Slashdot Mirror
New G3-Based Platform Runs Mac OS X
Worried writes "Pegasos is a new platform based on G3/G4 CPUs and it runs MorphOS and various Linux distros so far. This very interesting review of the platform over at OSNews points out that Darwin can play a significant role attracting new buyers. Another --possibly significant-- point in the article is that Pegasos can run Mac OS X via the Mac-On-Linux runtime kit. This is the *first* non-Mac platform that can run OSX without even the need for an Apple BIOS!"
Pegasos: A New Interesting & Sexy Platform
By Eugenia Loli-Queru - Posted on 2003-05-19 08:09:54
Genesi was very kind to send us in a fully featured Pegasos-based computer with MorphOS and Debian pre-installed. Here is our review with a number of screenshots of the supported OSes.
The Hardware, MorphOS
The hardware
First of all, we all have to understand what we are dealing with here. Genesi's business is to create a brand new platform. Not just OS software. And not just hardware. But a brand new platform based on the IBM/Motorola PowerPC G3 and G4 CPUs. In fact, the whole point of the Pegasos platform is for users to select the OS(es) that they want to run by buying only the motherboard & CPU and then adding supported hardware on top of it and literally building the system from scratch. Does it sound too geeky? Trust me, it is. And this can be the biggest strength of this platform or its main drawback for wider adoption. It depends how you see it.
The motherboard itself is a slick piece of hardware. It is a MicroATX mainboard (236 mm x 172 mm), 600 MHz PowerPC G3 750 CXe, (scaling up to a Dual PowerPC G4 MPC 7450). Two sockets of PC133 RAM (up to 2 GB), an AGP slot, 3 PCI slots, USB 1.1, Firewire 400, RealTek NIC, AC97 sound card, two ATA-100 channels, PS/2 mouse and keyboard. I was sent a G3 at 600 Mhz and except for the fact that the machine arrived with the CPU card floating around (it didn't have any screws or holders to keep the CPU in the slot during shipping-- so beware if you are moving houses), the CPU did deliver according to the expectations (glxgears -- just as an example -- delivers between 50 and 60 fps in software mode with an ATi Radeon 7500 AGP, while my dual Celeron 533 on Mandrake does between 80 and 90 fps with a 3Dfx Voodoo5).
If I am to pick my favorite feature of the system that would be its noise levels: the system is completely silent. Worse point: It's price. At around $450-500, it is pricey. For this amount of CPU power and motherboard, I wouldn't personally pay more than $250-300. But hey, Pegasos is exotic in many ways and that compensates a bit.
So, the hardware is slick, but what is the hardware without the actual software, right? Currently, with the Pegasos platform you will find two operating systems included and further supported: MorphOS 1.3 and a port of Debian GNU/Linux 3.x.
MorphOS
MorphOS is an interesting little operating system, but it is too little to lead the "platform" idea all by its own. The version I was sent (1.3) was problematic and nowhere near a true 1.0 commercial release, quality-wise. The main reason why someone would want to run MorphOS is to get access to the thousand of AmigaOS software via its emulation "A-BOX" kit, which enables MorphOS to run classic Amiga programs, 68k/PPC that do not depend on the Amiga's custom chips (there are no more than 80-90 native MorphOS applications/ports that I could find in one place). Unfortunately, except for a handful of supported AmigaOS applications, the rest wouldn't just refuse to run, they would completely crash the system (so much for protected memory). Reseting the system left me with an un-initialized keyboard that wouldn't work until I turned off the machine completely and left it off for 10 seconds or so. I presume that one of the ways MorphOS manages to boot in less than 5 seconds is by not initializing the hardware during boot-up. Yes, you read that right, it only takes 5 seconds to boot up to a fully functional MorphOS, and yes, MorphOS feels extremely fast (loading apps, UI responsiveness etc). UAE (Amiga Emulator) runs on MorphOS, but it is not a real solution in this case, as we could run UAE on our Windows too if we need to. The whole point of MorphOS is to load AmigaOS software easily and painlessly interacting normally with the native apps. But that part is not worked out perfectly yet.
The OS came with a media player (Frogger) that can play divx and mpeg, there are three browsers available for it, with similar page rendering
From the article: On this G3 600 Mhz, it would take 1-2 seconds for a MacOSX button to respond after pressing it.
