MagneticSystems posted a review and benchmark article of Pegasos and MorphOS.
Pegasos Review and Benchmarks
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
First observation: No, you won’t be able to run OSX on the Pegasos, at least not legally, unless Genesi has some sort of deal with Apple in the works. The OSX End User License Agreement forbids the user to install it on non-Apple hardware.
I have heard that some countries forbid this sort of clause in an EULA. Does anyone have a concrete example of such a country? (I mean: not “I saw them run it” but “according to such-and-such a law…”)
Overall I found the review interesting. Finally, some screenshots that make Ambient look good! (Buttons still seem insanely tiny though.) Other comments:
Whatever rumours have been said about these two companies should be put to rest. Talk is cheap.
It would be useful to follow your own advice, then, and not deliberately antagonize people who are eager for AmigaOS4. It’s terribly ironic that in the very week we are seeing actual performance, people are making comments such as …now Amiga inc. Still no results, just false promises and inability to deliver.
Unfortunately, much of the ill will against Genesi appears to be founded not on rumours but on actual fact, unless the people complaining about raw deals with phase5, bPlan and the like are straight-out liars. Since I never had dealings with phase5 or bPlan, I can’t give such an example without saying “Well, I heard…”
Again, Genesi’s CEO has himself deliberately started about Amiga, Inc.’s CEO. So if you want people to play by your rules, you ought to play by them yourself.
I hope this won’t be considered trolling since I would not have made the above statement, had the review not gone out of its way[i] to trumpet that, after years and years of development, MorphOS is finally ready.
[i]This board also has one thing the Amiga One does not- FIREWIRE.
Good point. Is there Firewire support in MorphOS and Linux? (Reviewer writes later there is no Firewire support in Ambient, but that’s not the same as MorphOS if I understand correctly.)
> No, you won’t be able to run OSX on the Pegasos
You are able to run it technically, but you are not allowed to run it legally. There is a difference.
You are able to run it technically, but you are not allowed to run it legally. There is a difference.
I said that: No, you won’t be able to run OSX on the Pegasos, at least not legally… Now I’m hurt. 🙂
>I have heard that some countries forbid this sort of clause
>in an EULA. Does anyone have a concrete example of such a
>country? (I mean: not “I saw them run it” but “according to
>such-and-such a law…”)
Does anyone have a concrete example of a case where a EULA was found to be legally enforceable? AFAIK, it hasn’t been tested either way.
IIRC, Sony were unsuccessful in preventing a Playstation emulator from being distributed. Hmm, http://www.worldofspectrum.org/EmuFAQ2000/EmuFAQ_M2P1.htm claims that EULAs are enforcable in the US within some limitations, but seems to say that running on an emulator is allowed.
Nice review, makes me wanna buy a peggy, but comparing it to Eugenias it seems a little cheerleaderish…
Finally, a guy who lives with the OS and hardware, not just someone who managed to install the OS.
Has anyone else noticed this? I learned more about the day to day usage of the system than I have in all the other reviews combined.
It is scary reading comments from users to whom a Voodoo3 and UW SCSI are hot technology. I remember bailing out of Amiga’s years ago and having hardware shock. By now Amigan’s almost seem like the Amish.
Based on what I read, I might buy one of these. The OS is interesting and the thought of PPC Linux and OSX are icing on the cake. I doubt Apple comes knocking on my door and after I buy OSX, I doubt they would have a leg to stand on legally.
Mutiny
@Jack Perry
Firewire works fine with Linux. The MorphOS drivers for the firewire are in internal beta at the moment so I understand.
Also, I have not actually heard a direct complaint against bPlan nor Phase5 itself. I have, however, heard complaints against them that turned out to be misplaced. A good example is when a retail outlet accepted pre-orders for G4 cards tho bPlan had not announced such a card nor it’s pricing, only that plans were there to do so. Mr. Buck a few months ago asked for the folk with complaints from Phase5’s days to e-mail him with the exact problem, what occured, etc and he would rectify the situation if he could. He recieved nothing last time I checked.
I’ve run MorphOS as my primary OS since mid-April and had few issues. But as I work for Genesi, a review by me would not be considered anything more than PR stories even if I was brutally honest.
Seems a bit overly enthousiastic, if you aren’t into amigas
morphos isn’t that much fun. uptimes are half an hour or less no network stack, no working developer tools.
It does run debian pretty quiet… but 600Mhz G3’s aren’t fast.
I run it for 8-9 hours at a time, personally.
And while 600Mhz G3’s aren’t the fastest, they are no slouches either.
I think talking about Mhz is plain stupid. Use expirence is what counts. If you are running A os on 3Ghz and B on 800Mhz
but the B seels better/faster and do the job and is probobly
less expensive. Than in my opinion B is better.
Unless you are pure hard core games than 3Ghz would be better.
i think it looks awesome! i wish i could buy one right now.
bravo, morphos!
I really like these guys attitude toward Multiple
OS’s. All the “Alternative” platforms should run on
Multiple boot systems like this. It would be really
cool if there was something like Mac on linux but taken
a few steps further to run multiple PPC OS’s. Kind of
like Virtual PC for PC’s. You could load another OS
without a reboot
Nice review except of course for the politics section. The current Amiga Inc has develivered products including AOS3.9 and AmigaOS XL (emulator package) in partnership with 3rd parties. Also their AmigaDE based products are shipping and selling very well at mainstream retail chains. Although it doesn’t wonder me much that this was stated considering who has contributed to this review.
The fact is however that MorphOS has been under development for much longer than AmigaOS4, while *also* suffering huge delays. Only MorphOS has never been in the spotlight as not many Amigans have shown interest in the platform. Currently there is a user/developer community of roughly 600 units and this was reached because the product was given away for free or at a huge discount to many of these people. Just as an example, according to polls there are many more Amigans interested in a new AmigaOS XL product than in MorphOS, so “delivering” has different meanings (What does the consumer actually want). Already without AmigaOS4 available the AmigaOne hardware orders are much higher than those for the Pegasos at most Amiga dealers.
And finally trying to paint a relatively overly rosey picture of BBRV/Viscorp and how he allegedly “saved” the Amiga platform is very debatable to say the least. For example Carl Sassenrath: “By August I was starting to tire of VIScorp and its unkept promises to all of us. They were 110 days behind in paying me, and I was very disappointed in the whole mess that they had brought on the Amiga community, developers and dealers, and myself. It had become clear to me that VIScorp was not competent. I took a couple weeks off and went to Florida.”
IMO the past should better be forgotten instead of being overly hyped, the amunition used against Amiga Inc by supporters of this rival platform counts just as much for the attackers themselves.
Please no more politics… Concentrate on the actual products, I believe that trying to discredit the competition in any way possible will prove to be very counter-productive.
> Carl Sassenrath
As a reference:
http://www.cucug.org/amiga/aminews/1996/961116-sassenrath.html
I completely fail to see why paying Petro his salary for some months “saves” the platform. The current Amiga Inc also paid Petro’s salary for a couple of months, at least until Amiga Deutschland was considered to be redundant. (Sales department, while there was no new product)
But paying 4.5 million dollars to Gatway for acquiring Amiga’s assets holds far more weight with regard to actually saving the platform from Gateway’s attic.
those stats didnt impress me at all. I tried loading those web pages up, just because my browser is already open, and they all loaded in half the time. I understand its running on slow hardware, but why doesnt he just try the test on some fast hardware? oh wait, he can’t
sorry for being such a flamer, but this review was almost funny because it was such an add.
to each his own, right?
