Any news on the A1222?

[matt3k]

@eXeler0
Sure the RBPi would be a fine platform to port it over to, with a good upgrade path. The problem with OS4 is that is it a mess from many perspectives.

By Contrast MorphOS is at a point where it can do most things that anyone would want to do with native applications and still run 68k stuff as needed. Wayfarer, Iris, PolyOrga just had a major update and it just superb, 1080 media playback, Pagestream, PDF, audio players are all extremely good right now. Iris just added vcard contacts and is adding an integrated calendar soon. Then you have the polish of the OS from accessing SMB 2/3 shares to using multiple screens, is all really slick and well deployed.

Logically if you were going to port to another platform (RBPi, ARM, AMD64, etc.) it makes much more sense to do so when you have a complete product you can move over instead of something incomplete and half baked.

If Trevor was thinking creatively He could keep developing hardware and pay to have MorphOS as the OS. That way he could make a few bucks, and not have to loose momentum with an already many times failed effort, we already can predict based on past performance not all features of the A1222 will be supported, more programmers will come and go, more time will be put into old hardware that you can't buy to do multiprocessor, and more tentacles can spring out of the lawsuit - complete madness to me. He could invest in a dog that can already hunt and has a very proven track record, with the same coders who have developed 30 or so releases over the last 20 some years. He could even reach with a crazy hardware bundle on another platform that has more legs for a future than PPC stuff if he adopts MorphOS and moves on. I fear like many of us, is that pride will not allow that to happen and the record will continue to skip and the entire community loses...

[eXeler0]

Now that I think about it, I have a bunch of last PPC gen Mac Minis somewhere in the basement. Probably better specs than A1222 ;-)
I should try MorphOS on at least one of them.,.

I basically dont know much about MorphOS software compatibility.. 68k is emulated obviously, and Think you can Sort of run the same software you could run on a Blizzard PPC?
But are OS4 apps completely off limits or can you somehow run them. (I mean, you can run Windows games on Linux through Vine ;-) but maybe Im optimistic here.

Anyway, seems Tabor is finally happening regardless of what we think of it. Will still be interesting to see final price etc. I dont really know who the target audience is though.. Ppl who have bern wanting a NextGen Amiga but still havent bought one in 20 years?

[matt3k]

You should really try it, it really is an awesome experience. About every App is feature rich and slick. I use MorphOS as my daily driver and do all my work on it. Put the disk in the drive, boot with C pressed and in 5 minutes you will have a full solution installed and ready to go.

68k stuff (that doesn't hit hardware) works great, just double click and your done. For the hardware hitting stuff, just install the chrysalis pack and it has all the UAE stuff (minus the ROMs) ready to go.

For OS4 stuff you can run OS4Emu on MorphOS, but frankly the apps on MorphOS are very likely better as the development of software on the platform is very constant.

I remember when 2.0 came out and many were complaining about it because it was so much different then workbench 1.3. Now we look back and laugh and enjoy 3.22. MorphOS is really the same thing, MorphOS is really Amiga OS improved. Technically it really should have been the next OS, as it was first and then came the lawsuits and stupidity that AOS4 still suffers from over 20 years later.

Get back to me, I bet you begin using it more than you expect as I did...

[jPV]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Now that I think about it, I have a bunch of last PPC gen Mac Minis somewhere in the basement. Probably better specs than A1222 ;-)
I should try MorphOS on at least one of them.,.

If you happen to have a "silent upgrade" mini with 1.5GHz CPU and 64MB graphics memory, you'll get much better experience than other Mac mini models. The other models only have 32MB graphics memory, which isn't quite enough for pleasant resolutions and all the eyecandy.

I basically dont know much about MorphOS software compatibility.. 68k is emulated obviously, and Think you can Sort of run the same software you could run on a Blizzard PPC?

68k CPU is emulated in a similar way OS4 does it, and the rest of the OS is API compatible with OS3, so apps, utilities, system componets (libraries etc.), RTG+AHI games, etc. do work directly like native programs without any external emulator.


Compatibility is pretty much on par with OS4, except the JIT emulation is a bit better and you don't have to blacklist programs like on OS4.


MorphOS also runs both WarpOS and PowerUp software from your Blizzard PPC setup.

But are OS4 apps completely off limits or can you somehow run them. (I mean, you can run Windows games on Linux through Vine ;-) but maybe Im optimistic here.

The mentioned os4emu patches system so that it can launch OS4 software as native software, but it hasn't been developed in years and compatibility isn't that good anymore. But is there that much software that wouldn't have a MorphOS port or similar other solution available? At least I haven't missed anything and the last time I tried os4emu was 15 or so years ago.

Anyway, seems Tabor is finally happening regardless of what we think of it. Will still be interesting to see final price etc. I dont really know who the target audience is though.. Ppl who have bern wanting a NextGen Amiga but still havent bought one in 20 years?

TBH. Tabor caused some buzz when it was announced, and I thought that it'll give a nice boost to the scene. I guess the same people might still be interested in some degree, but maybe the delay, outdating hardware, and price going up will ruin it...


I was also interested to buy it, because I develop NG software, but I still don't have anytyhing else than an emulator to test the programs. A real machine would always be a real machine, and you miss 3D accelerated features etc. on emulation. My WinUAE setup for OS4 is quite claustrophobic experience after all... but as it wouldn't be my main NG setup anyway, I'm not willing to put 1000+ euros on it. For 500-600 I would have bought it despite it's flaws...

[StevenJGore]

What is considered to be the best hardware setup for MorphOS, then?

[matt3k]

@StevenJGore
From my perspective the Mac PPC stuff is where it's at, although X5000 users still enjoy a nice experience although they don't have Altivec and MorphOS has optimize that for media etc.

Here is what I recommend (in no particular order):
1. The PowerBooks (1.67GHz for most performance) - These are fully supported and are simply beautiful to use. Speed wise they are very close to PowerMac G5's for day to day items. Mulitiple monitor support, works well with PowerBooks as well as the PowerMacs below). Some find the built in WIFI not as fast as a PCMCIA WIFI card (I use one for the best experience. The obvious benefit is that these just work perfectly with no tinkering.

2. PowerMac (PCIX Based Systems) - These support AGP video cards and the fastest CPU option (2.7GHz). The 2.7 is just a monster, It plays 1080P video like butter, I play 15 gig files off my NAS and playback it perfect. The best video card I found is the 1950 Pro. One caveot with the 1950 is that they are not MAC PPC bios cards, so you can' t get into early boot to boot from the CD, so you will need the Radeon based Mac card to easily get MorphOS booting from it for the initial install. Afterwards, MorphOS boots just fine off of the PC Bios 1950. I use Faster SSD's for the fastest IO, that helps with Wayfarer (There are posts on Morph.zone to explain how to maximize browsing performance.) Wayfarer will work best on the 2.7MHz system as well. Youtube works great, every website renders perfect, etc.

3. PowerMac - (PCIe based systems) - These are the last run of PowerMacs and are not officially supported by MorphOS yet, although this is my daily driver. The benefit of these is access to PCIe video cards and the new drivers that Bigfoot has been releasing. I haven't played with options of video cards much here and just use the X1900 Mac PPC card, I'm going to invest in a much more modern card at some point (see Morph.zone for what people are using and to find a good one). For these systems I recommend a single processor 2.0/2.3 and then swapping them out with a 2.5GHz processor. These PowerMacs have faster buses than the PCIX systems. Nothing wrong with a standard dual quad core 2.5, but MorphOS only uses one processor and it will run cooler with a single processor system.

That has been my expereince. I'm not much of a gamer but I occasionally play Quake 2/3 and they both play faster than my 10 year old PC.

People either can pick up one of these for free or very cheap locally or can pay $100 to $200 for a perfect example on ebay. The OS is around $100, so all in your looking at $300 or so for outstanding performance. Speed does count for browsing and media playback so always try to get the fastest CPU option if you want to use them.

If you get a MAC for free and want to test drive MorphOS, your out of pocket will be $0. Pretty tough to beat the price here .

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by TCD

That's the most nice way to put it I don't think either performance or price are really any concern to somebody buying the machine though. At least I hope not.

Yes pure performance is not the issue, but it's never good to have older price/performance combination for a commercial product in general when using ARM/x86 type CPUs due to the rapid improvement in 'bang for your buck' as they say.

Today I think most of the effort is on multi-core aspect of CPU performance, which may not be relevant to these kind of products.

[TCD]

But it's an Amiga. You know. That's the thing going for it. Otherwise nobody would spend any money for it. It can run OS4 when there's very little choice otherwise. Talking about performance per money is quite besides the point.

[matt3k]

Originally Posted by TCD

But it's an Amiga. You know. That's the thing going for it. Otherwise nobody would spend any money for it. It can run OS4 when there's very little choice otherwise. Talking about performance per money is quite besides the point.

