New Amiga Hardware Runs Mac OS

Ethan writes: "A developer on the Yahoo Amiga One mailing list has successfully installed MacOS 9.2 using Mac On Linux. And it seems that adding OS X support is on the to-do horizon for the MOL developers. I think that it will be interesting to see the people at Apple lose some sleep now that a low cost, fast, off the shelf solution exists to run Mac OS, without any Apple hardware. If it doesn't do anything else, at least it will give the people buying the new Amiga One G3 PPC board an existing software base." Mind you, I've never even seen an Amiga One, but it would be a pretty silly thing to make up ;) Update: 07/05 07:03 GMT by T : Mike Bouma piped up with a link to a page featuring the same hardware, in this case running Debian, OpenOffice.org and Mozilla.

Comments

Re:Executor

[bobtheprophet]

Making a mac emulator for PC also requires emulating the hardware, which isn't easy to do. There are a few out there, but they don't work terribly well. here is the google directory.

I don't really think Apple will lose any sleep.

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

Apple has basically abandoned everything pre-OS X, and Steve Jobs has already declared Classic(OSX) dead.

Not likely...

[PRickard]

Mac OS simply will not run without the hardware ROMs. I don't see how the Amiga could run it, much less run it decently - and if it can, Apple will have their hair. This is a vaporware announcement.

Re:Not likely...

[Matthias Wiesmann]

Mac OS simply will not run without the hardware ROMs.

This is getting less and less true, so called new world machines only rely on the ROM for booting (all machines since the iMac are new worlds machines). The ROM that contains the toolbox code is basically a memory mapped file (you can see this file in the system folder).

Darwin does not need any special ROMs (how would it run on x86 machines?). And Mac OS X basically runs on top of darwin (this is how unsupported machines can run OS X). The only part of the Mac ROM that needs to be somehow emulated is the open firmware booting code that sets up the device tree and hands it to the kernel. Open firmware is IEEE standard.

So roughtly to run OSX on a unsupported machine, you need to implement a booting system that can hand a device tree to the kernel and write darwin drivers for your hardware / emulation plateform. As far as I know, you can do both legally.

Of course there might be some hidden checks in OSX, but the open source nature of Darwin make this improbable. I don't think that Apple will care about this simply because it does not seem to be a serious threat to their marketshare...

Pretty neat, but.....

[G3ek]

OS X is the perfect marriage between a simple, intuitive, aesthetically marvelous end user interface and the power, stability, and hardcore good geekness of UNIX. Furthermore, the OS is designed to run almost absolutely flawlessly on Apple hardware. So what do you get? You get a Mac, the best computer on the planet, period. Someone figured out how to put Mac OS 9.2 on something else....I think that's really cool, and OS X would be cool too....This will let others get a taste of what an awesome OS it is and further propel them to want the real thing. HAHA, the Mac will eventually dominate the planet as planned! It's almost too easy..... ps. my first post!

Re:Pretty neat, but.....

[Alan Partridge]

I'll never understand this idea of promoting the Mac as a games machine. It isn't, and never was. If you want to replace your Pc with another games machine, you have PS2, GBA, NGC and X-Box to choose from - all of which are FAR better than the PC and FAR, FAR better than any Mac for games. If you don't dig Windows, get a PowerMac and a PS2 and you need never worry about missing out on games again. That's what I did.

Re:Pretty neat, but.....

[Alan Partridge]

right on - I'll only support Apple over M$ until the day that they are equal, and then they can fuck off and look after themselves. I think if Apple ever get back more than 20% of the market they'll turn back into the uncompetitive, unresponsive, idle, arrogant fuckers that REALLY want to be. It's only the evil empire that keeps the bastards honest. Like a lot of highly talented people, Apple is FUCKING lazy, they only show their best with a gun at their balls.

Re:The Amiga is coming back.

[josh crawley]

---"I've predicted this for a long time. The first generation of Amiga platforms were revolutionary, and blew away offerings from other personal computer manufacturers. In fact, it was only recently, with AGP systems, that modern PCs could even match the first Amiga (the A1000) in terms of graphics sync/performance."

Sounds like you're an Amiga fanboy. Care to back up your "Assertions" with real numbers?

