Professor Fulvio Peruggi illustrious member of Amiga community in Naples, Italy, wrote a long review on his Pegasos II G4 machine: what means Amiga philosophy, usage of Pegasos, compatibility of programs, productivity, multimedia, office applications, Mac emulation, MorphOS and more.
“From Genesi(s) to Revelation”: The Pegasos review
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Wow, this is a long review that covers very thing you want to know about MorphOS or Pegasos.
It’s to bad that their is almost no screenshot. No pictures.
Just pure, informative, text.
> However many Amiga supporters simply aren’t that interested in an alternative now that the
> AmigaOS4 looks like such a great product already and just around the corner.
For the first part of your sentence, well I see it exacty the opposite. At the moment the Pegasos and MorphOS had reanimated the nearly dead Amiga community in a really short time. In the past months more people bought new Pegasos Hardware than people bought old Commodore stuff within the past years. More software got released, ported and worked on within the past months for MorphOS than the years before on Amiga. We also have quite a lot of the former good and skilled Amiga developers and hardwaremanufacturers who now work exclusively for MorphOS on Pegasos. They identify themselves with the Hardware and the OS and see it as a very good way for the future of Amiga.
> Amiga was a company which produced Amiga branded joysticks, games and computer. This
> company was later bought by Commodore which then released a series of Amiga computers
> and related products under this brandname.
Your first sentence is wrong. The truth can be read from an interview with the godfather of the Amiga himself.
http://amiga.emugaming.com/jayminerinterview.html
http://www.heartbone.com/comphist/JayMiner.html
I assume you want to suggest people to realize that AmigaINC (as the company exists today) were the fellow founders and creators of the Amiga which is not the case.
> So for example, just because a Sony device may be compatible with an equivalent Philips
> product this does not mean the product is an Philips device, but instead a competing product
> from a rival company targeting a similar userbase.
But the same applies for the AmigaONE which is sold through Eyetech and which are regular MAI Teron Boards. I don’t want to start a useless debatte here but I wanted to make users to understand that your reasons are quite pointless. Neither the Pegasos nor the AmigaONE have anything in common with the former Hardware made by Hi Toro and then bought by Commodore. Both systems are CHRP PowerPC architecture Motherboards with more or less modern components and one of those running a Working well tested Operating System with many happy users, customers and developers. It’s basicly the same cut that Apple did many years ago with their old Hardware and OS. They simply went a new way. And don’t forget that the people who are working on MorphOS and Pegasos share the same roots with the Amigans for many years – from beginning till now. It’s not like an alien company has stolen their users or infiltrate them or something. These people are Amigans. Some of them even created many known standards which are still throughly used on Amiga.
But thanks for your comment, the users surely appreciate your view.
Here are some pages with nice MorphOS Screenshots. I hope you and other visitors will enjoy those.
http://www.morphzone.org/modules/myalbum/viewcat.php?cid=15&orderby…
http://www.amiga.org/modules/myalbum/viewcat.php?cid=37
http://pegasosforum.de/album_cat.php?cat_id=1
http://www.morphos.net/gallery.php?id=13
http://www.akcaagac.com/index_desktop.html
Here the Pegasos II Screenshots that we are talking about:
http://pegasosppc.com/gallery.php?id=83
> Your first sentence is wrong. The truth can be read from
> an interview with the godfather of the Amiga himself.
> http://amiga.emugaming.com/jayminerinterview.html
Read about the Amiga Joyboard and Atari games released by Amiga here:
http://amiga.emugaming.com/1stamiga.html
> I assume you want to suggest people to realize that
> AmigaINC (as the company exists today) were the fellow
> founders and creators of the Amiga which is not the case.
No, I wanted people to realize that “Amiga” has always been a brand- and company name, be it in relation to Amiga games, joysticks, computers or other computer related stuff.
I am not claiming that the Amiga 1000 computer had anything in common with the Amiga Joyboard. Similarly the Nintendo “Super Nintendo” doesn’t have much in common with the Nintendo GameCube, or the Playstation 3 may not have any technical similarities with the original Playstation. These are objectively all brandnames for computers, devices and companies.
AmigaOS4 is based on the orginal AmigaOS source codes, but that does not mean AmigaOS6.0 may be something totally different.
Very good Pegasos review. Good job!
With TCP/IP and ATI 3D Hardware acceleration to be included in the next revision, this Amiga platform is going to be great.
I wonder how is the situation concerning the new G3s (1GHz+) and G4s (1.2GHz+)?
IMO the only thing that would make it better would be a up-to-date browser (Gecko or KHTML based) and simplified install routines. I keep hearing about command-line installation and I don’t like that at all.
It’s to bad that their is almost no screenshot. No pictures.
Maybe I only looked at a few pages, and was lucky, but I saw loads of screenshots, of:
(a) TeX
(b) Maple
(c) a web browser’s fonts
The screenshots are links, not displayed inline, so maybe that’s why you missed them?
Even though there are some North American distributors listed, they NEVER have anything in stock. They always say that they have preorders. The closest I found was ultraspec.us. However, they only wanted to sell a full system (and they claimed to have only one left). I’d like just the motherboard and build my own. The only other option is to order overseas, and pay hefty shipping and customs charges. An occasional one shows up on Ebay, but the bidding is usually fierce, due to the scarcity in America. Too bad, I’d like to run this.
A long time ago, back when MorphOS was in beta, there was a FAQ that indicated that they would eventually port this to standard Apple G4 hardware. I wonder what happened there? They could probably get greater exposure to their software, but then again, they would have virtually no hardware sales.
“Linux and its many flavours are more difficult to qualify. Linux does not assume that you are a stupid, neither contains malicious traps, but unfortunately often assumes that you are a software geek. Either you use Linux superficially, or you must enter in its very deep and complex structure. In the first case you are a stupid user of a non-stupid OS (absolutely no satisfaction guaranteed!), in the second case you are required to become a specialist (an approach that requires too much time). Even Linux is not “Amiga-like”.
[…]
Bypassing all the other esoteric OS’s that we could list and examine, let me state that in my opinion, and as far as I know, only three other environments can be qualified as “Amiga-like”: AmigaOS (of course, running on classic Amiga hardware, or through emulators like Amithlon and UAE)”
Later he also states some opinions on Linux (which is merely a kernel while the author refers to it as an OS) which are generalisations. He mentions several FLOSS applications in his whole article also available for many other OSes (which isn’t always mentioned). The funny thing is, Amithlon USES the Linux kernel. Amithlon ain’t legal anymore though but if you can/want to get it you’ll get it running easy and fast. With “Linux” (the kernel) and AmigaOS under the hood…
Anyway, what really is interesting IMO is what the advantage of MorphOS is over a Linux distribution or MacOS when for example you’d like to do audio editing. I heard user-friendliness; fine i won’t discuss that. For example, it is important which (unique) utilities run on MorphOS which do not run (well) on other OSes. Because that’s what sells MorphOS and the Pegasos(II) for an artist in audio fields (just an example). Also, for example, can MorphOS use ALSA programs like Hydrogen and Ardour? Such compares isn’t made and such are important IMO.
Finally, i missed details on the lack of cash flow at Genesi, and also i missed information about the problems in the OpenBSD port case. Information about this can be found here: http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20040326093234
> Also, for example, can MorphOS use ALSA programs like Hydrogen and Ardour? Such
> compares isn’t made and such are important IMO.
Yes, if you port Hydrogen to use AHI and port the rest of Hydrogen’s User Interface to MUI for example.
You need to understand that MorphOS is NOT Linux, it’s not build ontop of Linux, it’s not build ontop of BSD or whatever Unix like exists. It’s a native Operating System in the means of the Amiga spirit. Thus no ALSA exists and there is also no need to port it because MorphOS does have it’s own layer for this. That’s why you can’t compare these things. They are in no way related to the MorphOS architecture.
> Finally, i missed details on … cash flow …
OT.
“That’s why you can’t compare these things. They are in no way related to the MorphOS architecture.”
Ofcourse i can try that depending on wether they either are ported or can be ported. Where can be also depends on circumstances like if one can do it him/herself, how trivial it is, etc. In other words, the difference between practice and theory.
I’ve already said what i had to say using audio as an example the above paragraph fits in nicely.
“OT.”
Important.
Finally, i missed details on the lack of cash flow at Genesi, and also i missed information about the problems in the OpenBSD port case. Information about this can be found here: http://www.phinixi.com/tiki-index.php?page=OpenBSD-Peg+Wrap-up for a more complete overview, including the undeadly.org links and others as well as links to Genesi statements.
— gary_c
Has anyone tried MorphOS on PearPC? Would be nice if it worked and there was some sort of demo MorphOS CD that people could see what its like without the expense of a Pegasos board.
> Has anyone tried MorphOS on PearPC ?
MorphOS is part of the Pegasos Hardware. You get it when you buy the hardware.
> Would be nice if it worked and there was some sort of demo
> MorphOS CD that people could see what its like without the
> expense of a Pegasos board.
Well if you know what the Amiga was then you know what MorphOS is. The only CD’s available are those that comes bundled with Pegasos.
That’s not what I asked. I asked if anyone has tried it with PearPC, whether they have a Pegasos board or not (which of course they do).
Actually, we would like to see PearPC and MorphOS working together. PearPC looks like a good development and we are following it. There is only so much that can be done at once.
In a related matter, we do intend to offer a CD-bootable distribution of MorphOS for Apple owners (no need to partition or change your hard drive unless you want to), but we need to move down the road a bit both on the OS and corporate side before we do that. We hit a couple bumps in the road, but we are still on the road and now picking up some solid momentum again.
As to board availability, we had boards for sale online for over a year (Pegasos I nine months/Pegasos II four). We have sold boards into 40 countries. They are not for sale online now and were not in mid-January to late-February simply because some components require 13-16 weeks for delivery and we had to balance the production against sales, cash, resources, etc. In the meanwhile, in addition to the 300-500 orders we were getting online and through Resellers/month, we had two large entities order not just boards, but complete systems (here we make more money). So, we built these into cases with memory, hard drives, power supplies and graphics cards at further expense. As they were delivered and the PO’s were satisfied from our side, only THEN did we go into the big company bureaucratic financial management systems. One of the companies was able to tune their policies, but the other against March deliveries will not be settle until early JULY. We are no complaining. These are just the realities of turning a technology into a real Company.
As to our Amiga roots – yes, we have them. One could argue that the computer cultures spawned during the days of CBM led in great part to the Open Source movement whose big days are still yet to come. But, as with the demise of Carthaginians what was left of the culture and people assimilated into the environment around them — where they were. Many Amigans have done the same. We have absolutely nothing against any effort in the Amiga Community, but we keep this in distinct contrast to the current IP holders of what WAS Amiga, who have absolutely nothing to do with the past, but dominion over the cult-like following that exists. Keep the cult! You can have them. We are against the mindless bickering back and fourth — akin to the once great Atari vs. Amiga debate (see were all that got them!).
In the not too distant future, we are actually considering a GPL-like license strategy (emphasizing the word LIKE) for a starter set of the total technology package (including the hardware design).
http://www.openpowerarchitecture.org
In a week there will be more information there. 🙂
We think we could give the “home brew” market a push with the right platform and the right tools. That could be fun and recognizes what made the Amiga so special in the past. We need to lower the hardware cost below the 299 Euros we charged for the Pegasos II G3 and this could be a way to do it. BTW, both PowerPC vendors have something new in the low power-low temperature-higher reliability coming soon. We will be selling 750GX and 7447A CPU cards for the Pegasos II before the summer is out.
Finally, a word of thanks to the good Doctor and the comprehensive review — Grazie molto! — and to steal a page from the *final* Chapter and DoctorMorbius_FP, “evil” is LIVE spell backwards. We are patiently waiting the revelation and the final judgment…
Raquel and Bill
Morph is more than an OS — it’s a concept!
<<In a related matter, we do intend to offer a CD-bootable distribution of MorphOS for Apple owners>>
OOHHH!!! That would be nice!
It’s the best thing I read since long time.
Thank you.
in my point of view, any attempt to run morphos in any kind of hardware like mac or pc (through pearpc) would kill the pegasos sales, which, i think, is a good piece of hardware because it is more open than mac and for guys like me who are a bit allergic to x86 hardware give some fresh air.
just my 2 cents.
@Rushpat, who says: “Even though there are some North American distributors listed, they NEVER have anything in stock. They always say that they have preorders. The closest I found was ultraspec.us. However, they only wanted to sell a full system (and they claimed to have only one left). I’d like just the motherboard and build my own. The only other option is to order overseas, and pay hefty shipping and customs charges.”
I understand your frustration, but it’s a global economy now and sometimes a North American can order stuff from Europe or another continent and the price turns out to be not too bad. May I suggest trying GGS-Data (Sweden) or CompCity (the Netherlands). Try emailing them (in english) and asking if they will ship to you and for what total.
http://tiw-pro.web.internet.telia.com/~1698137/
http://www.computercity.biz/index.php?cPath=27&osCsid=0b4a8bec80535…