I guess it is Amiga in name only and is no more an Amiga than MorphOS, since MorphOS was suppose to be AmigaOS in the 90's. They both do the same thing, one does it clunky/old school that has had very little development, while the other has matured and has very many point releases and is more relevant for doing more things.

Maybe people do still have lots of disposable income and they will sell out, we shall see.

[Karlos]

The 2.7 is just a monster, It plays 1080P video like butter,

Yeah, but so can my years old mobile phone, in a tiny fraction of the power. Plus it can cast it to a big screen over wifi without dropping a frame. It can probably do rather a lot of things, and more of them at the same time thanks to actually having SMP, that would show up the ageing G5 for the embarrassing power leech it is, here, in the year 2023.

Not only is it not particularly impressive, I'd be willing to go out on a limb and say "most Amiga fans in 2023 don't rely on their Amiga/like machine for their home entertainment needs, but to scratch their nerd/nostalgia itch".

I'm not here to crap on "NG" - hell, I was an early adopter and even a contributor, but PPC is the deadest of all possible dead horses. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever of any value going for it. You can choose between new, heinously expensive for one choice or discarded old kit for the other.

Comparing MorphOS to OS4 is an utterly futile willy measuring experience because they are both still stuck in the saddle of that dead horse.

I have absolutely no idea why MorphOS persists in clinging to the tip of the melting iceberg of obsolete old hardware when it was able to boot on x64 years ago. Nothing, other than obstinence, couples either system to PPC. They are both almost entirely written in portable languages and the only parts that need to change to move to another architecture are "the native software" - which tends to be equally written in portable languages and their 68K emulation. And it's not as if rock solid, performant 68K emulation hasn't been done on x64 or ARM.

Years ago, takemehomegrandma was shouting that MorphOS in particular should move to ARM. One cannot look at the landscape in 2023 and conclude he was not dead on the money about that.

PiStorm is already making the performance gap from 3.x to either NG look less and less meaningful and it's only going to get better (and more backwards compatible), while PPC performance stays resolutely stuck in the past.

I reckon whichever one ports to either ARM directly (i.e. to run on a PiStorm or standalone) or to 68K in order to run on PiStorm under Emu68k would make a happy killing.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by matt3k

I guess it is Amiga in name only and is no more an Amiga than MorphOS...

Indeed.

[eXeler0]

Could Morph OS be tweaked to run on A1222?

I actually have a bunch of Big-ass powerMacs, including the giant Aluminium G5 PowerMac which you can probably use as a chair too ;-) But there was something about the GPU that wasnt compatible if i recall this right. Also I thought it was such overkill duevtonits Power/volume ratio compared to a MacMini :-)
I also have PowerMac G4 and even the G4 Cube, that would probably be a pretty sweet MorphOS computer.
I also have a couple of laptops that could work with MorphOS. ;-)

[matt3k]

@Karlos

Sure, very true that most AmigaNG users probably don't use their systems to watch media or browse the internet. I am probably one of the few, but maybe not who knows. Regardless it is cool and productive that it can still do it.

As far as the next step for NG? I don't know the official playbook for either but I will make a few observations from what we all see and guess.

MorphOS seems to have a laser sharp focus with improving their OS and applications to a "finished" state. I can only surmise that when they are done/ready, the programming resources will go into investing in another hardware platform. The MorphOS Team seems pretty methodical and practical with what it does. I'm sure they are very well aware of the state of PPC, and I'm sure they will make a public move at some point. Since they rarely over promise and under deliver, I get why they play their cards this way.

Sure, other platforms like PiStorm look good from a hardware performance but the Amiga has suffered from OS/Tools/Programs so even I have something really really fast, I have nothing to run on it, so I can run Quake 1 30 frames faster or sorta browse the web faster with Ibrowse. Again, that seems to be the MorphOS playbook, get the software done first and than worry about what is underneath it. That just seems to make a lot of sense to me anyways.

I think too often we over look the software and focus on the hardware as a community.

For me if I want to relive my early years, I will fire up the 3000 and have fun and still will invest a little bit into it. That said, MorphOS can be used daily, yes on dead hardware, but it still can which is a huge testament to the Team and their years of efforts and decisions.

[matt3k]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Could Morph OS be tweaked to run on A1222?

