2009/6/14 Cameron Kaiser <spectre at floodgap.com>:
Leopard (10.5)
requires a /G4/ of at least 867MHz. The kernel is
compiled against a G4 and will not boot on a G3. The check can be
bypassed with an app called LeopardAssist or an OpenFirmware hack.
Compiling against a G4 implies there is AltiVec (without a non-AltiVec
option) code in the kernel. To my knowledge the Leopard kernel does
not have such a dependency; where did you see this?
Not that I advise bothering with Leopard on a G3, mind you :)
This has been discussed at very considerable length on the LEM
UnsupportedOSX list and it appears to be quite definite; for more
info, I'd suggest asking there.. It does not necessarily imply that
the kernel uses AltiVec, although I don't find that massively
implausible; for instance, the Linux kernel uses MMX and SSE to
accelerate software RAID functions. All it implies, AFAICS, is that as
it loads the kernel checks that it's on a G4-class or better CPU and
aborts if it's not.
--
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