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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.
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.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1897
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.
The closest I can find to an announcement is at http://www.morphos-news.de. v1.0 will be released on Oct 14 to "betatesters".
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.
highly unlikely.
For starters, they're fundamentally different architectures.
What the article fails to mention is that MorphOS will be shipped on (together with Yellow Dog Linux) an in-house designed POP-based OpenFirmware-equipped motherboard called Pegasos. While different from a New World PowerMac, it's not "fundamentally different architectures". This board already runs OSX with Mac-On-Linux. MorphOS on (reasonably modern) Mac hardware is quite likely, though not in its initial release.
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
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... . . . .
NT is not written in C++, it is mostly C (with some assembly, obviously). It is also not a reimplementation of OS/2. As a matter of fact, it looks a helluva lot more like VMS than OS/2. Sure, the kernel and executive both handle objects, but not in the C++ sense. They are really just C structs that the kernel and executive keep track of and make sure don't leak (all get freed when an application terminates, if the app forgot to free them itself).
It is based on OS/2 code though. Breifly and somewhat inaccurately - the history goes that IBM and Microsoft were originally jointly developing OS/2 as a next-generation graphical multitasking OS for the PC. I believe version 1.0 of OS/2 was actually called "Microsoft OS/2", but it didn't get much notice. Microsoft and IBM had a falling out - they split up, each retaining the rights to re-use the existing OS/2 code, but only IBM keeping the actual OS/2 name. From at least OS/2 1.3 onwards it was all IBM.
Microsoft used the OS/2 kernel to base NT off of. As late as NT4, and quite likely still in 2k and XP, if you search the binaries in winnt\system32\.... you can still find OS2 error messages embedded deep in some DLLs - so apparently the code is still in use to this day.
I might, just for the record - that IBM released OS/2 2.1 (which had a Win95-level GUI and better-than-NT true protection and multitasking, and Win3.1 application compatibility) before Microsoft ever released Win95 or the first commercial NT. But Microsoft actually beat this released product into the ground with FUD about the upcoming offerings. Sure enough well down the road they did eventually release 95 with a decent GUI, and NT with a half-decent kernel. But at the time of OS/2 2.1, all they had to compete with was Win 3.1.
I migh also add it took until NT4 years later for Microsoft to put a 95-style GUI into their NT kernel, and it took until the recent release of XP before an NT system was considered good enough for home/desktop use to replace the 95 line of products. OS/2 was always a good desktop OS.
11*43+456^2