Submitted by I barely finished and published my MorphOS 2.3 review for OSNews, and here we have the release of MorphOS 2.4. The biggest improvement, if you could call it that, is the one thing a lot of people have been waiting for: MorphOS 2.4 includes support for the entire range of PowerPC G4 Mac Mini computers from Apple.
This release has been long in the making, as rumours, hints, and then definitive confirmationof a MorphOS port to the PowerPC Mac Mini started appearing a long time ago. This port works on all variants of the PowerPC G4 Mac Mini (so not on the Intel Mac Mini, obviously). Installing MorphOS on the Mac Mini is pretty much the same as any other operating system: hold down the ‘c’ while the MorphOS disk is in the drive, and go from there. This guide will help in setting up a dual boot environment with Mac OS X.
This release also includes a lot of bugfixes, but as a relatively inexperienced Amiga/MorphOS user, nothing really stands out to me. It’s a long list in any case, so that’s a good sign.
The upgrade is free for existing MorphOS 2.x users, and there’s a demo version available so you can try it out, but without the keyfile it will slow down after (I believe) 30 minutes of use. This is a good way to find out if MorphOS is worth your money. Speaking of money – MorphOS costs 150 EUR, which includes VAT.
this is great news! congratualtions to the MorphOS team for all your hard work. now i am off to ebay to get me a new old mini
Just run it off the LiveCD. Works fine, it is impressing fast, fast, fast!
Will do the actual installation tomorrow – have to think a bit about a clever repartion of the internal hdd (keep OS X or remove it).
I’ve been playing with it for the last few hours, need more time to see what I think of it. A *lot* of effort has gone into this. The installation and Live CD were very well presented with lovely icons and installer graphics. It boots stupendously fast, like 5 seconds.
With 3 to 4 times the CPU power of the old EFIKA boards, Mac mini finally provides a platform where Morphos can really shine. Still, I wonder how many people with old Mac minis around will want to shell out the $150 for this. Also, given that Mac minis probably sold in fairly small numbers when compared to G4 laptops, lampshade iMacs and probably even G4 towers and cubes, I wonder how long it will be before someone gets it working on a wider array of Macs?
Edited 2009-10-12 23:02 UTC
I’m going to shove the .iso in my PowerMac tomorrow or Wednesday. PowerMac dual G4-400Mhz, 1GB of RAM. Let’s see what happens.
“I’m going to shove the .iso in my PowerMac tomorrow or Wednesday. PowerMac dual G4-400Mhz, 1GB of RAM. Let’s see what happens.”
later that evening in the TV news: “As of October 13th 2009 SkyNet has come online.”
Thom’s computer becomes sensient and takes over
I tried it in my Powermac yesterday, it was the computer I’d just burnt the CD in, and only got as far as the white Quark/Open Firmwear, didn’t try anything else, so tell us how you get on! Although I don’t think there’ much to be gained from using 2/faster processors, as it’s so darn fast anyway.
A MorphOS laptop? yes please!
Did your G4 Power Mac have a Radeon series card (from 7000 up to 9200)? Was it a stock Mac CPU or an upgrade? These two details could play a big part in why it didn’t work for you.
Does anyone have any idea why other G4 machines won’t work? Would it be the specific type of chipset, video card, etc., contained on those machines and a general lack of drivers for other (iMac, eMac, etc.) hardware? Just wondering, because I happen to still own an old eMac G4.
well when building an OS for a platform you need to have al the equiptment to write teh drivers. since there were MANY releases of teh G4 power mac’s and a decent amount for teh eMac’s it would require teh devs to have to suport more hardware configs. this poses an issue when there aren’t that many devs or much time. also mini’s are cheaper and easier to get ahold of. it all comes down to time to market and marketing towards your target audience.
That’s true. But there are plenty of things with similar identical to the G4 mini hardware, including many “mid period” laptops and the second and third generation eMacs. It will be interesting to hear how peoples experiments with various configurations work out.