Mike, your petty partisanship has become very tiresome. It is inappropriate here, especially in view of the author’s efforts to be even-handed. After reading his words “These boards (AmigaOnes) are finally shipping and look exciting as well…. I wish both these companies well,” it’s unfortunate to have you (ironically, you’re on staff at osnews.com, aren’t you?) push the level of discussion down with unnecessary negativism stemming from your own personal passions. Don’t you have more respect for this news site than that?
— gary_c
> sorry for being such a flamer, but this review was almost funny because it was such an add (sic).
> to each his own, right?
That’s right. If you know the context of this product then it’s easier to accept the performance figures. In terms of the now-ancient Amiga platform (or “Amiga-like” given the vendor here), the performance is a big step forward, but of course still far short of mainstream commodity boxes. But it’s a first effort, more or less a proof of concept. Upgraded boards with G4s will be out shortly. Even then, in terms of cpu speed they probably won’t be a match for a lot of x86 boards, but more important is the fact that the people making and using Pegasos boards are in a niche where there are other values, like doing things their own way and having fun. So, yes, to each his own.
— gary_c
Russia. I’m no lawyer, but here you cannot restrict _use_ of a lawfully acquired instance of a program, as long as the owner of the instance doesn’t copy, broadcast it etc. (that is, doesn’t infringe copyright). Nobody has tested enforceability of EULAs in court, either, but the civil code has no provisions for enforcement of such restrictions, and there is an understanding here that an EULA doesn’t constitute a legal contract.
I’m sure Russia is not the only such country, and it’s not because the Eastern Europe is the cradle of piracy. I think these rules are just more reasonable.
I just wonder why Mike’s messages are not modded down.
That is just simple trolling, sorry. While Mike added cute remark about AmigaXL or so being much more interesting to ppl, he forgot to mention, that AmigaXL, linux kernel based Amiga x86 emulator, was requested by plenty of ppl. MUCH more ppl than even AmigaOS 4 would be ever sold. Some ppl were simply tired of that old hw and wanted to use PCs we use every day anyway. What Mike also completly forgot to mention is, that it was dirty Amiga Inc. politics, who entirely killed the product, completly. And why? Because it posessed some threat to their AOS4 plans imo – so the concluded conspiracy that Haage & Partner broke some legal issues in the package, resulting in blocking the product completly, situation that served well AInc. imo ..
To be honest, both parties provided us with the claims, that AmigaOs/MorphOS on x86 makes no sense, as we can see how BeInc. ended up.
As for VisCorp, I already said it here some time ago – I contacted BBRV personally about the issue and received some more in-depth explanation about what was going on – satisfactory enough for me. Everybody can do the same, but it is probably easier to just post links to some old articles, like they would be the mantra.
-pekr-
In the UK there are loopholes in the law that would allow you to LEGALLY run OSX on this hardware, provided that you own the software in question that is. Basically, provided you’re not harming anyone (including yourself) you can use software/hardware in any way you want and on any computer you see fit to but, so long as you don’t copy it etc you’re in the clear essentially.
Could a big case close these loopholes? Definately but quite frankly Pegasos is so small (no pun intended) it’s likely to stay under Apple’s lawsuit radar for a while to come.
@Gary_C
Your bi-partisan nature is becoming petty and tiresome. This “review” done by a ****to be reseller**** of the kit is questionable in its ability to be anything but biased. Thats right I SURE TRUST WHAT FORD VENDORS TELL ME ABOUT FORDS!
The political tack ons were innappropriate for a technical review and the whole piece seems to be a cheerleader puff for the political views of a large section of the MorphOS userbase.
Posting innaccuracies and exaggerations about the history of what has gone on to score points would earn this article a severe flaming from people like Nate if it were spun the other way around. But hey, freedom of speech and all that, if the guy is allowed to post a skewed version of events ( IMHO ) then Im allowed to post *my* skewed version of events.
This guy finally paying lip service to “wishing” the competition well does not excuse the contents and sounds as hollow as it does when MikeB sayes it.
Your mask is slipping Gary. Once I thought you stood for accuracy and fair play.
