MorphOS advice.

[Fullflavormenthol]

Hello,

I am new to the forum and I am interested in MorphOS. Well honestly I am interested in Amiga like OS', but since I have a 1st gen PPC Mac Mini gathering dust I decided to install MorphOS on it. What I am really looking for is advice as to any software I could install or other cool things to do with it.

I am not looking for anything big...just something to pass the time and play around with. Any games or such would be good. I am starting from scratch...my nearest experience with anything Amiga is a few hours playing with an old Amiga computer my alma mater's TV station had laying around before they got rid of it. (I could never work it out with the college to let me simply take it, and last I knew it was sitting in a closet somewhere. :confused:) Still it was pretty cool with Video Toaster and all that...really made me jealous of those who actually grew up with one because I grew up with a 286 where the nearest I got to a GUI was a simple selection menu which I had to access through DOS.

[Fullflavormenthol]

I don't have time to type much atm, but would love to share my experiences with MorphOS, but in the mean time, check out this link and check with the guys in the forums here:

http://www.morphzone.org/modules/news/

Awesome. Thank you. There is a lot of cool stuff there, and enough to keep me busy for awhile. Thanks for directing me to that website.

[Fullflavormenthol]

Look for Papiosaur's "Pack Ultimate".  It will install and setup many games and other programs for you and give you something to play with.  In addition, it also will put a cool background up for your desktop and setup a dock for you to use.  It is a great effort to install and setup things for the lazy, or uninformed users.

What model of G4 MacMini do you have?  Remember, if it is not the 1.5GHz model, it will only have 32mb of VRAM and you should probably turn off the enhanced display to save your Video RAM from running low in certain circumstances.  The great thing is that you can enjoy playing around with it for 30 minutes at a time between re-booting to find out if it is something you like and want to buy.  Then, if you want something better you can look for a G4 PowerMac (single CPU is okay as MorphOS currently can only use one CPU), so you can put better graphics cards and a sound card in it for better performance.  Plus there are third party accelerators of 1.6GHz, 1.8GHz and 2.0GHz that you can use, if you can find them.

Enjoy, and welcome to Amiga.org!

Edit:  One last thing you might want to consider before you make a purchase of MorphOS2.x license key, is that it cannot be transferred from one system to another, as it is hard-coded to the MAC address of your computer, so make sure you have the MorphOS2.x compatible system you really want before you buy a license key for it.  Also, the MorphOS Dev. Team is currently working on support for the G4 PowerBooks that have USB keyboard and trackpad interfaces.  Generally speaking, this means only the last couple of G4 models will be supported when this port is completed.  It is unknown when support for any G4 PowerBooks will be completed, so if you are happy with MorphOS2.7 and want to use it now without the time restriction, don't wait for PowerBook support to come, as it might be a few weeks, or it could be many months.

I've got a 1.42Ghz model, which means I may have to simply play around with it for awhile. If I like it I would probably secure a faster one. I forget that while I was given a pretty good mini the processor may not be the best. So if I find I like it, I would not think twice about getting a faster PPC model Mac. I have been fascinated with the platform, and although a found a line on the Efika boards...I would probably be better off dual booting the Mini I own given that I use it only to run legacy software at the time. And that is becoming more rare given that I am moving beyond that software...I last booted the thing up over two years ago*.

*To really use. I tested it tonight, and it works great. Just that I do nothing with it other than keep it around just in case. Like keeping the old 286 for almost ten years just in case I wanted to use a compatible 286 software...which never happened.

[Fullflavormenthol]

Morph OS looks pretty cool, and I am looking forward to installing it when I get the time to really play around with it. I just need to set everything up as far as my Mini goes, well that and my older PC with I will be reformatting to run Ubuntu.

I would like to thank everyone for the advice. Especially pointing out the limitations of my Mini in regards to Morph OS...it is literally something I would not have thought about and something that if I didn't know would have reflected in my opinion of Morph OS after using it.

[Fullflavormenthol]

The Mac Mini is a nice system. Compact, fairly powerful. But if you're actually considering buying a license, a G4 Powermac is a better platform for MorphOS.
The 1.42Mhz processor in an MDD Powermac isn't much better then a Mac Mini's processor, but the PCI/AGP expansion slots allow for a lot more upgrading.
And the Powermacs are available at a low cost.

As I have discovered. I remember looking for used Macs back when I was considering the Mini, and the prices where still pretty high. The move over to Intel really cut down on the prices, which means I could by my dream Mac from back in the 2000s for a rather cheap price.

[Fullflavormenthol]

I've had nothing but good experiences with Morph, and will register it once I pick up a beefier machine.

That being said, my main Amiga is a SAM/OS4 rig - and while I love it, MorphOS is an extremely pleasant solution since old mac's are so inexpensive.

That is sort of my situation right now. I am very interested in OS4 and would love a SAM, but my fiance would not be too happy if I paid so much for what would be a hobby machine for me. To be perfectly honest she has been rather cool about the amount of computers I have picked up, and building a little render farm set up in the closet; I don't think I should really press my luck with the SAM right now. Perhaps at a later time...

[Fullflavormenthol]

Aye, the SAM's and OS4 are lovely machines, but the cost is just so insanely high, unfortunately.  The bang for buck compared to macs/Morph just isn't there.

For the most part I find my self explaining the rational behind my purchases (even though for the most part I don't have to) for example with the PC and the Ubuntu based render farm it goes into my graduate study with goes into open source software in professional media production pipelines, which means I have to use a variety of software. With the SAM the rational isn't there yet, but if I get more skilled in programming and can reasonably port something over or write something than I will be able to justify it to her and myself. I think in that respect starting out with Morph OS and maybe experimenting with AROS might give me an idea of the work flow. Still those aspirations are a far way off for me unfortunately. Still I can run a port of Blender on Morph OS, which means I can make it part of my production pipeline. Thus it is on my agenda right now, and I am looking forward to it; than it is easy to make a point for buying a PowerMac from the PPC days.

Man, I feel like I am presenting myself in a bad way. Still it is bad to have to look at a disapproving look from my fiance. :nervous: