Slashdot Mirror
Retro Activity: MorphOS 1.0
An anonymous reader submites: "You can read it from their development page if you like to get the word from the horses mouth. 'The current version is 1.0. Feedback welcome.' Hey, if you can't revive a dead horse, whip it some more, yeah?" All the better to run programs on their "old Commodore(TM) A1000, A500, A2000, A1200, A3000(T) and A4000(T) systems as efficiently as possible." Everyone has different uses for time.
Can I run Dragonzord??
The correct expression is to "beat a dead horse" not to "whip a dead horse."
Just FYI.
It's a great day...neither BeOS nor Amiga is dead! :-)
I am without speech! The Comodore is back baby! ;-)
Don't be so open-minded your brains will fall out.
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
Bah. One word. Unicos.
Now go back to your toy OSes, OK?
Unlike the post says, this isn't an OS for the old Commodore computers. This is a reimplementation of that old OS for PowerPC machines. They are trying to maintain API compatibility so you can run the old programs right on a PowerPC box.
From the website:
"Under the Quark kernel a PowerPC(TM) native reimplementation of the OS we know from the Commodore(TM) A1000, A500, A2000, A1200, A3000(T) and A4000(T) systems runs as a mixture of a virtual emulation and a driver. We call this OS driver from now on the A-Box."
Uninnovate - Only the finest in engineering.
All I see on that page is version 1.0 of the "MorphOS Development Reference Manual," but nowhere on the site do I see anything about a 1.0 release of the OS itself.
Furthermore, the site says that the purpose of MorphOS is to run Amiga programs FREE OF the old Amiga hardware.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1897
So all these ancient Commodore systems are growing in popularity but *BSD is dying, eh?
Trolling is a art,
It's basically a OS that runs on a new system, but also supports Amiga 3000's, 1200's, and 4000's with PPC Accelerator boards in it.
It also is competing with Amiga OS 4.0 which will run on the same accelerated Amiga's AND the new Amiga One.
so what are the chances on using MorphOS on consumer Apple PPC's? Seems like a great alternative for old hardware and would certainly be a positive move for the MorphOS.
transmission_err
My grandma has 4 different console versions of the classic Pong game in her closet. When will someone hack something together with these so I can play Counter Strike with them?
Please no grandma closet jokes
*DrugCheese rants*
hal.rom, kernel.rom, now all we need is cluster.com so we can set up a beowulf clu....er....nevermind.
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
This motherboard also comes with a version of linux for PPC. Besides that MorphOS will also run on Amigas equiped with a PPC cpu and rumour goes a PowerMac version could be released one day.
MorphOS is intended for the POP-compliant Pegasos PowerPC board from bPlan. Note that while a Realtek PHYceiver is listed, that's just the PHY; the ethernet controller itself is a Via Rhine derivative embedded in the southbridge. Pictures here. It can also run on classic Amigas with appropriate PowerPC accellerators; NetBSD is also being readied for the bPlan hardware.
AmigaOS 4 is the 'name-brand' product, being produced under contract by Germany's Hyperion Software. It's intended for Eyetech's AmigaOne G3SE and XE products, and Elbox's SharkPPC accellerator in classic hardware with suitable PCI busboards. Hardware dongling of the AmigaOne (with respect to AmigaOS; Linux and *BSD will run unhindered), and continuing intellectual-property disputes may or may not effect the chances of OS4 support for the Pegasos.
All three new PowerPC boards use MAI's PowerPC chipsets, also seen on the Linux-friendly Barbie.
Nor should we forget 'AmigaDE' or 'Amiga-Anywhere,' a crossplatform system based on Tao's Intent runtime + media libs, which is really quite cool even if they've just redesigned their site opaquely. the CEO of Gentoo provides a good writeup here.
no one can be told what MorphOS is. You have to see it for yourself.
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
Everyone has different uses for time.
Well, some like to play with old innovative OS:es, some like to play with old rebuild monolithic Unix:es, trying to use slow X servers as desktop enviroments.
