The Genesi Group calls for the creation of Development Teams and User Groups in an effort to establish the new platform and introduce it to technically-savvy users. The company also hopes for ports of a number of x86 OSes to their Pegasos platform as an addition to MorphOS.
Genesi Calls for Platform and Community Creation
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Did morphos run in x86? :]
If it runs I want to install it in my computer right away. It have a great screen shots…
No, you need to buy a Pegasos computer.
I have an amiga 600!!! Did morphos run on it? :]
I have an amiga 1200 but i hold out no hope…
Yes, there is a HOPE :]
You can find here, Hardware and Software:
http://www.amigasuperbit.com/maine.htm
They are also a reseller of:
Pegasos/MorphOS
I read somewhere that I can run Linux in my A600 :] It’s true?
I like very much the GUI of MorphOS in the article… That’s the reason that I ask if it run’s in my amiga.
Another thing, does the new amigaos 3.9 run in A600?
I still don’t understand why people choose X86 instead of Commodore Amiga
Amiga still alive, take a look at their website:
http://www.amiga.com
Blade & DavidGentle
> I have an amiga 600!!! Did morphos run on it? :]
No, but the OS does run on big boxed (desktop/tower) Amiga systems (including towered A1200 computers), equiped with PPC accelerators. But this earlier version of MorphOS wasn’t yet a full OS of its own, back then this PPCOS stack relied on AmigaOS. At the time WarpOS was somewhat its officially supported equivalent (And so AmigaOS4 will include WarpOS support, but not MorphOS support).
I think that the guys at the company which is behind the MorphOS project (Genesi or bplan or whatever its name is) have to do some things to become more popular:
> Creating an emulator. An emulator for games. For instance an emulator for Playstation 2 Games. The difficult thing is to co-operate with Sony to do that, but if they succeed, they will have many benefits. Typical users use their PCs for games, so with this movement Genesi can be a serious player in the Computer Market.
> An other business movement is to buy the rights for some popular programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Director etc.. Maybe there are better programs than Photoshop or Director for the MorphOS platform right now, but if people see that there is a version of Adobe Photoshop for the MorphOS, I guess they will buy the MorphOS Operating System more easily. The difficult thing here is that they need to change a part of code to make programs like Photoshop work on their OS.
> More advertisements. They have to inform the people for the existence of the MorphOS in the market. They have to inform them for what is MorpOS and what is not, what people can do using this OS, the available programs and applications for MorphOS etc. Most of people know that a computer is a machine with Microsoft Windows, so the big difficulty for Genesi is to change that.
> Low prices and good support. They have to present better products than their competitors in low prices. Lower than their competitors. A good quality of support after sailing their product is the key for the success. People will appreciate that.
> Finally maybe it would be a good movement for Genesi to co-operate with the Company behind the AmigaOS 4.0 project. At this phase a competition between two companies with let’s say “similar OSes”, maybe would be a catastrophe, because they are both small companies with a small amount of applications and programs available for their Oses
Please let me know what you think about my comments.
>For instance an emulator for Playstation 2 Games.
This is not doable, not only with Sony’s help, but not even with the alien Grey’s help… The PS2 cannot be emulated with today’s fastest PCs, let alone with Pegasos ~1 GHz G3 CPUs.
They can always emulate the Amiga and MAME or other old arcade/console games, plus maybe, getting support from VirtualPC on emulating Windows. But that’s about it regarding emulation.
>An other business movement is to buy the rights for some popular programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Director etc..
To port such big apps, these companies will ask many millions of dollars to do it, because they have to be compansated about the lack of sales (no matter how big the Pegasos market might be, it is still not enough to drive such ports). So, the solution *at this point* is not to throw away all this money to such big software players, but to smaller ones, companies that require less money to developer or port their apps and *build* the software base instead of just “populating” it. And of course, VirtualPC could always help here again, by emulating Windows and most of its apps.
>They have to inform the people for the existence of the MorphOS in the market.
I will have to agree about this. I think with time, as MorphOS gets readier, they will need to market it beyond the France/Germany/Skandinavian/Holland etc. borders (which are countries mostly into Amiga so they already know MorphOS).
> Low prices and good support.
Genesis will indeed need to sell full machines with the OS, the way Apple does it. They will need to create the “platform” and the full solution. With good prices of course…
>Genesi to co-operate with the Company behind the AmigaOS 4.0 project.
Hehe, I would think the same 2 months ago. But seeing the situation between the two communities, I don’t see it happening.
One last thing:
> They have to create products (Software and/or hardware products) with the next features:
New, breakthrough, cheap, “clever” and easy to use
I agree with you, but creating an emulator is not so difficult as you think.
After the decision of Sega to stop the production of Dreamcast console, guys at Sega announced that maybe they will produce a Card (PCI Card) and a program (emulator) for PCs. With this package (emulator and PCI Card) you can play all the dreamcast games using a small amount of CPU process.
Maybe, it is not so difficult for Genesi to create something similar, don’t you thing?
With hardware assist, would be easier to emulaet PS2. But it will be expensive (you will need to write a lot of code for it – plus the hardware cost) so there will be no reason why someone wouldn’t buy the real thing instead of adding a $200-$300 price *on top* of the Pegasos price.
As for Dreamcast and PS1, they were not as complex as PS2, they could be emulated if you had the full docs. But PS2 is a different beast, as I said not even the fastest PC today can emulate it. And if you create hardware for it, then it becomes too much and too expensive. Doesn’t worth the trouble.
>I will have to agree about this. I think with time,
>as MorphOS gets readier, they will need to market it
>beyond the France/Germany/Skandinavian/Holland etc.
>borders (which are countries mostly into Amiga so
>they already know MorphOS).
Like attending thigs like er, CES like we did last week 😉
Actually it seems to be a littel known fact but the UK was the biggest in sheer numbers for Amigas sold.
>> Low prices and good support.
Support we can work on but prices are really more down to volume, unfortunately these are still pretty low at this point.
>Genesis will indeed need to sell full machines with
>the OS, the way Apple does it. They will need to create
>the “platform” and the full solution. With good prices
>of course…
We sell the motherboard and OS, whats added beyond that is up to the reseller. Thats with the Current setup but will likely change in the future as we add things like the Eclipsis and Psylent.
>With hardware assist, would be easier to emulaet PS2.
>But it will be expensive…
No kidding! …and once it’s working we’d have the really difficult problem – Sony’s lawyers!
// But it will be expensive (you will need to write a lot of code for it – plus the hardware cost)
Eugenia I agree with you again. I can understand that. But read my next thoughts.
As far as I know Playstation 2 and most of the popular consoles (Gamecube, Xbox, etc.) will be supported at least for 4 to 5 years from now. As far as I know all the companies that produce game consoles have some earnings from the games. For example Sony can earn 5% of the sells of a game, even if that game is not produced by Sony.
So, if we take the given fact that Sony will have *earnings* (earnings from the games for at least 4-5 years) from the co-operation with Genesi it will be easier to produce an emulator *which can be cheaper than the Playstation2 console*. And of course Genesi has to give the opportunity to the customers to buy the emulator separately from the Pegasos case.
-Is it so important for Genesi to co-operate with Sony for an emulator with hardware assist?
-I think only Guys at Sony have the knowledge to create the powerful hardware thing.
Thank you for your time Eugenia.
I think her point regarding emulation is that it is impossible right now and probably for a long time because emulation is a very CPU intensive task. The emulation would be too slow to actually run the game. Especially since PS2 hardware is very unique. (Okay I am kind of guessing as to the hardware being unique).
I am sure Eugenia will let you know what she meant but in any event I don’t think it is possible for the reasons I mentioned above.
*as the thread turns to emulation*
If i remember correctly the GameCube has an IBM PowerPC in it, so wouldnt that be drastically easier to emulate?
//I like very much the GUI of MorphOS in the article…
Things are much better:
There is a Fully Skinnable user interface for MorphOS GUI (Graphic User Interface)
More information-> http://thendipo.alias.domicile.fr/us/pegasos.htm
//I still don’t understand why people choose X86 instead of Commodore Amiga
They buy x86 stuff for the simple reasons:
-They can run the most popular OS (Microsoft Windows) out there, with thousand applications and programs.
-They can install pirated copies of Microsoft Windows and programs available for MS Windows. (By buying a Mac or Commodore you pay for the OS)
-Most of people do not know about the RISC technology and its benefits
-The only popular machines now with RISC technology are Macs and Macs are expensive.