About 1 month ago, I did a Buy It Now on eBay for a 733MHz G4 QuickSilver with 1Gb RAM and GeForce2MX video card… $70 (incl. shipping). Oh, wow… how horribly EXPENSIVE! Totally broke the bank buying it! How will I ever afford to buy food now!
I never saw a G4 Mini going that cheap.
“marketing toward your target audience?”
Wouldn’t those who bought a G4 mini be more likely to go with OS X (or a new mini) than go to the trouble of using Morph?
Edited 2009-10-13 13:55 UTC
All nvidia gfx are a major prob. But other Powermacs with ATI gfx may (sic!) get supported later on. There was an exerimental port to a powerbook shown. But this is nothing to be expected anytime soon.
Better enjoy the Mini *now*.
Might help to make it easy to run on “accessible” non dead platforms. How soon before that?
I would agree with others in the previous posting that a cortex a8 system would be a good choice. Biggest issue there being 3d drivers, unfortunately.
Cortext is ARM, Mac Mini is PPC. Do you really thing the 3d drivers would be the biggest issue??
I guess I’ve been spoiled by systems like linux and bsd where porting isn’t really much of an issue. Supporting non documented hardware has always been the issue for these.
I’m guessing that you’re implying that morphos isn’t very portable? If that’s true then I would suggest they MUST perform this port to clean up any bad internal code.
I’m guessing as well, but in general, if you do not write an OS with portability in mind, it is difficult to port it afterwards. That’s not to say that the code is “bad” somehow. It may be code that’s beautifully tailored to the specifics of the PPC platform, but very difficult to port to ARM or Intel.
It’s about more than just the OS, MorphOS currently runs legacy Amiga m68k and PPC applications, recompiling the OS for ARM or x86 will not magically maintain compatibility with those.
Actually, the 68k support would probably carry over as it works as a JIT emulation layer. PPC support would be lost though.
The JIT (Trance) targets PowerPC. But hey if they’re doing a new m68k JIT for x86 why not add PowerPC emulation? Shouldn’t add that much work?
Edited 2009-10-17 17:06 UTC
This is amazing news, and although MorphOS is on the pricey side, I’m gonna buy a Mac Mini G4 just for this. 🙂
ebay will be really confused as to why there is a sudden boon in G4 Mac Mini demand 🙂
Few saw this release coming this soon. The authors are capable of great secrecy in development. They released it with virtually no fanfare.
I’ve never used Amiga OS or any compatible system but it’s great that those people finally have a beefy system that they can buy from ebay for around 200 EUR, no more < 1 GHz mobo for the price of a netbook 🙂
On the other hand: The OS costs almost as much as the computer itself, but hey, so what?
Edited 2009-10-13 10:51 UTC
Come on Thom, its been out all of a day now, why so slack with a review?!
Seriously though, if you are able to redo the review on hardware that does the OS credit (G4 mini)I think it would be a really interesting read.
So would I, but I don’t have a G4 Mac Mini; that’s why I am hoping my PowerMac will work (unlikely). G4 Minis are still ~275-300EUR here, and that’s too pricey for hardware that is obsolete (even Apple considers it to be as such).
I’m just a poor student.
I’ll do the review. I’ve been waiting years to get my hands on an Amiga-like system.
You, sir, are so full of win.
ouch!
I thought they would be almost ‘disposable’ in cost now. £100 or so at most. Incredible how well they have held their value…
…do you buy Morphos?
I saw a Quicksilver G4 PowerMac on ebay for about £75, I wonder if you put a supportted ATI card how far you would get?
Experimentation time!
I was thinking the same thing. And Mac versions of the Radeon (from the 9200 down to the 7000) are about US$30-$40, when I looked last night. How much is MorphOS (in US dollars)? I can’t find a link to where you can buy it on their site.
If no one is writing new software for the Amiga platform (or MorphOS), then MorphOS has a very limited and narrow lifespan. Fast is good (1.4GHz G4… ZOOMIN!), but racing your engine (fast), stuck in park (no apps), does nothing but burn up your engine and waste gas (waste of time and money to no avail)!
