier for those developers who do not actually have PPC hardware:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_...l_machines

QEMU emulator looks most promising at a first glance(?) Huh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QEMU
http://bellard.org/qemu/
Quote:QEMU is an open source software simulator for x86 that can emulate systems with processors of various architectures, including 386, x86_64, ARM, MIPS, PowerPC and Sparc. For ARM, two emulated platforms are available -- an older "Integrator" platform, and a newly-added "Versatile" platform.

The new Versatile platform includes a SCSI hard disk controller, Ethernet card, and graphical display. According to french Debian developer Aurelien Jarno (who published a HOW-TO about installing Debian or another Linux distributions on the open-source QEMU emulator), when run on an Athlon 64 3800+, running under QEMU can perform 20 percent faster than the ARM-based LinkSys NSLU2 (an inexpensive network-attached storage appliance that is commonly pressed into service as a full Debian ARM development target).

Jarno's HOW-TO begins by describing how to download and install QEMU from CVS, to ensure that the latest Versatile platform support is included. He then configures QEMU to emulate a 10GB hard drive, and downloads a publicly shared Versatile kernel that he created (Debian ARM does not yet include a kernel that supports the image, he says). Next he downloads Debian's "Etch" installer, and bootstraps the installer using a qemu-system-arm command.

Jarno's HOW-TO next describes several harmless error messages, leading ultimately to the emulated ARM system's first boot. Jarno's HOW-TO completes the basic installation by installing a more complete kernel.

Jarno's HOW-TO goes on to explore a few more advanced topics, such as running an Xorg server, increasing the amount of RAM to the maximum supported size of 256MB, and setting up a network bridge to allow the emulated system access to the Internet. The HOW-TO closes with a list of additional resources.

The full HOW-TO can be found here (link) was first published in 2006
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.
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#66
Any update on this?

I have a powerpc mac mini with Ubuntu 10.10 installed and can compile xbmc successfully, but it consumes almost 100% cpu for the standard skin in idle and it crashes when trying to see a movie. ffmpeg from the Ubuntu repos work fine.
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#67
sfar Wrote:Any update on this?

I have a powerpc mac mini with Ubuntu 10.10 installed and can compile xbmc successfully, but it consumes almost 100% cpu for the standard skin in idle and it crashes when trying to see a movie. ffmpeg from the Ubuntu repos work fine.

No, your best bet is to find out why it's crashing. Crash logs and xbmc.log are useful things that will show all sort of nice info. Posting them to a pastebin site and giving the URL might even prompt an xbmc dev to comment on possible issues. Aside from that, there are very few users running your setup and zero xbmc devs doing it.
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#68
Rainbow 
I'm looking into this now. I previously managed to get XBMC compiling on the Mac Mini but didn't pursue it at the time because I didn't want to try to diagnose the slow interface (I didn't bother trying to play content). I'm going to try investigating it now since, given the recent break in PS3's chain of trust, it seems like PowerPC as a target platform might heat up again.
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#69
I know this thread has been dead for a while, but I'm working on setting my G4 tower up as a HTPC. The machine is heavily upgraded (dual 1.8 ghz, 1.5 gb ram, Geforce 6200), and I'm building XBMC right now (v11 beta 3.1). I'll report back what my results are...I kind of skimmed this thread, and I think my setup is the most powerful PPC/Linux setup to try XBMC...

FWIW, in OS X, I can decode 720p no problem, anything from there up gets iffy, depending on format.
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#70
Alright. I've got Eden Beta 3 compiled, installed and running on my G4. The menus are smooth. The issue I have right now is that I think I need to force XBMC to use Mplayer. I remember seeing this as an option on whatever build is on my Xbox, and I know Mplayer is what is used as the "standard" player when I open a video outside of XBMC.

How do I force XBMC to use Mplayer?
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#71
xbmc has not used mplayer since the xbox days.
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#72
But my question is can it?

Some googling reveals some old threads of people asking simliar questions (linux machine looking to use mplayer)....

The reason I ask is because video playback is terrible, but the menus are fine. I have no sound right now, but I suspect that to be an unrelated issue.

Mplayer can play all of my content perfectly fine. I know this because that's the process that is used when I play my video files outside of XBMC. I *think* XBMC uses PAplayer and DVDplayer by defalut, right? I don't know what PowerPC support is like with either, but if Mplayer works, why not use it?

Again, maybe I'm way off here, but XBMC behaves for me except for video playback. Music playback works (or so it seems to - I have no audio, as mentioned, but playing a song doesn't crash XBMC), so I think DVDplayer is my problem...
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#73
Well, I sort of answered my own question. I craeted a playercorefactory.xml and added /usr/lib/mplayer to it. I can now open videos in Mplayer by right clicking and going to "Play using..."

Just as I suspected, Mplayer plays my files fine, though the transition from XBMC to MPlayer is less than smooth. Also, I've learned that the crashes I was getting also seem to be due to DVDPlayer. My log files show DVDPlayer as some of the last activity each time before it crashes.

Does anyone have information on what exactly is incompatible? Can I default to MPlayer, and avoid this problem entirely?
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#74
Hello, I found myelf in this forum trying to compile boxee on Linux using a ppc platform. The build process seems to fail when it enters the xbmc part of it with the following error:

checking if we have SIMD optimisations for cpu type... no ("powerpc")
configure: error: CPU is not supported
~/Downloads/boxee-1.5.0
configure: error: Submodule xbmc/lib/cximage-6.0/jpeg-turbo failed to configure

I assume that cximage-6.0 has no support for powerpc architecture. Is there any work around or any ports of the source code for ppc linux platforms?

Kind regards and apologises if this question is out of date or repeated.
Yiannis
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#75
Maybe you should ask boxee in that case? ^^
AppleTV4/iPhone/iPod/iPad: HowTo find debug logs and everything else which the devs like so much: click here
HowTo setup NFS for Kodi: NFS (wiki)
HowTo configure avahi (zeroconf): Avahi_Zeroconf (wiki)
READ THE IOS FAQ!: iOS FAQ (wiki)
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