I believe that things will change after the release of MorphOS/Pegasos and the future release of AmigaOS 4.0
Just some reasons why people prefer x86 instead of RISC technology.
Yes, I think you are right Richard Fillion. But Gamecube is not so popular and there are not many games for the Gamecube console.
Even though the Gamecube is not so popular, an emulator for Gamecube can be also a good movement, if it is *easier to create* than the Playstation 2 emulator. There are only few games available for MorphOS and most of people use their computers for games.
A good idea, also, for Genesi is to spend some money to create some breakthrough games for MorphOS. Not complex games with lot of code. Simple games with new, breakthrough gameplay. Games with good gameplay have good sales, even they do not have good graphics and/or good sound.
//No kidding! …and once it’s working we’d have the really difficult problem – Sony’s lawyers!
As I have said the important and difficult thing, for Genesi, is to co-operate with Sony or Nintendo or IBM etc.
but this OS is doomed. Utterly. It has exactly zero chance of ever being a significant player (say, even 5% of the Mac market). Proprietary hardware? Please, even Mac has trouble because of this – what chance does an OS that’s virtually unknown (not even a niche) have if Mac is barely breathing? If you have proprietary hardware – or need proprietary hardware to function – you really have only one of two ways to go – go very high end with specialized markets (say, science, engineering or graphic design etc.) – which is to say work-station, or go extremely cheap to undercut Win boxen or Linux. Neither is an option for an OS with no market share, no capital (of the kind it would take to go either high-end to compete w/ Sun or IBM, or go low end to compete with a million Taiwanese or Chinese generic producers, not to mention grocers like Dell).
Nothing against these guys – we need all the choices we can get, but if I had to bet, I’d say, sadly, their chances of reaching any type of market share is somewhere between zero and nothing. Sad reality – no OS venture that has little capital can succeed with a proprietary hardware requirement. Linux doesn’t do proprietary – which is why it is not only breathing, but growing.
With these thoughts, my friend, every effort to create something new is already mistaken. That is not right in my opinion.
//At the moment our market is “Alternative Computing” starting with current and Ex Amiga users, it provides a very similar feel…
Please read the Interview -> http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=2345
//Proprietary hardware? Please, even Mac has trouble because of this – what chance does an OS that’s virtually unknown… …market share
The problem with Macs is one: Price. Macs are expensive.
What about the stability of the OS? A good solution is one Company to create both OS and hardware. Have you ever heard for hardware bugs?
But you can run MorphOS on different hardware:
[[Q: Will MOS run on a different hardware than Pegasos?
R: Yes, Mos people like the idea, hardware platforms like the Power Macs or the upcoming Eclipsis, also tests have been done on the TeronCX. But just now the MorphOS team is concentrated on finishing it, doesn’t make any sense to think about porting something which is not ready yet wasting valuable time and resources. Better wait until it is finished.
Q: Will MOS run on my old Amiga computer?
R: Yes, there will be a version for classic Amigas equipped with a PPC Accelerator and a graphics card. MOS has been developed in part in these hardware. This version will appear as soon as MOS is complete.]]
More information-> http://www.pegasos-uk.com/english/support_mosfaq.html
Nothing against these guys – we need all the choices we can get, but if I had to bet, I’d say, sadly, their chances of reaching any type of market share is somewhere between zero and nothing. Sad reality – no OS venture that has little capital can succeed with a proprietary hardware requirement. Linux doesn’t do proprietary – which is why it is not only breathing, but growing.
Linux is became commercial. Look at Lindows… I need to buy a CDROM from it, and became a membership and look to other linux distributions… I have to pay! Some of them you don’t need to pay right now, but later…:) If I want the source at lindows, I need to became membership, according to licence…
Another thing, GNU licence tell that some company’s sell the binary, and if you want the source (if the company wants) you must pay a value superior to source code. Open-Source is a way to make money…
Things must be commercial, because if they don’t have money, the company don’t exist, look for example at mandrake…
Look for example to GNU that is an organization, they want money (there is a button DONATE)
You can also visit:
http://www.morphos.net
:]
Put its biz less dependent on the humours of the AmigaInc&Gang crew is a wise movement, you can appeal to a wider market than former Amigans.
