Here is a new Pegasos review, also reviewing the MorphOS in addition to the hardware.
New Pegasos Review
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
MorphOS has some of the nicest icons of any OSes out there. I think people underestimate the importance. I frequently note (just my opinion) that the default KDE icons are ugly. Windows XP finally itroduced some nice icons for Windows. But MorphOS has really spent some time on their icons, and they look great.
I like those icons…not to shabby.
I’ll admit that I don’t know the first clue about MorphOS or Amiga computers anymore, but I don’t think that I have to for this question:
1) What exactly is MorphOS (a clone, a rewrite, a pizza) and what is pegasos (hardware, software, croutons)?
2) What is the target audience here? Is it old school amiga people, or schools, or just my Uncle Dave?
3) Are Pegasos and MorphOS part of the same project?
Thanks, it’s late, and i get really odd after being up for 22 hours. Thanks a lot OS News for reanimating my corpse from 11pm to 1am every night.
Hi Josh, start here…
http://www.pegasosppc.com
There are many answers to your questions are there.
MorphOS and the Pegasos are all in one project. We also have a few specific applications and the ability to prototype and manufacture the Pegasos ourselves. See pictures here: http://www.dcecom.de/galerie.html (start with the third picture and scroll down). This makes us self-reliant and allows us the flexibility to respond to opportunity quickly.
Right now, as Eugenia has said here on OSNews, we are focused on being the ultimate “geek” machine. We have provided a number of Pegasos machines to various alternative OS developments (details are on http://www.pegasosppc.com). This will continue to be our focus though the end of the year. We have found that the alternative OS market is an excellent niche for us that produces surprising and innovative results.
In the beginning, we focused on the Amiga market. Here we found an enthusiastic and receptive community spirit, a large amount of application software that has in many cases maintained its relevance with the rest of the world, and a pool of talented, motivated developers. The latter has provided the most solid assurance. All one needs to do is scroll through the recent history of http://www.morphos-news.de to see how active and dedicated these developers are. After years of disregard, they have responded more than sufficiently. They were our first customers.
We will begin producing 5000 Pegasos II mainboards in September. We have replaced the Articia with a Marvell northbridge and the G4 CPU card will go on sale in July to our Pegasos I customers. We have the same game plan as we did a year ago, we just added another zero and are broadening the circle of interest to LinuxPPC, OpenBeOS, BSD, etc.
Josh, it is not (yet) your Uncle Dave and 5000 may not sound like a big number, but watch who buys them and what they do with them. In the meanwhile, the rest of the market grows more ripe for change and when we are ready for Uncle Dave we will have a fairly interesting alternative for him.
Hope that answer satisfies your curiosity. 😀
Best regards,
Raquel Velasco and Bill Buck
I know i’ll get flamed for this, but why ppc over i386?
Well cr@zy, here is our answer, but Nicholas are you reading this? 😀
Nicholas Blachford will have something to say about this here on OSNews this coming week. In the meanwhile…
Title: Big Marketing Battles Ahead
The Pegasos II will be the ONLY alternate PPC hardware platform of its price and performance on the market. The challenge will be overcoming the market convention for many things.
Challenge #1 (the old favorite): CPU speed
Comparing the rated speed of two processors in MHz is virtually useless unless the processors are exactly of the same architecture. Even processors within the same family cannot be directly compared (Pentium I vs. II, III vs. IV, G3 vs. G4, etc.). For example, the enhancements made to the Pentium II gave it far better performance characteristics than the Pentium. The difference in MHz alone could not account for the improvement. The increase was due more to a number of architectural changes, including cache sizes and algorithms, pipeline organization, memory access, etc. If you cannot compare the MHz “rating” of CPUs from the same family (i.e. Altivec in the G4) as it compares to the relative speed of the entire computer, you really cannot compare the clock speeds across two distinct families (IntelWhatever and PPC). The clock speeds of CPUs reminds us of the marketing hype that goes into selling vacuum cleaners or blow dryers — which machine has more amps? Anyway, back to computers…what “sucks” or “blows” more will be the primary propaganda PC-oriented marketing obstacle to overcome.
Our answer to that could be:
WATTS HAPPENING!
Power is the rate at which work is done, expressed as the amount of work per unit time and commonly measured in units such as the *watts* and horsepower (flying horses that is! Pegasos!). Power (to do things) is the key. We need to get people thinking about what they can do and not the speed at which computer runs to do it.
Challenge #2
It is NOT about MorphOS and how great it is or isn’t – at least not yet. It is about Microsoft vs. OpenSource. This is about Linux folks. The City of Munich recently decided to move its 14,000 desktops to Linux. SuSE has confirmed that they will be using the SuSE Linux Desktop. Congratuations to SuSE. They have leveled at good stroke toward breaking down the “wall” for all of us. First, we have to get people to try something new in the Pegasos hardware. THEN, we have to eliminate vendor lock and get people to partition their hard drive with more than a LinuxPPC distro (or they could have a few hard drives), only then might we get the chance to stand in for a few dances. Remember, we are trying to get more people using the Pegasos and Linux has captured the attention of many!
What can we say when confronted by our GHz-pumping-steroid PC friends…
Spitball #1
Hey Friend, are you homogenized? Got Pegasos? And while you are at it, please ask yourself the *ethical* MicroSoft question. There is NO spyware or Gestapo installation tactics here. We won’t ask you endless privacy questions. By the way, have you actually sat down and read a EULA lately? (forget MacOS for now…) Read through the one for XP Home today. It actually prohibits you from connecting to your XP HOME PC via your network for anything other than file or print services. Technically, that seems to mean you cannot install something like Apache and run a small website from your own house. It also probably means you cannot install Oracle on your PC, because then you would be accessing a database service, which the EULA doesn’t appear to allow. Is it just a good thing that Microsoft does not yet have the technical means in place to enforce such draconian terms, but it sure does seem like they would like to head down that path. In the meanwhile, the Pegasos offers FREEDOM to use the OS and applications you want! See http://www.PegasosPPC.com for details…
Spitball #2
Why Choose A Pegasos? “Why The Dell Not!”
Get them to ask themselves if they want to support clone companies that benefit from pumping out the cheapest boxes with the least innovation, or if they want to go with a Company that is ready to innovate like crazy! Dell are parasites making commodity products. They do not advance the state of the art of the industry. They just make it a bit cheaper and you get what you pay for (and pay for, and pay for…).
Spitball #3
What is the lifespan of the product? An Apple investment has a practical lifespan of two-to-four times as long as the PC alternative. Anyone want to address the resiliency of the Amiga Community… then, you can address the changable CPU card, the upgrade path, scalabilty, the large number of applications that have been kept current by the Amiga Community through years of disregard, etc., etc.
The VALUE meter has to pull to the right, even against a lower entry-level cost of a PC-clone.
People wait forever for that new, faster CPU to come out. They end up waiting forever when they could be using a NEW KIND OF COMPUTER tomorrow (…or at least in September!). What is in front of them then has to be compelling for them to make this decision!!! We are doing our best to insure this.
That was a quick Sunday afternoon stab at that question. 🙂
Best regards,
Raquel and Bill
Interesting, I’ll keenly observe the progress of Pegasos over the next year or two to evaluate their seriousness and professionalism. I currently use Linux but atimes I’m appalled at the so many incomplete, unproffessional, poorly designed and bug ridden unscrutinized projects that are released for public consumption. Agreed, the projects are usually open source and free. But I don’t see that as an excuse for poor design, horrendous documentations, carelessly written code and a ‘use at your own risk’ attitude. If you are not confident in your work, or cannot defend it, don’t release it.
If there has to be an alternative to Wincrap, lets make the alternative viable. Let Microshits and their users come to acknowledge the superiority, the stability and quality of open standards, open cooperation, open feedback and open source. It’s about time we stopped releasing half baked products, and concentrated on releasing products that far exceeding the expectations of users. Agreed, it is a challenge. But it is one that can be easily defeated with the right mentality and attitude. And that is, we will be open; we will not play second fiddle; we will settle for only the best; our products shall be stable and complete; and I shall stop ranting now and return to my commitments.
Regards,
Mystilleef
Hi Mystilleef, we would be very happy to keep you posted. If you send us an email we can add you to the mailing list of your choice…:-)
Alternatively, each of these sites has their own function:
http://mdc.morphos.net
http://www.phinixi.com
http://www.morphos-news.de
http://www.morphzone.org
…and then there is the whole “Pegasos Network”
http://www.Pegasos-au.com
http://www.pegasos-benelux.com
http://www.pegasos-czech.com
http://www.Pegasos-de.de
http://www.Pegasos-France.com
http://www.pegasos-hellas.com
http://www.Pegasos.pl
http://www.PegasosPPC.fr
http://www.Pegasos-suisse.com
http://www.Pegasos-uk.com
http://www.Pegasos-usa.com
…and Pegasos Spain: http://www.nowee.org/pegasos/index.html
…and here is a good one:
http://pegasos.innoidea.hu
Watch the Pegasos on Hugarian TV two weeks ago! (with English subtitles)…:-)
…and finally here is our favorite User Group site:
http://www.snopug.org
Why wait until next year? 🙂
Best regards,
Raquel and Bill
[email protected]
P.S. Here find another review:
http://www.magneticsystemsnyc.com/BeginRevGrphc.html
but Nicholas are you reading this? 😀
Sure 🙂
Why PPC?
Well it started that way initially because there had been a move in the Amiga world to PPC with the first products being made by Phase5 (some of whom are now working for Genesi). The Pegasos is a continuation of that process.
MorphOS wont run natively on a Little Endian machine so we couldn’t go x86 without breaking compatibility with pretty much everything and given that compatibility is one of the primary goals of MorphOS thats hardly sensible.
Building x86 hardware would be pretty much impossible fo us – we simply couldn’t compete with manufacturers who produce 500K units at a time. And competing with Windows and Linux for the desktop is damn near impossible, Be tried that with an OS which was better than anything else for it’s time and look what happened to them…
PPC also has some advantages, notably low Power consumption / heat which means you can make a small noiseless computer, you can do this with x86 but only by cutting performance to the point where it underperforms even a low end PPC.
Then theres things like SetTopBoxes some of which also use specialist low end PPCs but cost significantly less than any PC. MorphOS can run fine on such hardware – try running WindowsXP or a modern Linux distro on similar classed hardware and you’re not in for a fun time at all.
<Josh Byington>
/*
I’ll admit that I don’t know the first clue about MorphOS or Amiga computers anymore, but I don’t think that I have to for this question:
1) What exactly is MorphOS (a clone, a rewrite, a pizza) and what is pegasos (hardware, software, croutons)?
*/
Yes it’s a pizza and a clone.
/*
2) What is the target audience here? Is it old school Amiga people, or schools, or just my Uncle Dave?
*/
If you do not like Windows this is an option as MacOS,Linux or Unix systems.
/*
3) Are Pegasus and MorphOS part of the same project?
*/
Yes and no, there different companies working to getter one providing the hardware and the otter providing the OS.
Hello again,
Thanks for the information bbrv. I’ll proceed to join some of the mailing lists. I’m very interested in Pegasos and I hope it does becomes a viable and respectable competitor in the OS market. However, I’d love to follow and see Pegasos mature a little further before I commence extensive evaluation and testing. And then, hopefully, I’ll take the plunge. I also need to prepare for the necessary adjustments. 🙂
Regards,
Mystilleef
Will the Pegasos go 64 bit with the 970?
numbers are organized in different way on Motorola CPU compared to I686, performance whist converting number take time, if you have jit compiler that needs generate 3/4 Intel instruction to cope withe this type of problems and then there is the problem with having some data stored in Intel format and some in Motorola format you need keep track of what is what. it simply not a easy task and it’s not an efficient task if you are going to make it compatible with the programs that came out from 1992 to now, before 1992 every thing accessed the chipsets directly none of the software before 1992 will run on MorphOS/Pegasus or AmigaOS4.0/AmigaOne,
*
3) Are Pegasus and MorphOS part of the same project?
*/
Yes and no, there different companies working to getter one providing the hardware and the otter providing the OS.
You’re thinking of the wrong companies. Pegasos & MorphOS are both by *one* company.
doubling the bits don’t make programs faster, on all type of operations, the preference will not effect things like ‘dir’ ‘list’ ‘cd’ you may get better performance when compeering large amount of data, or copying large amounts of data,
things that will improve preference is games that do lots of context switching, database system that do a lot of text compeering as well as moving and compeering long text strings,
So there is no point in a 64bit OS, however having graphic-library 64bit or part of the OS may help a give preference boost, as long as 64bit processor have some legacy support with 32bit once there is no point going 64bit.
<Nicholas Blachford>
Genesi provides the hardware
<http://www.pegasosppc.com>
bplan provides the OS
<http://www.morphos.net/>
Hi Brandon, we expect to. In fact, a 64 bit kernel is being developed now for the Pegasos by the NewOS Team (http://newos.sourceforge.net). This kernel is a true 64 bit kernel and will also be used by the OpenBeOS Team (http://www.openbeos.org). If you scroll down that page you can read the whole discussion about it and even a word or two about the Pegasos. 🙂
Thanks for your interest.
Sincerely,
Raquel and Bill
Hi Kjetil, bplan is part of Genesi.
You can find the details here:
http://www.pegasosppc.com/quick_help.php
🙂
R&B
Okey it look like every one else has lost intrest…
what about the quark kernel are you drooping it?
and what about Q/Box is that drooped ?
Hi Kjetil, Quark and the Q/Box are part of MorphOS. NewOS and OpenBeOS are different operating systems…;-)
But, they all will work on the Pegasos.
Thanks for your interest!
Best regards,
Raquel and Bill
I’m all for alternatives. But, let’s give credit where credit is due. Dell is #1 for a reason.
In the business market, MIS departments want a computer product with a solid reputation, that performs well, upgrades easily (not proprietary) and is reasonably priced. Name one besides Dell that meets these requirements. We used use Compaqs. But, they are so proprietary that you can not even install an of-the-shelf Windows CD on them without spending the day downloading drivers. OTOH, Dell brings generic components together in an extrordinarily well designed case at an affordable price with good support.
Dell’s are great machines. They make a great benchmark to measure other offerings.
My present BeOS machine works great and I probably will not need (note: need not want) an upgrade for another two or three years. Problem: in that amount of time I may find that the best Intel based boards some many rights controls imbedded in them that the only OSs that run are Microsoft’s or other pay thru the eye-teeth OS.
Linux is not my cup of tea, and it is not clear that I will enjoy using MorphOS or Pegasos, I loved my Amiga but after using BeOS I do see it had some bad limit. Not that the AmigaOS does not have a few tricks I would love to see in BeOS. But if OpenBeOS is available 2-3 years down the road for it, I see no reason not to go PPC instead of Intel.
Earl Colby Pottinger
Yes, and I’d point out that the Pegasos is an open platform. The only “proprietory” thing about it is that it is not x86. And, last time I checked, PowerPC was as open as x86 for documentation, so that is not a real issue.
The only limits with the Pegasos rev. 1 boards is due to the choice of northbridge/southbridge, not due to the choices of the designers. Rev. 2.0 will not be as limited, and should be as open as a standard PC motherboard for components.
You might have limitations due to drivers, but you have that on x86 as well.
well well well dear ladies and gentlemen.
So it looks quite obvious that Genesi/ bplan folks are about to give people the news that they’ve been waiting since the summer of ’99. What makes me wonder is that, although OpenBeOS team are working to port their stuff which they never released, is there any way to get the Personal or Professional Edition of BeOS R.5 work on Pegasos? I mean, Be Max Ed and BeDev Ed people can have the old Personal Edition BeOS with software upgrades and stuff and can get it work on platforms that original BeOS can’t even boot- like P4 and Athlon machines, which the north and southbridge chips that are used in the boxes are quite different than old BX stuff. As far as I know there was a PPC version of Be Personal Edition – which can be used on original BeBox’es and also on Mac’s, so I suppose that if stuff like Max and Dev editions can be spawned off the old Be Personal Ed -x86, then it can be done to PPC version too. I’d like to see any reply to my little curiousity. thanks!
AFAIK, only the BeOS R5 Pro version was released for PPC. I suppose that this excludes third-party hacking, too. But it certainly wouldn’t be a bad idea to investigate.