Regards
Dave.
> Your bi-partisan nature is becoming petty and tiresome.
Uh, OK, should I try leaning a little? 😉
> This “review” done by a ****to be reseller**** of the kit is questionable in its ability to be anything but biased.
Sure, consider the source, as always. That doesn’t mean he can’t have good information for people interested in the Pegasos.
> The political tack ons were innappropriate for a technical review and the whole piece seems to be a cheerleader puff for the political views of a large section of the MorphOS userbase.
Well, it’s magnetic’s call isn’t it? I don’t know that his report is billed as a “technical review” per se. You’re not reading it in Consumer Reports. It’s interesting information on the Pegasos and MorphOS and includes, as an aside, his take on events in the history of the platform. You’re right about one thing, though. Clearly there are some people who will jump on any negative portrayal of their icons, so future reviews would probably best stick to uncontroversial issues like, uh, well, there must be something…. 🙂
> This guy finally paying lip service to “wishing” the competition well does not excuse the contents and sounds as hollow as it does when MikeB sayes it.
Well, I detect partial agreement 😉 . As for magnetic, I really think you’re misreading his intentions. He’s involved in both Genesi and Amiga, Inc. products, so in this sense your characterization of them being “competition” from his perspective is off-base and it would hardly be in his own interests to perceive them that way.
> Your mask is slipping Gary. Once I thought you stood for accuracy and fair play.
I can appreciate inaccuracies in a review being pointed out, but Mike Bouma is hardly the person to attempt an accurate portrayal of Amiga history, especially where it involves Genesi. I welcome corrections that might be made by someone who isn’t predisposed to a particular interpretation for personal reasons.
— gary_c
I think you guessed I just wrote that in that way to make a point.
OTOH the guy has to be congratulated on his writing style, the layout and the great pics. I liked the additional information at the back as well 😀
Nice review 😉 Oh and “Cool computing” is a great logo.
Mike Bouma, would you mind wiping your mouth?
Because you’re foaming at it!
Why do you care to bring politics into this? Why?
The next time you see that butterfly icon, feel free to ingore it. After all, it’s a butterfly, not a boing ball, so it’s not Amiga, is it?
Really, Eugenia. The way you staff OSNews is your business, but with Mike Bouma being one of those people responsible for the oft-mentioned split in the Amiga community (his presence in this thread can only be seen in trolling, and the fact that this item was posted by you and not him says a lot), having him as the official OSNews Amiga staff is bound to only make things worse, both because his presence will attract other trolls, and because few people want him to represent the entire community, especially since he likes to exclude a large part of it.
Feel free to delete or mod down this post, just as long as you read it.
@Iggy
One of these days you guys will stop your personal
campaign against Mike.
If the review had not mentioned Amiga at all then I guess Mike might not have posted.
However calling for this needless segregation is silly.
Seems to me that Mike isn’t the one foaming at the mouth, you are, everytime you see Mikes name.
The clue is: “(his presence in this thread can only be seen in trolling, ”
Thats when you know to open the door and go and enjoy the sunshine.
Dave.
Nothing negative? It seems an advertisement. Eugenia’s review made a bad reflect to this stuff and they come up with a new ‘review’ which shows it in a different light. Why? Because the review doesn’t contain any major negative statements. Only positive.
A real review from the middle would be nice. But these are sucks…
Bad try. Try it again!
Take it as you might, but I will not contribute any further to the pollution of this thread. I don’t want Amiga users fighting each other, especially not where others might see it. Keep it within the family.
“Take it as you might, but I will not contribute any further to the pollution of this thread. I don’t want Amiga users fighting each other, especially not where others might see it. Keep it within the family.”
The expression “what yyou don’t know, won’t hurt you” apllies here. Too bad it is false.
Hi yopippie, (hope I got the nick right 🙂
well, I think that it might be question of pov. Eugenia was in slightly different position – she made review for OSNews directly and wanted to stay neutral … so it was more negative in some areas. OTOH current review is done by some person on his own website, to which OSNews just points.
I saw plenty various end-user reviews – why should not they be overoptimistic/enthusiastic? The person in question simply likes the machine and he does not say anything negative about any other system. Have you ever owned Amiga? If so, you would be happy too, that there is some machine, behaving/looking like amiga, only way faster.
So – I don’t think the review is biased, but if you want totally neutral review, then go and read spec-sheet 🙂
Cheers,
-pekr-
Hi Petr,
OSNews points, right. But it points.
Somehow the pointing were made. If you know what I mean…
If I would make a review about a product, I would took over my personal feelings. It seems that the guy owns a stuff and would like to prove to the world why does he bought it. And he didn’t mention those negative effects what I heard about this peg. It seems he owns a different machine than the others.
And bootmanager must be default thing (at least a graphical one) for an OS, but it seems the review maker handles that command line boot ‘kicker’ as a miracle.
Regards,
Yopippie
At least ONE HW-platform….
Port it to x86 or else we know what is going to happen!
In Germany it is of course not forbidden to run a legal copy of OSX on your machine of choice, perhaps a Pegasos.
IMO Apple’s EULA is a kind of AGB (= Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen) that tries to overrule the law. A problem on the other hand is that you have to agree with Apple’s EULA by a mouseclick to get OSX installed. If you want to run OSX on a non-Apple here you should force Apple at court to change this program.
I have some difficulty imagining a “modern” GUI-heavy Multimedia OS running fast on a 600MHz ppc. In what language(s) was Morph developed? Assembly? Is that why there’s proprietary hardware?–hell the motherboard looks awfully x86-like (having all those standards helps Ac97, Ata100, SDRAM.)
Wish I could see a set of benchmarks of Morph on that PPC vs Morph on an x86, like a p3 or athlon 600–it would certainly tell you if the buying the hardware was worth it.
I run it for 8-9 hours at a time, personally.
But you stated that you work for genesi, maybe time to release that version someday?
And while 600Mhz G3’s aren’t the fastest, they are no slouches either.
The lowest available on the current market…
But that does have it’s plus points:
low cost, low power, silent running, the necessity to optimize the software.
@Atari-fan
Nope, no need to sue.
a) clicking on a button after you paid for the product (and brooke the seal, so no refund)
is NOT a legally binding contract.
b) you can sign pretty much everything which contains illegal clauses, those clauses
are still non-binding.
>I have some difficulty imagining a “modern” GUI-heavy Multimedia OS running fast on a 600MHz ppc.
Why – just because Apple got it wrong?
>In what language(s) was Morph developed? Assembly?
More info about MorphOS at http://64.246.37.205/files/morphos_in_detail.pdf
They chose PPC because it promised a tenfold performance increase for a Microkernel OS (so they claim).
>Is that why there’s proprietary hardware?
It´s standard components glued together to form a microATX PPC board (the first on the market?).
>–hell the motherboard looks awfully x86-like (having all those standards helps Ac97, Ata100, SDRAM.)
The difference lies in the Northbridge that must be compatible with PPC
(in theory this very Northbridge is also compatible with some x86 and MIPS CPUs).
@all (Russia, UK, Germany)
Thanks for the information!
I can’t imagine that Apple would expend time and energy actually hunting down people who run OS X on non-Apple HW; I wonder if that isn’t more of a clause to guarantee they won’t be liable for damages if the software doesn’t run well on the machine & trashes all your data. I’d think they could phrase such a clause more politely though.
I have some difficulty imagining a “modern” GUI-heavy Multimedia OS running fast on a 600MHz ppc.
Why? BeOS ran (and runs) fine on much lower end hardware.
The perceived speed of the system depends on the OS, not the hardware. An old A1200 will still feel fast …with a 4MHz CPU.
In what language(s) was Morph developed? Assembly?<i/>
Mainly C, some assembly.
