MorphOS 2.4 for Mac Mini Released

[amigadave]

I have just downloaded 2.4 and will be showing it at this weekend's AmiWest 2009 Show in Sacramento, CA.

That is just one MORE reason to attend AmiWest 2009.  The Amiga Game Competition that I will be running during the show is another great reason to come and possibly win some prizes.

Hope to see some of you at AmiWest 2009.  I will be there on Friday through Sunday.

[amigadave]

The dual boot option is unofficial, however this guide by jacadcaps should help:
http://dreamolers.binaryriot.org/dualboot.pdf

Very nice guide by jacadcaps.  I'll be putting it to use tomorrow.

[amigadave]

Any chance this would run on an 1.42ghz eMac?  It has the exaclt same specs as the 1.42ghz mac mini, except it has the build in monitor.

No, the 1.42GHz eMac has an ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card in it which is not supported by MorphOS2.4, AFAIK.

The 1.25GHz eMac does appear to have a supported ATI Radeon 9200 graphics card though, so maybe someone can test an installation of MorphOS2.4 on one of those and report back their results.

[amigadave]

Thats great news for Morph but I hope they also go intel. This will be a lifeboat to keep them afloat for a little longer, but they need more hardware to survive.
 
Watch now the prices of mac mini's on ebay will skyrocket I bet!

Steven

I think we need more native software more than we need more or faster hardware.  Just my opinion.

[amigadave]

Truth be said, new hardware was required, the kind you can buy with a good price/performance ratio, which sadly Efika never was. Agreed, the mac mini is not really new hardware, but it does has a very nice price/performance ratio and you can easily/cheaply get upgrades for it. If enough people (ex-amiga owners, techies and whatnot) jump into the MorphOS bandwagon then maybe (just maybe) there might be new applications, be it open or closed source but there will be no new software if the number of users does nor increase

I guess I should have prefaced my earlier comment with "Now that we have the MorphOS port to the MacMini ......."  If you look at the post I was quoting, you will see it mentions that the MacMini is just a stop-gap measure and that the poster think MOS needs to go to x86 ASAP.  Hence my comment about needing more and better software instead of faster hardware.

I totally agree that the Efika is under powered, but it was at a great price point and if it only had a bit more RAM, it would still be a very usable MorphOS machine.

[amigadave]

Well after getting ZERO sleep last night, I am on my 4th or 6th attempt to install MorphOS2.4 on my G4 MacMini.  I almost succeeded a couple of times, but the installer froze and it appears that I have lost all of my previous MacOSX settings and programs that originally came on my used MacMini.

I am watching this latest install attempt and as it is copying all the files to DH1: I see at the top of the screen an error message that my 60mb Boot: partition is too small and that 169mb size is required???

The install completed and I have successfully booted to MorphOS2.4 from my hard drive, so I guess that error message was inaccurate.

Downloading fonts for Sputnik seems to be working and everything is very snappy which is a welcome sight compared to MacOSX.  Sputnik seems to be taking a very long time to open and appears to have frozen.  After waiting for several minutes, I have been trying to close the window or even get to the Ambient menus so I can restart and nothing responds.  I have an hourglass pointer when it is over the Sputnik folder window, and returns to a regular pointer outside that window, but nothing responds to any mouse clicks anymore so I must resort to the power button on the MacMini to restart.

Edit:  Rebooted and loaded OWB up.  All appears to be working well now and I just left my first message using my MacMini running MOS2.4.  Hooray!  This Mini really scoots running MOS2.4.

[amigadave]

No announcements about any other Mac models have been made (yet), but one of the team members did hint that some progress had been made by him on his own G4 Mac laptop.  I can't remember if it was a PowerBook, or an iBook.  Even though it would seem logical to port to other G4 Mac models, the Dev Team might have completely different plans for the future, or they may find that some of the G4 Mac models are more difficult to crack and complete a port to than the MacMini was.  I would imagine that much of their time in the near future will be spent still working on improvements for the MacMini release, as it could probably still use some improvements and there are still missing drivers for some of the MacMini's hardware add-ons too.

Personally, I am hoping for a port to the G4 PowerBook's, as I would love to have a fast MorphOS laptop.

[amigadave]

It's written by people who like(d) AmigaOS.

...and it's expensive.  It'll cost you more than the MacMini.

It is written by guys that were trying to negotiate with Amiga Inc., or who ever was the owner at the time they started work on MorphOS, so that it would have become the next version of AmigaOS, if negotiations had not broken down.

They obviously think that it should have become the next AmigaOS.  It is very similar to AmigaOS4.x in many ways, but since it has been worked on for a longer time period, IMHO it has a more polished feel to it, but I am biased.

If Hyperion would release AmigaOS4.x on some hardware that is much faster than the 1.5GHz G4 MacMini (PowerBook & PowerMac G4???) then I would really consider switching to using AmigaOS4.x, but I won't switch unless there is a good reason, like better and more native software, plus better and faster hardware.

[amigadave]

I've got this running on my Mini now... Its pretty awesome. I'm running it on the lowest spec mini you can get and it still fly's (1.25ghz/256mb ram)

The ibook/powerbook version of MorphOS will make a lot of people really happy!
I know my old ibook had the almost same specs as this mini.

Yeah, Mom might be getting a "New to Her" computer to replace her iBook soon, if MorphOS2.5 is released and it works on her 1.42GHz G4 iBook.  Dear old Dad, who lives with the "Aliens" in Roswell, NM has a 17" G4 iMac that might also get the MOS treatment if the hardware is close enough and the MOS Dev Team gets bored and has nothing better to do.  It would really be great if MOS could be optimized for the G5 Power Macs and also if it could be rewritten to use more than one CPU and multiple cores, but everyone says that those dreams are just never going to happen.

I have my registered version of MOS2.4 running smoothly on my 1.5GHz G4 MacMini w/512mb RAM and 64mb VRAM.  It fairly flies and has no problem displaying several 1920x1080 screens beautifully on my Acer 23" widescreen LCD monitor.  I have not been this excited about any Amiga (-Like) computer since I upgraded from my A1000 to my A2000 in 1990.