I don't know about anyone else, but I use my Macs to get work done, not to be waiting 1-2 seconds for clicks to respond. Therefore, I think I will keep using boxes made by Apple.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
No, MOL only runs on PPC based Linux distros. It's simillar to Vmware or Wine on Intel/AMD boxes.
If I remember correctly, there's still a small ROM that handles boot information, etc. Most of the higher toolbox functions are now held in RAM.
6 7.htm l
Here's the technote about it;
http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn11
From the Mac-on-Linux FAQ:
Why does Slashdot insist on posting anything "PPC" under the Apple category?
One of the interesting points with the Pegasos is that it's a PPC based consumer-oriented (as in non-workstation/server á la IBM) system that's NOT from Apple, it comes on a nice micro-ATX mobo, and it comes with a rather new non-Apple OS! The POP concept has come to fruition, and hopefully the Teron PX (a.k.a. "AmigaOne XE" when marketed to AmigaOS users) will also do well.
That running Mac-On-Linux on Linux on a PPC system let's you run MacOS isn't all that sensational IMO...
People might be interested in hearing a new Pegasos system has been announced for this autumn(?), which won't be hampered by the currently buggy Articia S northbridge. This will have a Marvell Discovery II northbridge (366(?) MHz DDR, gigabit ethernet...).
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
You were right about everything else except the OS not being stable. Mac OS X is VERY stable. Its built on Unix for crying out loud. It gets better uptimes than Windows XP thats for sure.
So make sure you update your Mac knowledge concerning OS X.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Don't hold your breath for an x86 OS X that will run on commodity hardware, but that would be cool.
After OS X came out I reasearched the slowest cheapest PPC it would run on--even considering MOL for non Apple platforms--and hunted for good deals on eBay. Old PPC equipment that can possibly run OS X or Linux ain't cheap!! I thought I found a decent deal on some RS/6000 PPC's, but the chip and architecture of that model (I forget which) made it unable to run Linux...only NetBSD and AIX would run on it. Plus it was missing some RAM that turns out to be orders of magnitude more expensive than their PC counterparts, even on eBay.
PPC stuff just isn't commodity hardware; it's expensive, even the old stuff. I just haven't yet been able to justify spending that kind of money on Apple when I see what it can buy in x86.
(I'm speaking for personal use purposes, so none of that "comparable hardware" stuff applies here. Two weeks ago my cheap power supply went out so I ran to the store and picked up another for $45. Not what you want for a production environment, but fine for home.)
All "New World" Macintoshes use Open Firmware, an IEEE standard which (I think) was originally developed by Sun. You can find more information here.
irb(main):001:0>
funny, but not entirely accurate. not that one can be completely accurate when discussing mythological creatures, but......
a pegasus is simply a winged horse. a _unicorn_ has a horn.
If by "significant chunks" you mean "the Aqua interface", then sure. That's almost all that's still closed.
In fact, I downloaded a version of Darwin for my computer. Unfortunately, ViA chipsets aren't supported, so it won't run on my main machine.
From my Mac OS X license agreement:
"This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time."
It is illegal to run Mac OS X on a non-Apple computer. Even machines built from Apple parts are iffy.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
MacOS X is stable, but the article describes MorphOS - the PPC AmigaOS 'clone' which isn't quite all there yet.
:)
Some small missing things, like say, networking
I have a 500mhz G3 iBook2. Aside from video access, it runs realtime. Hell, I've even used Bryce in it! Just try that with VMWare.
It could be that I run OS 9 in mol and OS X doesn't like the slower graphics functions.
On a sidenote, Amigas can also do this, as can Briqs. The mentioned system is not the first.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I think it's more likely an issue with the emulation and video hardware. It's my understanding that Quartz (OS X's video rendering/compositing layer) is coupled with the specific sorts of hardware that Apple puts in their machine. Mess with that combo, and it's almost certain you're going to take a performance response hit as far as interacting with the UI or anything visual.
I've got a 333 Mhz Powerbook, and it runs OS X (10.1.5) at a sufficiently snappy speed to get plenty of stuff done. I *did* put a boatload of RAM in (320 MB total), which helps quite a bit, but if a 600 MHz machine isn't doing as well with half the RAM, the fault isn't the design of OS X or the hardware... it's gotta be something in how the emulation is done, or more likely, as I said, the integration between the OS and the video hardware.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Also referred to as an Alicorn, a winged equine with a single spiraling ivory horn centered on the upper precranial region. Of course, the mythical but less well known Bicorn also falls under this category. All of these were a favorite prey of Gryphons. (see Gryphon, Bicorn, Unicorn)
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
> The licence agreement on OS X precludes it being used on anything other than Apple licenced/made hardware.
So don't agree to the license agreement and figure out how to install OS X anyways. From first sale doctrine, you not only have a legal basis to resell a book, etc (of course destroying any archive copies you've made), but you also have an implicit right to use the copyrighted work (in this case, OS X). This could of course lead to requiring a contract be signed prior to leaving the store with any box containing OS X (simply pre-installing it means nothing because of first sale doctrine--as a side note, them not including a CD wouldn't be relevant, as you could just make an image of the HD and resell it).
here is a screenshot of virtual PC on Mac-on-Linux on KDE. Very cool.
Apple stuff has pricedropped a lot, especially as of Quartz Extreme (QuartzGL) in Jaguar. In particular, old iMacs are now on price parity with old Pentium II hardware. (You may need to learn to distinguish the various models of iMac; if you don't know the difference between a DV and a Rev A/Rev B bondi, you'll see a lot of $800 pricetags and miss the real picture.)
The older hardware sometimes fetches *more,* because it was positioned higher in the product matrix (meaning people are trying to get back their $2,000 investments). Compare a Beige G3 to the iMac - both quite capable and comparable in speed, the former more expandable, but the latter much more OS X-ready - and you'll see the prices have only begun to level out. The Beige G3 towers take standard ATX supplies (and the desktop models can be made to do so, with the simple flip of a jumper), though you might need to redesign the cooling solution or switch cases with a swap.
The problem is that all the Apple hardware *previous* to that is suboptimal for desktop use in other ways- it predates SDRAM, and often PCI.
The Pegasos and AmigaOnes *are* a bit pricey now, but if they can get enough early adopters to create a market, there's no reason they can't reach rough price-parity with x86. The move to IBM chips should end the Motorola supply problems that have plagued previous attempts. So if you like PowerPC, the future does look brighter than it's been in years.
He meant an Apple ROM. New machines (OS X compatible) use what they call a "New World ROM." The information contained in them lets them boot into Mac OS X. Similar to a BIOS yet different. The OpenFirmware is contained in the ROM.
NeXTStep - operating system that Apple bought and based OS X partly on
PA-RISC, SPARC, 80x86, and 680x0 - assorted CPUs. 68k and 680x0 mean the same thing, and is the range of chips that Macs used to be built on, before they changed to the PPC architecture.
Cocoa - the libraries/environment/whatever (informative, eh?) that NeXTStep used, and MacOS X now uses. Cocoa programs are generally written in Objective-C, but I believe Java is possible.
Carbon - legacy library containing a slightly cleaned-up version of the pre-OS X libraries. It's still used a fair bit though.
There are probably errors here (I make errors a lot) but it's probably not too dreadful.
Check this out. Apple sued the hell out of them, so they eventually gave up. (well, not really them, but threatened, through the US government, brazilian exports, so the government made them give up) My professor have one of these machines in a shelf in his room at uni.
how are they *not* valid contracts?
in consideration of using a vendor's software you agree to their licensing agreement.
that's a contract. consideration. exchange.
(i had a discussion with my IT Law lecturer over EULAs. I used to think as you do. I know realise I was wrong. They are contracts. Whether they're contracts made in good faith or whether they're unconscionable contracts is a different question.)
As far as I know, the courts view more recent acts of Congress as the more recent expression of democracy. If the United States Code is internally inconsistent, then the judge will tend interpret the law so as to follow those sections enacted later more closely than those sections enacted earlier. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which may make click-wrap EULAs binding, was enacted more than a century after the Sherman Antitrust Act.
I am not a lawyer, but I watch a lot of "Law & Order".
Will I retire or break 10K?