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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!"
Apple will have to crack down on these "meta-clone" boxes.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but since the second-rev G3 machines (blue and white towers), hasn't the Apple BIOS been unnecessary? Or am I confusing the Software-ROM (that the New World mac architecture introduced, ROM-in-RAM) with something else?
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
Is the giant horn that sticks out of the monitor. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to get a closer look at the screen only to have it poke me in the eye. The wings are cool, though.
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.
It might, assuming you have access to all the source code. But not all of OS X is OSS. Significant chuncks of it are closed and proprietary. Without the source for that stuff the best you could do is hope to emulate G3/4 hardware on X86, which isn't really an attractive prospect.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
The SSL certificate is not from one of the "trusted" providers, nor does the name on it match the site name, since they're using an IP.
I decided to go through the rigamarole of creating an account to find out the price when they DO get them in, only to find out that while they are sold out, you cannot even list a price.
In other words, this is a non-product. They made a small run of them apparently, but you might as well just call it a beta test, because that's what it seems to be. They have announced that they're bringing out a G4-based replacement, and a G4 upgrade for the current G3 board. All of this will be neatly swept under the rug by dramatically more powerful systems based on next-generation 64 bit PowerPC.
If you need a cheap system to run MacOSX, buy a used Mac or one of those ATX systems based on Mac motherboards. Both are available now and not very expensive, all things considered, plus faster than this unavailable hardware.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Man, I have been waiting for this! A computer that will run MacOS X and Linux slower than the slowest Apple Macintosh. Now where is my wallet?!?!?
fp!
Why would you want to run Mac OS X under MOL?
It completely defeats the purpose of MOL... and Mac OS X. MOL is designed to allow you to access your mac os x programs when running linux on a dual boot mac, but as far as I know you loose most of the flashy speed that you would get from a standard OS X install.
I say just run linux and be happy.
This is just sig!
From the Mac-on-Linux FAQ:
You are paying $500 for a 600MHZ PowerPC G3 motherboard at the entry level. Not exactly a bargain by any stretch. We're talking Celeron-esque performance here for considerably more money, not something that's going to attract a lot of customers in my opinion. This is similar to the problem we saw in an article here awhile ago about building one's own Macintosh: high cost of parts made the project rather unreasonable for anyone other than financially-stable tinkerers. And moreover, judging from the author's conclusions, the OS isn't exactly stable either. Someday, in a happy world, there will be inexpensive Mac clones and we will even be able to build them ourselves from a vast and inexpensive selection of parts.
Loomis
"The television is the retina of the mind's eye" - Videodrome
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
Apple is mainly a hardware company, so don't expect them to release an x86 version of MacOS X. And anyway, what's the big deal? You can get a eMac (w/ a G4 processor) for $749. That's pretty cheap and it's gonna work well: my G3 800Mhz iBook runs just fine. Stop crying about prices: iMacs, iBooks and eMacs are good machines and are pretty cheap (in price). On the other hand, PowerMacs and PowerBooks are power machines, and it's natural that they cost more
I would think that the manufacturers will be in the clear as they don't supply or load OS X on the system, but the actual owner of the installed copy OS X is in breach of the EULA...
Can't see Apple identifying infringments, and tracking them all down though!
(At least I hope they don't... they should be busy building the 970 Powermacs...)
Wow! I just tried this and it really works! I never thought it would be possible, but my mac now works just as well as my x86 box running windows xp!
you know your OS is bad when Linux is considered more usable than it is. :)
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
You keep going until you're running the fucking ENIAC. And don't forget the custom punched-tape reader either there, Nancy
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
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!
Procedure... A
#1> Buy MacOS
#2> Don't tell Apple
Procedure B
#1> Buy PEGASOS motherboard
#2> Put Motherboard in old mac
#3> Call it an upgrade (The hardware {case} was approved by apple)
Procedure C
#1> Pirate MacOS
#2> Don't tell Apple
I'm not sure about the legal standpoints of running mac software on non-mac systems, but ya know, I don't give a shit. The SIAA isn't likely to go after *me* if I bought the software, no more then I've ever heard a case of mac emulation being pursued provided they bought the required ROMs. I should beable to put MacOS in my toster if I so choose to, dispite it being a violation of my license agreement. The worst thing I can see Apple doing is not support this alternative platform.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Contrary to the article, there is no BIOS in any Apple computer. G3s and G4s use OpenFirmware. I suppose what the poster meant was "Boot ROM", not BIOS.
There is quite a cost issue associated with the method you mention - even if someone were able to successfully reverse-engineer the Boot ROM legally, and get a supply of compatible logic boards and processors, I highly doubt that Apple would license the OS to them. Because of the licensing terms of the OS, they couldn't package it with Mac OS X, so they'd have to leave it to the user to pay an additional $129 to buy Mac OS X.
Back in the mid-90s, Apple did license the OS to several clone manufacturers. It nearly drove Apple out of business, because market share wasn't increasing, therefore the clone manufacturers were taking sales away from Apple. Plus, it becomes an extra expense for Apple to have to support their OS on third-party hardware. Also, there really wasn't any compelling reason to buy a clone - they didn't look as good, the prices weren't much less, and they didn't really offer anything you couldn't get in a Mac. PowerComputing did demonstrate that you could use commodity parts and overseas manufacturing to be able to implement a faster bus and still charge slightly less. If I recall correctly, they had a 180 MHz 604 system with a 66 MHz bus, while the comparable Apple systems still only had a 50 MHz bus. Soon after that, Apple canned the licensing program, acquired PowerComputing and their engineers, and released the G3.
here is a screenshot of virtual PC on Mac-on-Linux on KDE. Very cool.