OTOH, banking your biz on a PPC is somewhat risky these days. Not only Chipzilla came back in 2002 and seems unstoppable (can you hear, AMD? We need Hammer and we need it NOW!) but the lack of intereston the Motorola’s part to create faster G4s are poisoning the PPC name on the market, even if Genesis is using IBM chips AND IBM is achieving some impressive goals with the G3 core (that puts Moto on worse position).
A good trick for Genesi with no cost is the next:
The announcing of “new” products (software and/or hardware) continuously in small time periods, even if these products have been in existence for a long time. That has to do with the psychology of the human. If Genesi announces continuously new products, users will think that Genesi is a powerful company with lot of future and support for the users.
Even if RISC CPU’s are capable of decent performance looking at the motherboard specs one has to deduce that the PPC’s performance is hampered by such bloody poor specs. With 133Mhz CPU busses and SDRam 133, come on people. Let’s stop bottlenecking the CPU and give the darn thing some bytes to crunch. I can imagine the Dual G$ setup with a shared memory controller with a fat (NOT) 133Mhz bus. Get real, this just makes me want to cry.
Try moving to a decent hardware platform or do something innovative with the PPC hardware like 500Mhz independent CPU busses and DDR Ram PC 3200 with Dual memory architecture like with the current x86 platforms. At least be on equal footing so when you show your OS you can show a desktop on current hardware that totally obliterates Windows and Linux on the desktop. This’ll be the only way to impress users, that and coupled with some decent apps that deal with digital media handling like music/video/images/Office docs like Mac OSX and WinXP does.
Until then, dream on.
I think that:
BeOS – porting is impossible without source code
Zeta – same as above, Zeta use BeOS code too
NewOS – it’s only a kernel, the same of OpenBeOS!
OpenBeOS – good, but has the necessary resources?
therefore, draft only of good intentions?
>Even if RISC CPU’s are capable of decent performance >looking at the motherboard specs one has to deduce that the >PPC’s performance is hampered by such bloody poor specs. >With 133Mhz CPU busses and SDRam 133, come on people. Let’s >stop bottlenecking the CPU and give the darn thing some >bytes to crunch. I can imagine the Dual G$ setup with a >shared memory controller with a fat (NOT) 133Mhz bus. Get >real, this just makes me want to cry.
>
>Try moving to a decent hardware platform or do something >innovative with the PPC hardware like 500Mhz independent >CPU busses and DDR Ram PC 3200 with Dual memory >architecture like with the current x86 platforms. At least >be on equal footing so when you show your OS you can show a >desktop on current hardware that totally obliterates >Windows and Linux on the desktop. This’ll be the only way >to impress users, that and coupled with some decent apps >that deal with digital media handling like >music/video/images/Office docs like Mac OSX and WinXP does.
>
>Until then, dream on.
How about you actually wake up and study *how* hardware works first? If you slap DDR RAM onto a system without upgrading the rest, or do the same with the CPU bus, or the video bus, etc, you end up with a miniscule increase in performance. The ratio is you gain 10% of the increased bandwidth by doing it this way. It’s been happening like this in the PC world since the Pentium-60. That’s why a 100Mhz Pentium can reach 90% of the usable performance of the 1Ghz Pentium III. (don’t quote benchmarks here, I know them already)
Pegasos, by comparison, was engineered top-down using complimentary components, that it components that work together. As a result, running MorphOS on a Pegasos, I was doing circles around my ex-roomates G4 based Mac, and I’m running a G3 here. And don’t even wanna see how it trounces my Athlon setup here. Provided it’s CPU doesn’t overheat, the Athlon, after 24 hours of continuous number crunching, was coming in at barely 1/3rd speed in rendering *and the Pegasos was running a 68k copy of POV in emulation*.
Then there’s the cost benefit by these specs. DDR-RAM, for all of it’s speed bonus, is still twice the cost of sDRAM. Not good for a price-concious system. AGP 4x is rarely achieved, with the 2x’s bus thuroughput being the general rule. Adding a year onto development and doubling the design cost just to gain an advantage in 10% of the situations it’ll find itself in? This model doesn’t work.
So, let’s see…. I can build a complete Pegasos machine using parts I find at CompUSA for under $700. Not bad. Tough to do that with the specs you were running off. Consumers don’t know what the hell pC2100 RAM vs PC133 RAM means. They don’t care to know. What they do care about is “hey honey, this machine is damned zippy!” and “Hey, $700 for this machine verses $700 for that one, and this one looks faster.”
Design components to compliment each other rather than fight each other for resources, synch everything up, and lock them in tight, and you can beat machines with higher benchmarks easily. If you want a prime case, look at a workstation from Sun/IBM/HP sometime and compare that to an off-the-shelf machine. Heck, my old 500Mhz Alpha running sDRAM beats this Athlon hands-down. And I didn’t even get the top-end motherboard.
I think you need to study reading, I have stipulated though my post that the underlying features of the current motherboard ie CPU Bus, Memory architechure, etc are staid and sorry on the Power PC platform but not so bluntly. As far as graphics Bus bandwidth is concerned well AGP doesn’t cut it at all and that is why many high performance 3D cards are comming out with their own high performance memory systems. The processing and rendering is done mainly on the card as to not rely on the system’s CPU and the motherboards memory bus which doesn’t cut it currently under most systems exept SGI, Sun, and IBM proprietry workstations because of the limitation of the PCI architecture which is at least being replaced on the next gen of x86 motherboards. I fail to see this happening on the desktop Power PC platforms but please feel free to prove otherwise.
Power PC doesn’t cut it except, in maybe embedded devices. In all processing intensive tests against alternative and affordable hardware (re x86) it is blown out of the water. So don’t give me this shit about we are using a special MB with complimentary components without backing it up cause after studying the site linked and knowing about current Power PC hardware I have deduced that they have not done anything new except at the OS level. Of course with a decent OS you will run rings around a G4 Mac cause OS X boggs the hardware down with overhead that is not necessary. The results were the same with BeOS running on Power PC and x86 systems especially in dual configurations. I’m sure if they ported to x86 my dual AMD setup would crap on Windows and Linux. Most of it is in the code and what is realised in Morphos and also with BeOS is the KISS principle, Keep It Simple Stupid with the addition of small efficient coding. Something neither Apple and Microsoft will never realise.
You’re quoting processing times when that’s not where people actually interact with a computer.
They interact with the I/O.
A faster processor tied to a bog-slow I/O system is worthless to joe-consumer. Hate to break it to you, but the majority of systems sold since the P4 was released were running CPU speeds of half of the top-end model or slower. People don’t give a crap if you can render Quake3 at 100fps or 200fps, just that they can frag their friends at the local LAN party.
And note, PowerPC use in non-Apple machine has actually compared favorably with x86 in terms of processor benchmark score. (Yes, they do exist) Apple has a dog-slow memory model that they inherited from the original 68k mac, so they’re not achieving the maximum potential of the CPU. I’ve heard differing figures, but it averages around Apple getting about 60% of the potential.
So please, before you keep on this “PowerPC suxxors, x86 r00lz” thread, could you step back and look at the intended target here? We’re not trying to sell high-end UT2K machines here. We’re not trying to even sell top-end desktop solutions. We’re selling a middle-of-the-road platform that happens to offer some workstation features that can be turned into a whole computer for a pretty damned competitive pricetag. If that’s not good enough for you, fine, but don’t get all high-and-mighty if there are quite a few people that would love to be free from x86’s limitations.
Guess what, I’m not trying to be high and mighty. I’m just a person who like most out there is pissed off with the sorry assed state of afairs with desktop/workstation computing. There has to be a better way. For my own needs I want something for Audio creation/editing and for the odd Flight Sim. After being introduced to a bright light of computing BeOS, then to have it flop and not to see much in a replacement but the same old crap from the major vendors, well I’m very disapointed. As for x86 artitecture, things are getting better and I think you need to look into Hyper Transport from AMD and the Intel version to see where the technology is going. If anything the Hard drive is the current bottle neck of most computing systems but Motherboard Bus and Memory sub systems are progressing quite well. I just want a seemless easy to use system wich doesn’t kill my hardware with legacy crap, dumb assed graphics, apps and services that I don’t want running in the background unless I specify them.
Is this too much to ask for?
Anyway, if your alternative is simple and works well then go for it. I will keep looking at your progress and see where it leads down the track. If you get Steinberg on board with VST Instruments and Nuendo/Cubase on board then I will be very interested.
Take care