I leave it as an exercise for the reader, trying figuring out which one of those two options I find more attractive.
"Therefore we are doing an API compatible PPC reimplementation of the OS using our own and AROS' technology, which we call A-Box. The goal is to extend the A-Box with new functionalities which it painfully needs and also work on a new OS layer using Quark functionality called Q-Box."
In other news Microsoft is suing MorphOS in 47 states and in federal court for copyright infringement. A company spokeman said, "This is an obvious attempt to capitalize on Microsoft's patents and copyrights. We are committed to protecting consumers worldwide from themselves. MorphOS's blatant attacks on innovation in the industry will not be tolerated."
sig
Oh wait... No it's not. Damn those Amigas are cool... They can survive a slashdotting!
Big deal - my Atari 800 with pop-out memory and game cartidges is better technology. Atari Atari Atari!!!
(Hell, as long as we're reliving the past, let's *really* relive the past - you're either pro-Atari or pro-Commode-dore)
"What we have here, is a failure to communicate." - Cool Hand Luke
The Amiga A1000 was perhaps the most advanced piece of personal computing hardware of it's time. It ushered in the age of computer generated effects for television in the '80s as well as provided extraordinary graphical capabilities unmatched by any personal computer until the early 1990s. It was a horrible failure of the marketplace that this hardware platform did not find a sufficiently large customer base and it's wonderful to see that some groups seek to prolong the usefulness of this platform, regardless of the financial benefit. Consider it a service to the memory of evolutionary hallmarks of the computer industry.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Is it opensource or is it commercial?
When you get older you will stop caring about trivialities of teen angst like worrying over freedom of software, manufactured bands like Britney Spears or the "evil" movie studios.
Teen angst is something that results when you realize that the whole world is screwed up and you only have a few useful years to do anything about it before you get sucked into being a part of why its so messed up. Post-teenage angst is that hopelessness that you feel when you realize you wasted your only chance to change your miserable little corner of the universe on keg parties and chasing after females that rejected you anyways, and now you've been sucked into the whole machine and must grind out your remaining years as another redundant cog that perpetuates the whole thing.
I know. I was you, now I am the cog in the machine content in my own little niche and see absolutely nothing wrong with it.
Oh, and if you want *truly* retro, you'll have to look here.
;)
The CommodoreOne actually integrates some features similar to the original Amiga, showing what a single hobbyist can accomplish in this day and age. Then again, perhaps times haven't changed much, since we all know who was the real brains behind the Lorraine...
Rest in peace, Mitchy... and you too, Jay.
From their 'corporate' page: "Hyperion Entertainment is a privately held Belgian-German company, founded in March of 1999."
:)
Sounds multinational to me, though thanks for pointing out the other half.
G3-SE here, and a flock of Pegasi for the gateway, entertainment center, etc, if I ever win the lottery...
I know what it's like when a loved one passes away. How it feels to find that you most loved piece of hardware has passed away. For 7 years my only computer was my trusty old Amiga 500. Even when CBM went up in flames I still went out and imported a A3000 from Canida. So I feel your pain.
It's time to let go man. Just drop it and walk away, don't look back. I said, don't look back.
If you still believe you must have all the benfits of the Amiga, get your self a nice linux box. Shoot, a nice Mac will help go through the loss.
Trust me, it's for the best
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
OS/2 isn't dead...it just smells that way. :)
With preemptive multitasking, shared libraries, a choice of GUI or CLI, and early forms of IPC, it heralded much we take for granted today.
:)
Not to mention the 2D accelleration provided by the blitter/copper...
Don't worry, it's illegal as it uses stolen or rewritten Amiga OS code.
Are those what give Naval officers jock itch?
Oh, sure, this is great, but when do I get Duke Nukem Forever?
No, Amiga Inc. = dot-com investor scam.
This is fortunately not Amiga Inc.
no, but you can get shogo and quake :)
-Polyhead-
As long as it can play Scorched Earth, I don't give a shit what silly tweaks they do to it. That game fucking rules.