Edited 2009-10-13 19:05 UTC
I’d love to see support expanded to desktop Macs like the B&W G3 and later. I have several of those with 350mhz G3 processors and up that I’d love to use as useful systems with a modern OS.
The price is way too high. 150 euros is $222US. Too much for a niche OS with such limited hardware/software support. Cut the price and go for volume.
Since most users will download the ISO and burn it themselves, distributing the keycode via email is little cost. At $99US a copy, most of that is profit anyway.
At that price point, I’d bet the volume would more than double to make up for the price cut.
For the price thing I totally agree. 99 would be the perfect price. I even guess 149 EUR would sell better than 150 EUR. While we all actively know 149 and 150 are vrtually the same ammount there is also the non-concious component that helps us to decide. And for this we need these threshold prices like 99.
So, while I am crazy enough to spend 150 EUR for a keyfile (did so before for a keyfile for my Efika and haven’t regretted it), I would strongly suggest to lower the price to 99.- (EUR or even US$), but the 150 are too bold for the majority.
Okay, I just spent a lot of time trying to get MorphOS to boot on my PowerMac G4 (dual G4 400Mhz, 1GB, Radeon 8500), and it didn’t work. It hang at the Quark/OpenFirmware part (MorphOS users will know).
In case you want to try this out on your own Mac, this is the OpenFirmware command you need to try and boot the Quark kernel:
ok> boot cd:\mac_pp32\boot.img
Too bad. Took me a while to realise that the Mini boot.img was located in the mac_ppc32 directory – this might seem like the first place to look, but please keep in mind that all the other boot.img files (default, peg1, and efika) are all located at the root.
In any case, I’ve been at university all day, and played with this all night. In other words, normal OSNews service will resume tomorrow.
Thanks Thom. I’m tempted to try it out on my eMac but haven’t got it set up yet (in the middle of moving to London).
Does anybody now any MorphOS forums? Maybe they have some pointers.
It won’t boot on anything other than a Mac Mini G4(any version), so don’t waste your time trying to get it to work on an eMac, PowerMac or whatever.
But with any Mac Mini it will work. I recommend the 1.5Ghz model with 64MB vram. I picked two up from a local buy/sell site cheap.
There are forums on http://www.morphzone.org and you can talk directly to the MorphOS developers on IRC at irc.freenode.net on channel #morphOS
I recommend downloading the really great mplayer port, Wookiechat for IRC
You can also find MorphOS software here:
http://morphos.lukysoft.cz/en/
or
http://www.morphos-news.de
or on Aminet at
http://www.aminet.net. Look for the blue butterfly logo which identifies MorphOS native software. However most system-friendly older Amiga 68K software works.
Make sure you also check out http://www.amigazeux.net which has some really cool OS utilities.
Edited 2009-10-14 03:56 UTC
Oops, should be mac_ppc32.
Although I will be paying the price for MorphOS, I do think they should offer regional pricing. The Euro is not what it was against the pound, and I would prefer paying in my own currency. Aye, the British should stop being stubborn and enter the Euro zone. Anyway, how about some pricing for each market? Dollars, Pounds, and Euros. That would help things immensely.
Also the guy think people will just run OS X, I’ve already got access to three OS X machines. I don’t need another! MorphOS is much more interesting…….
And, pray tell, how should the Brits prepare? Like Latvia perhaps? ‘Tis not such a trivial question especially with Germany headed in one direction and Italy, Spain and Ireland headed in quite another.
Given the current pace of FOREX fluctuations; setting prices in several currencies is a PITA especially for folk whom we want concentrating on software development.
[rant mode on]
Having paid for American software at double the prices that Americans pay over a period of twenty years; my plea is for transparent pricing that reflects dignity on all sides. Yes, there is VAT (Value Added Tax) but it’s just not THAT high. I am not ranting at MorphOs but more at the widespread status quo of decades past and present.
[rant mode off]
FWIW – by all means drop the price for the “two thirds” world and so on, just be up front about it.