I actually have a bunch of Big-ass powerMacs, including the giant Aluminium G5 PowerMac which you can probably use as a chair too ;-) But there was something about the GPU that wasnt compatible if i recall this right. Also I thought it was such overkill duevtonits Power/volume ratio compared to a MacMini :-)
I also have PowerMac G4 and even the G4 Cube, that would probably be a pretty sweet MorphOS computer.
I also have a couple of laptops that could work with MorphOS. ;-)

Sure MorphOS could be tweaked, but who would pay for it? IMHO, Trevor could certainly pay for it, but I don't know if his pride would prevent him. Would be a great start to a new era in Amiga land if he tried to do so.

If the G5 has an NVIDIA, yep you have to purchase a Radeon. They are heavy, but I'm used to them now. If you don't plan on doing anything intensive, start with the laptop. That is the easiest way to get going and it really runs pretty well on them.

If you want more (been there myself ), then invest in a video card for the G5 and have fun. On most days my PowerBook, even for browsing is just fine for my needs. The PowerBooks are really good...

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by matt3k

Sure MorphOS could be tweaked, but who would pay for it? IMHO, Trevor could certainly pay for it, but I don't know if his pride would prevent him. Would be a great start to a new era in Amiga land if he tried to do so.

If the G5 has an NVIDIA, yep you have to purchase a Radeon. They are heavy, but I'm used to them now. If you don't plan on doing anything intensive, start with the laptop. That is the easiest way to get going and it really runs pretty well on them.

If you want more (been there myself ), then invest in a video card for the G5 and have fun. On most days my PowerBook, even for browsing is just fine for my needs. The PowerBooks are really good...

This was a bunch of years ago, but I remember chasing a very specific Radeon card (for full Warp3d support) , and not just any model, it had to be the Mac version not the PC version, that would have been too easy ;-) But I'd had too Google around what model I need, don't remember anymore.
I might dig into this again, just because "why not", but Im guessing scalpers are charging insane prices for those rare Radeon models. ;-)
But that PowerMac G5 still has a funcional Mac OS installation on it. And it is one of the most impressive machines (build-quality-wise and sheer bulk) I've ever seen or owned. Would be pretty cool if it came to use again.

Edit, yea so there's the relevant info on this page:
https://www.morphos-team.net/hardware

[matt3k]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

This was a bunch of years ago, but I remember chasing a very specific Radeon card (for full Warp3d support) , and not just any model, it had to be the Mac version not the PC version, that would have been too easy ;-) But I'd had too Google around what model I need, don't remember anymore.
I might dig into this again, just because "why not", but Im guessing scalpers are charging insane prices for those rare Radeon models. ;-)
But that PowerMac G5 still has a funcional Mac OS installation on it. And it is one of the most impressive machines (build-quality-wise and sheer bulk) I've ever seen or owned. Would be pretty cool if it came to use again.

Edit, yea so there's the relevant info on this page:
https://www.morphos-team.net/hardware

If you want to still use the Mac OS, than a PPC Bios card will be required. The only advantage a PPC Bios card offers to MorphOS, is an much easier initial install of MorphOS since you can get into the bios/firmware on boot to select a boot device to boot from the CD. You can still use a PC card with MorphOS. In my 2.7GHz, it has a PC based card and works great. It would be cool to dual boot Mac OS and MorphOS, you would see how much better MorphOS for most things. Media playback alone is SOOO much faster on MorphOS than MacOS, browsing is also so much better on MorphOS.

The price will greatly depend on which Mac you have. If yours is AGP, Mac BIOS PPC is cheap and readily available. If you have a PCIe based Mac, than that is a lot harder to find a cheap PPC Bios based card. I have a X1900 in mine and it costed a pretty penny to get it (around $120 USD).

FYI Mark aka Bigfoot is releasing new drivers for MorphOS that will greatly change the hardware page you posted when he is done. It is in final beta so I think well be released soon, you still can download the beta of course and have fun...

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by matt3k

FYI Mark aka Bigfoot is releasing new drivers for MorphOS that will greatly change the hardware page you posted when he is done. It is in final beta so I think well be released soon, you still can download the beta of course and have fun...

Now that’s interesting. Are we talking about graphics card drivers specifically or general compatibility with more Mac models?

[matt3k]

Graphics Cards only.

There is a thread on Morph.zone listing all the cards, there was a lot, maybe 20 or 30.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by matt3k

Graphics Cards only.

There is a thread on Morph.zone listing all the cards, there was a lot, maybe 20 or 30.

Wow and includes legacy Warp3D support and all of the fancy Warp3D v5 and TinyGL support too? Outstanding! Where's the thread?

[matt3k]

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plu...er=0&start=300