Sorry!
Unless this is an Amiga Inc. story, It shouldnt run with the Amiga Boing Ball Logo (i.e. The Origional 1985, 8 x 8 checker pattern).
MorphOS has a great logo: so thier stories should use the propper butterfly. Its a really nice logo too... . . . .
The Amiga 1000 came out in 1985. Why it didn't do so well was because:
Commodore's legendary bog-awful marketing. You can find the adverts on the web, they were bad. The failed to push the Amiga platform towards anything much other than gamers.
It cost alot more than other inferior but similar systems such as the Atari.
Ram. The Amiga 1000 came with 256kb, which although being a mighty lot for its day, was far short of what the ~2mb or so the computer needed to function to its full potential. They should've released multiple models of the Amiga in 1985 aimed at different markets.
Also, the Amiga was fast, but a little known platform called the Acorn Risc PC (released 1987) was quite a match for it.
Even though I'm typing this from a TiBook, stories like this remind me how much I miss using the Amiga. My A3000 sits on a shelf just above my BSD machine, and I still have my A500 downstairs (or A0.5K as some people liked to call it :) My 3000 (one of the few softboots) was having some hardware problems, and I just haven't had the time to really work at it. At the same time, I just can't seem to find a good use for it - Linux, BSD and MacOS X now take care of my needs.
IMHO, the Amiga made using computers fun. It wasn't *what* you were doing, but *how* you were doing it (except for those ^#@! guru's) Now that Windows has taken over virtually everything, computers have become just a tool for getting work done, and it's become too routine. Linux and to an extent, MacOS X, have captured a lot of the spirit of the Amiga, and features that I had on my Amiga years ago are starting to make their return (I missed my CLI on my desktop machine!). Yet, it just isn't the same.
Off topic, SASG still appears to be active. Looking at some of the MUI screenshots, it's interesting to see how similar parts of MacOS X are - back in 1995!
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
Nothing like being a devout AC. In any case, the 800's graphics were indeed sired by Jay Miner.
;)
Atari's direct competition to the Amiga was the ST, which evolved into something comparable to the Mac, but was a pretty large ripoff in its first incarnations, featuring none of the coprocessing and wait-state outsmarting that made the Amiga grand.* It made a niche for itself as a musician's machine, given the built-in MIDI interface, but it featured no grand synthesis hardware itself- just the good ol' serial port that MIDI is, which could be added to any machine of the day for about $50.
The first ST also beat the Amiga in resolution, but only on Atari's proprietary displays, which had a different aspect ratio than most CRTs of the time. The decision to leave the Amiga at 640x200NI was a sad one, and made by Commodore management to keep the displays cheap and RAM usage down (remember, the first machines had to hold all of Kickstart, the OS, and program code in the stock 256k; this was quickly remedied in the 500 and 2000, when the 'memory crisis' of those days had eased somewhat, but the damage was done architecturally, and Commodore actually designed another chip just to deinterlace the output- Amber, found in the 3000, and trickled back to the 2000 in the official delacer card.)
So, at best, you could call the machines a tossup. The Atari had its two strong points, but remember, it was no faster than an original Mac, and no more able to multitask. The Amiga, in contrast, was a speed demon, its 68k mostly freed to execute program code, with the copper around to assist. With the first multitasking OS on a consumer machine, you could actually do two things at once, like listen to MODs on the Gary chip's multivoice audio output while you BBSed.
A sidenote: Why the hideous blue, orange and white default everyone remembers from Workbench 1.x? The Amiga crew hauled in the most broken television sets they could find, back when they still thought they'd be using them for display, and determined it was the highest-contrast scheme. Woz made a similar decision in going green on the Apple II- green phosphors were the last to die on your average color TV, and who was going to buy an expensive new set just to tinker with a computer?
Come on moderators, +5 for a personal, non-subjective praising of the old Amiga 1000!?
