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.

Comments

Great Day!

[joyoflinux]

It's a great day...neither BeOS nor Amiga is dead! :-)

Re:Great Day!

[Longinus]

I'm gonna go find a story about OS/2. It will surely get accepted today!

Re:Great Day!

[Anonymous Coward]

OS/2 isn't dead, it's just in really weird nitch places. I believe the interface of the new copy machine at the place I work actually uses OS/2. I hear many ATMs do also

Re:Great Day!

[dumbnose]

and NT- an even bigger ball of bloat, being at heart a reimplimentation of OS/2's C sources in C++- was reborn as Win2k about 4 years later.

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).

Re:Great Day!

[armb]

Well, Be did claim that it would be the "Amiga for the 90s".

Re:Great Day!

[photon317]

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.

I'm speechless

[Kwelstr]

I am without speech! The Comodore is back baby! ;-)

Don't be so open-minded your brains will fall out.

Its not for C64

[ageitgey]

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."

Re:Its not for C64

[fod]

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.

Actually, it does run on Amigas with PowerPC CPUs too.

http://www.morphos.de/support.php3
Platform: Pegasos, A4000(T), A3000(T), A1200

Re:Its not for C64

[He Was Gamecubed]

"Actually, it does run on Amigas with PowerPC CPUs too."

Last time i checked, no programs run on Amiga. Some walk, but most crawl.

-Q

Re:Its not for C64

[operagost]

I'd have to disagree, considering that I saw both 2-D animation and fairly nice (dunno, maybe a hundred polygons) 3-D models running at 60 fps on an A1200 in 1994. That was a 68020 at 12 MHz, mind you! Blame it on the custom chips.

Where?

[jagapen]

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.

Re:Where?

[subuni]

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".

Morphos screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

OSNews had an informative article a few days ago about Morphos. Check the article and 2 screenshots of the OS here:

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1897

Lets see.....

[sheepab]

hal.rom, kernel.rom, now all we need is cluster.com so we can set up a beowulf clu....er....nevermind.

MorphOS

[Anonymous Coward]

This OS is made in the "spirit" of the AmigaOS, but with all the stuff a modern os should have, plus it runs Amiga programs through a combination of 68k emulation and the AmigaOS api ported to PowerPC. There is also a PowerPC motherboard being made especially for the os, called Pegasos, Thendic France is the main distributor. MorphOS just got bumped to release version 1.0 and both the motherboard and OS are available for sale.

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.

Intended hardware.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Unfortunately...

[distributed.karma]

no one can be told what MorphOS is. You have to see it for yourself.

Different uses of time.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

In other news...

[ekephart]

"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."

The Amiga A1000 was the greatest PC of it's time

[hillct]

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

OS/2

[Tumbleweed]

OS/2 isn't dead...it just smells that way. :)

All your Boing are belong to us, NOT!

[Anonymous Coward]

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... . . . .

It's not the same without the Amiga

[myov]

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!