---"The new generation of Amigas will be running on PPC-compatible hardware. (Even older Amgias can get extension boards with PPC chips on them, though), and will truly rock. It's been a while since we've seen a truly good mixture of hardware and software, working together well to build the ultimate platform. That was... hmm - the late 80s and early 90s. The Amiga. The x86 hardware has (and still does) prohibit the PC from reaching this level,"

Care to mention examples? Perfreablly comparing to the Amiga (the old ones)

"and MacOS (up until MacOS X) has been a complete toy operating system."

Agreed.

"Just when PCs and Macs are starting to catch up with the original Amiga, the new Amiga is getting ready to be unleashed."

I'll believe it when I can use it somewhere. I've heard about the "Amiga 1" ever since '98 from usenet. Unless you're talking to the developers, I see this as much fud as the Troll "BSD is dying".

Guys

[Sleeper]

I have huge respect for Amiga. But I have to tell that I've been hearing about Amiga comming back many times in the past five or so years (including here). And I have yet to see this actually happenning.

Re:The Amiga is coming back.

[Mekanix]

Oh Pleeease. Wake up from your dreamworld.

In fact, it was only recently, with AGP systems, that modern PCs could even match the first Amiga (the A1000) in terms of graphics sync/performance.

Recently? Already at the time Commodore went belly up Amiga was starting to show its age. Doom was the game to show that Amigas "superior" chipsets wasn't so superior.

Just when PCs and Macs are starting to catch up with the original Amiga, the new Amiga is getting ready to be unleashed.

Christ, I dumped Amiga 4 years ago and since then I've been catching up to the rest of the world. The PC's and certainly Mac's surparsed Amiga years ago.

Very timely, actually. Things could get interesting in the next few years.

How so? There is absolutely nothing interesting about the new Amiga. The most advanced feature of the new OS is... *gasp* .... some sort of memory protection. How do you create a modern OS in less than a year? You don't, OS4 will mostly be a PPC-port of OS3.1 (H sits on 3.5/3.9).

And what about software? There have hardly been released anything for the Amiga the last 8-10 years. And even less for all those PPC-addons.

And then there is the HW... It'l be closed and crippled and "donglelised" as always (just as a Mac)... I'm sure the slashdot-crowd will be more interested in bplan's more open PPC-board.

No, there is absolutely nothing interesting about the new Amiga.

The point of the OLD Amiga

[squaretorus]

Surely the point of the old amiga was that it was graphically amazing for its time and it was available at supermarkets before you could get PCs in the high street?

I had an ST and an Amiga - I got the ST first, so using the Amiga always felt a little unfaithful! But wow, what a machine.

To have the same impact today I think you'd have to have something that made the iMac look ugly and blew away a hefty desktop PC for $300 - in a box - in the supermarket - next to the gamecube.

Re:The point of the OLD Amiga

[Mike Bouma]

The new Amiga will use mainstream graphics chips like the Matrox Parhelia or ATi Radeon chips.

At the time when the Amiga was released there were no good graphics solutions available. So Amiga could finally show the world what multimedia computing was like.

Nowadays mainstream graphic chips are good enough. There are several big graphics companies all spending millions of dollars on Graphic chip development. So today it is best to use of the shelf components and concetrate on the multimedia OS.

Do note however that many Amiga users have upgraded their machines with graphic boards and sound cards based on mainstream hardware chips. (There are even Zorro/PCI bridges available to allow usage of standard mainstream hardware) So actually this isn`t something entirely new.

Re:The Amiga is coming back.

[Saint Fnordius]

Revolutionary as the Amiga systems were, I don't think that this new offering has that much of a chance.

Apple's current high-quality/low-price hardware strategy will undercut the demand for this thing before it gets off of the ground. Add to that Apple's new NeXT-based OS, and the chances look even dimmer. As for native apps, I think Be's demise should show where this leads.

The Amiga was killed by several factors. It was a giant leap forward, but after that it languished. Its image was tarnished by the fact that is was available from K-Mart and other discount stores. There were so many games available that the public didn't consider it a "real" business machine.

I am also a little surprised that you consider the Macintosh OS so lowly. Compared to the other GUI's of the time, it was polished and well thought-out. True, multi-tasking didn't come until much later in the game, but it started the DTP revolution.

Re:Something I've wondered about

[rnd()]

You have an excellent point. Mac OSX represnets what Linux needs to become in order to become a true competetor to Windows on the desktop, and for precisely the reasons that you mention. Mandrake comes a long way, but lacks some of the apps that add sizzle.

All of the cusomizability of Linux tends to diminish the ease of use for non-geek users.

We'll get there at some point, but we're still a long way off.