Also, don't blame Amiga's failure on the marketplace, Commodore screwed things up badly time after time. Shifting of market focus, failure to deliver, low quality components (high return rate for substantial amounts of time), economical extravaganzas, do I need to go on?
And if you think that average corporate offices should have chosen Amigas instead of PCs or Macs, then you obviously don't understand the corporate needs of the 80's. What the hell would an office computer do with advanced graphics, advanced sound, flickery colorscreens (either interlace or way to expensive monitors), an immature platform with a seriously buggy OS and hardly any software support (we're talking about A1000, right?)??? Not to speak about the dependence the company would get on one single, small supplier.
Sure, I also regret how things turned out, but put the blame on those who deserves it. As far as I see it Atari Mega STs would have fit the corporate desktop much better (more user friendly GUI, cheaper hardware and a rock solid B/W screen), but I don't blame them for not choosing that either. Atari also screwed up a lot and was also a too small single supplier.
If you recall, it *was* the 'vision of the future' before OS4 got pushed in. Whether Amiga would be dead already without OS4 is, of course, anyone's guess; I expect the launch party will see a few things cleared up.
Amiga's role with Tao's stuff has always been as a distributor, and they haven't tried hard to hide it. The question is, of course, where the added value promised is, and the answer seems 'largely missing.' Still, between Ami2D and Warp3D- both developed (mostly?, in Ami2D's case) by third parties, but Amiga's job to organize, and whatever effort went into the annoying .AMI packaging for the 'Player,' you can't say they've done absolutely nothing.
An investor scam? More like a scam to acquire the capital necessary to pay the coders to make it a reality. Not the sweetest-smelling thing, perhaps, but the way modern business worked until recently; IPO, then overcome your burn rate and survive, or die trying. It was certainly uncouth of McEwen to be nailed for advertising stock, but he's a marketroid by training, and you need only flip open a recent issue of Fortune to see NTT DoCoMo and others doing the same sordid thing, albeit with more flair and bigger budgets. (The DoCoMo ad is particularly egregious; keep a lookout for it if you're in a yuppie's waiting room.)
FOAD, troll.
Note To Moderators: sending unknowing innocent people looking for information about Amiga related issues to Amiga.com is about as "helpful" as linking to goatse.cx.
BTW, 4444444:th post?
Roy and Elvis really have been busy! I never thought I'd see it. :-)
Heh, well it's better than the Blue (Screen Of Death) pill ;)
-- Drain
The colour scheme on pre 2.0 machines was based on a user interface study from NASA which found those colours were easiest on the eye (unfortunately they looked crap).
Also, while the Amigas custom chip arrangement meant that the CPU was usually freer to do more processing, the A500 was 7.14 Mhz to the STs 8 Mhz due to the memory addressing scheme (I think).
Of course, the Amiga rocked and still does.
A500, A1000, A2000, A3000(T), A4000(T).. There's something missing... Don't forget the often-forgotten small form-factor A600! Damn.
Last i heard it was still a viable and shipping product, though at the moment i cant remember who IBM sold it off too..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
A brand new Amiga based totally on ppc is out soon too, actually the developer boards are allready out but AmigaOS aint ported to PPC yet, both AmigaONE and AmigaOS4.0 is supposed to be out by end of december.
a fd0b62cfe3ad24945
Check out: http://os.amiga.com/os4/?PHPSESSID=ff28f7fbfc97c4
And http://www.amiga.com
For screenshots and info.
Truly the Classic Amiga legacy: user wanted it, user was willing to pay the extra bucks, user still couldn't have it.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Sigh, another innocent slashdotter mislead by marketing fluff and ancient "information" on amiga.com.
No, there will be no more Amigas. The Mai TeronCX POP boards or any other hardware being redistributed under the "AmigaOne" trademark is exactly that: third party hardware that in order to be allowed to run AmigaOS must be distributed by Amiga Inc-licensed vendors.
AmigaOS is an entirely different matter though. It's just too bad that this particular Licensing Lunacy will kill it.