[i]Is that why there’s proprietary hardware?–hell the motherboard looks awfully x86-like (having all those standards helps Ac97, Ata100, SDRAM.)
Try plugging a PPC into an x86 motherboard! the bus systems are incompatible so you need a different NorthBridge and that means an entire motherboard.
Wish I could see a set of benchmarks of Morph on that PPC vs Morph on an x86, like a p3 or athlon 600–it would certainly tell you if the buying the hardware was worth it.
MorphOS runs Amiga software which is big-endian, porting to an x86 would mean going little endian and would break compatibility with absolutely everything or using emulation which will have a big performance hit.
The lowest available on the current market…
C3s are slower and you still get 650MHz blade servers (which are surprisingly expensive).
But that does have it’s plus points:
low cost, low power, silent running, the necessity to optimize the software.
Exactly.
BTW A 1GHz (or better) G4 CPU card is due in September along with an improved board.
a) clicking on a button after you paid for the product (and brooke the seal, so no refund) is NOT a legally binding contract.
Not true, it’s a legal grey area – I was told this by a lawyer.
Also it depends on the country.
b) you can sign pretty much everything which contains illegal clauses, those clauses are still non-binding.
Yes. In fact depending on the importance of the clauses they may invalidate the contract completely. But again this is a grey area.
C3s are slower and you still get 650MHz blade servers (which are surprisingly expensive).
Maybe, but 1000MHz C3’s with VIA EPIA motherboard and 1000MB RAM sell for about $170 according to pricegrabber…
@Nicholas B…
Wow, a 4mhz A1200, that must be a rare collectors item 🙂
Actually I’m running the stock 1.3 release, same as Eugena and the guy that posted this review do. I just have more experience in optimizing the Amiga than Eugena, so I did not run into the same problems she had. Reminds me of the Linux vs Windows benchmarks from a few years back, when the reviewers used hardware that Linux performed poorly on, with non-optimized apps. Not because they were trying to make Windows win, but because they didn’t know Linux well enough to optimize the system appropriately.
I guess that is the real problem with an OS like AmigaOS or MorphOS, the real power for performance (or lack thereof) lay only in the hands of those that run them. With experience, one can run them quite stably and quickly. Without, problems will arise.
A great example is my wife. She’s only ever used Windows. She sits down at my Pegasos, 10 minutes later I hear “Your computer hates me!” as apps crash, system locks up, even a total reboot once. She keeps trying to use windows tricks, and the system hits her on the head as a result. I run the machine, no problems, no lockups, nothing. So, she’s decided that my Pegasos hates her.
Well, IIRC, it wasn’t 4Mhz because I had an Amiga 500 which was clocked at 7.13Mhz. The Amiga 1200 had something close to 15Mhz plus an AGA graphics chipset.
Hehe, yeah i know the frequency, aswell as its chipsets, just tought i would give nicholas a hint…
Actually I’m running the stock 1.3 release
Oke, but what do you use as a network stack?
and I prefer my OS’s to be stable out of the box…
Wow, a 4mhz A1200, that must be a rare collectors item 🙂
D’oh!
OK, OK 14.x MHz.
It was over 10 years ago!
And yet, what does a modern computer do now that really requires 50-200 X the clock speed, 200 X the RAM and 2000 X the HD space?
MiamiDX.
And we’re working on fixing stability issues. Eugenas article did us
a lot of good, for it showed us where outside people would judge us,
and where we need to focus effort.
…just thinking of a NEW name for the Pegasos…;-)
…hey, who said that?!
? huh, does that mean the name was “taken” as stated by someone somewhere. Well anyways, please choose a name without os at the end, seen a lot of posts were people thought it was the name of the OS…
Is Lorraine taken ? (hehe)
I will then have 4 Full operating Systems on this machine BeOs, MorphOS, Linux, MacOS X! A true supercomputer.
Is this guy for real? Seems he’s missing a few clues.