Whoa! My ears are burning!
:-).
There actually was a Mac "emulator" for the Atari ST (which everyone called the "Jackintosh" when it came out) first. I didn't agree with the term "emulator" everyone used, since it really wasn't an emulator, but a port of MacOS to the Atari hardware, without Apple's permission. I dubbed this a "Hostile Port".
The early versions for the Amiga worked as well, but eventuall you got versions that ran as a more-or-less well behaved task under AmigaOS. That was pretty cool, if you needed Mac software... you could have Mac and Amiga at the same time. In those days, the Amiga had one of the fastest Mac hard drives, thanks to DMA, available -- dramatically faster than any "real" Mac.
I was a founder of Metabox, along with Andy Finkel (ex-Director of Software at Amiga) and two German businessmen, Stefan Domeyer and Geerd Ebeling. We were originally called PIOS Computer, back in the Mac Clone days. PIOS/Metabox had the first 300MHz Mac Clone shipping -- that should set the coordinated for your way-back machine. We bought the motherboards from UMAX, which also carried the license, and made our own CPU cards (actually designed by Thomas Rudloff).
I was working on a CHRP system, which wasn't terribly easy in the day. It had a separate CPU module, along the lines of what they had planned for the second generation BeBox (not precisely the same, but had they gone forward, it probably would have become so), and we had single and quad processor modules in development, G2 stuff in Apple terms. Future modules could have done G3, G4, or PPC970 for that matter. But Apple did pull the plug before this was finished, and Metabox [rightly] didn't see a viable market in a PPC machine that couldn't run MacOS. Of course, the Mac had over twice the market it has today.
The CPU modules kept selling, and Metabox acquired a US branch, based in Austin Texas, to bring some of this to the US market, but it wasn't expecially good timing, since Apple finally got aggressive with G3 machines.
We had three STBs -- the Metabox 500, based on the PC architecture and OS/2, the Metabox 100, which was an OEM from Teknema/Ravisent, and the never-completed Metabox 1000. That was my design, Thomas joined in later, and we had more people building add-ins for it, like a DVD/DVB decoder. This was roughly DVD-player-shaped. It ran a proprietary, AmigaOS-like OS developed under Andy and one of the Germans, Carsten Scholte(sp), called CaOS. The Amiga coonection was pretty key -- we tapped into numerous, well developed technologies like MUI (OO-graphics), Voyager (a browser), etc. This all ran on a ColdFire 5307/5407, not my top choice for a CPU, but a decent enough CPU if you had hardware for MPEG.
Metabox failed when the management got totally nuts, due to the stock prices rising (my shares, which I couldn't sell then, peaked at about US$5.8 million, but I got out of Metabox in terrible financial shape, with them owing me about $75,000 in salary alone). Basically, they spent money on nutty sponsorships: they tried to create a German basketball league, they sponored Forumla 1 racing, Soccer teams, etc. They bought a small film studio.
Meanwhile, the engineering team wasn't getting paid regularly, as the shares started falling in the fall of 2000. They pulled some maneuvers, probably illegal, that effectively stole all of my and Andy's shares in the company, replacing them with then-worthless, unregistered shares, all without our permission. A year of in-and-out of bankruptcy killed off the positive happenings at the US branch (I was CTO there in late 2000/early 2001, we were getting serious interest in the STB from Blockbuster, Enron, and others... ok, so maybe it was fated, anyway, to fail
They went into another bankruptcy late last year, more of the Chapter 7 than Chapter 11 sort from what I heard, but I don't know the German rules that well. Basically, the management proved, in less successful times, to be a bunch of criminals, stabbing their own partners in the back this way. I'd love to report they're all in jail now, but German law doesn't seem to have much to say unless you're German (they actually have excellent protections for employees - thankfully, most of our crew didn't get hosed).
-Dave Haynie
Darwin is Open Source. It would seem to me that if someone wanted to get OSX running without MOL (or Xpostfacto) on a non-approved PPC machine, they could compile a darwin kernel that does not exclude non-standard hardware.
For example this board has what appears to be a non-standard north bridge and south bridge (non-standard as far as apples go)but they work under linux. Someone could port the modules over to darwin, I'm sure. From what I can tell, there is not very much of a "community" behind darwin. Most seem content to let the apple guys do the darwin work. If I had any level of programming skill beyond 1 semester of C programming I'd seriously look into this myself.
Where do the major differences exist between darwin and Freebsd? Certainly FreeBSD is written to be portable since it runs on i386, alpha, and 64bit Sparc platforms. I'd think that some of the code could be inserted into darwin to add kernel level support for unsupported hw.
Actually, Apple used to sell a toaster that runs MacOS.
Actually I think flying might have been the only new feature they advertised.
If you already have an Internet terminal, and you just want to add magical human flight, get a Gillette Mach 3 Turbo(tm) razor. It's a lot cheaper than a new operating system license, even at volume prices.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It's a strange slashdot obsession.
Putting together a system with this board will probably cost MORE than buying a mac, and running OSX under MOL reduces you to unaccelerated graphics anyway. I can understand firing up an OSX session on your pegasos machine to test if an app compiles/runs under OSX, but the usability of OSX under MOL is minimal.
I'd rather pay for Apple's workstation-class hardware than an obscure mobo running a VIA chipset, even if I have no intention of running an Apple OS.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails