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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.
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.
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
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...)
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!
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