64bits of sweet action. Tell me if im right.

[lanceomni]

So someone please tell me if I got my facts right.

1. Leopard OSX is 64bit compatible.
2. Using the -Legacy flag forces 32bit only.
3. Not using the -Legacy flag will allow me to run compatible applications written to support 64bit. But will prevent me from running PPC apps under rosetta?
4. Most drivers (kexts) are not written to take advantage of 64bit.
5. Snow Leopard 10.6 should be a giant step toward 64bit sweet action.

[nfoav8or]

Yes.
Yes.
Yes, taken from: http://www.rosettacommons.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Source+Code+Overview
64-bit Platforms

If you are building on a 64-bit platform it is important to use the appropriate
target and compiler configuration to create a 32-bit build of Rosetta. Rosetta
64-bit builds have not been validated and are not supported at this time.

You can give a try as "make gcc64", it depends on your OS and we can give you help
but could not support it.
Yes, because there wasn't a need when they were first created. Most haven't been updated.
Hells Yes. We are also looking at the extensions that haven't been updated to take advantage of this from the leap from Leopard to Snow Leopard.

[lanceomni]

Well Im glad im on the right track Ill wait quietly till 10.6 arrives.

Also I keep hearing about a large update (10.5.6) coming soon. I figured that any updates to text would probably be written to support 64bit being this close to Snow Leopard. If that is the case would one benefit from such drivers or would you need a complete upgrade all the way around to see any performance differences. (I do understand that the difference should not be too noticeable and would depend heavily on the applications and in some situations a minor performance decrease might even be seen.)

I have installed kexts from Slashack's post on InsanelyMac where he rewrote AppleNforceATA to support 64bit in order to properly address 4GB of memory and I am very please with the results. Before installing I would see problems when I pushed past 3.5GB (3.2GB if I had any PCI cards installed.. Very strange I thought) . Now with the kext installed I have pushed past all but a hair less than 100MB of memory without a crash.

[nfoav8or]

ya know... I've tried that method and it messed up my ability to read from my internal DVD-RW. since I'm not a part of the dev group for snow leopard OR the 10.5.6 update I can only speculate as well and even then I hold my breath a lot because Apple surprises me around most corners with what they update and how.

One thing I do is to label all my extensions with a single color and then after an update I'll go through and check to see which ones were updated by booting to a different (stable) drive first before I go on to try and boot into the updated one.

[lanceomni]

Now that you mention it I did have an issue ejecting my drive after the update. I have not used the drive much prior. Ill have to check and see.