Amiga.org
Operating System Specific Discussions => MorphOS => MorphOS -- Hardware requirements and availability discussion => Topic started by: vic20owner on May 21, 2010, 11:11:32 PM
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Hey guys, I gave up my my Amiga hardware a few years ago. It no longer became cost effective to maintain my A1200, 3000, and 500's. I sold them and figured it was time to move on.
Then recently I purchased a Mac Mini for my daughter (an older 1.42ghz G4) and after realizing MorphOS was released for it I became rather excited.
So how does MorphOS work for you who are using it? Can I play my old Amiga games in UAE without too much trouble? Is the wifi supported?
If so, I may find myself using my daughters mini occasionally :) I am a dedicated mac owner, as OSX is everything I wanted from my Amiga in the 90's... except of course the creativity of the coders. I miss the cool demos and games developed for the Amiga.
I currently have 3 intel macs but if MorphOS is as cool as it seems maybe I'll pick up a Macbook G4. Will it run on one or is the mini the only supported G4?
thanks
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Hi
Welcome back!
Mac Mini is the greates MorphOS machine ever I have to say. Unfortunatelly you've got the 32MB VRAM version but it shouldn't be any problem at all with correct system settings.
You will be able to run UAE to play old Amiga games with no hassle at all. There is an article how to setup UAE with Ambient (MorphOS Workbench).
I would recommend to go to morphos.net and download MorphOS iso, it works for 30 minutes and after that time it slowes down (without registering).
At the moment WIFI is not supported at all, but it might change in the future.
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MorphOS for MacMini is the greatest Amiga operating system experience you can get, and it's definitely worth the registration fee. Think of it as giving something back to all those creative Amiga coders who stayed on to keep the dream alive for the rest of us.
All your old Amiga programs will run in MorphOS as if they were running natively thanks to the built-in 68k emulation, plus you'll be able to take advantage of all the modern applications people are still working hard on.
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Can I play my old Amiga games in UAE without too much trouble?
I don't currently have a working MOS system but AFAIK, UAE is the way forward for any applications that needed the amiga's chipset. Any other OS friendly legacy applications should run without it.
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Ok, what about Ethernet? Does that work correctly on the mac mini?
So MorphOs will run legacy software without an emulator, just some sort of API wrapper, right? For example, Octamed... will it run?
But if I want to play old games, I will need a E-UAE configuration of some sort, is that correct?
Thanks!
-tom
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MorphOS is the currently most polished and stable next generation Amigoid OS. If you have a Macmini around you should definately give it a try.
It is a bit awkward to get used to it when you are familiar with Workbench, but then, it is definately a progress in the right direction.
The OS is stable (unlike other supposedly official Amigoid OS around) and the legacy emulation is the best you can get on these Amigoid systems.
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Ok, what about Ethernet? Does that work correctly on the mac mini?
So MorphOs will run legacy software without an emulator, just some sort of API wrapper, right? For example, Octamed... will it run?
But if I want to play old games, I will need a E-UAE configuration of some sort, is that correct?
Thanks!
-tom
OctaMED will probably run fine without UAE, but you may need to install this (http://aminet.net/package/util/libs/TheMaestrix) utility to hear anything*. Not sure about MIDI either as OctaMED clobbers the native hardware for that too. However, there is the NSM patched version of OctaMED sound studio, which I believe redirects MIDI through camd.library. I really ought to get that version myself.
*you need to select the Maestro sound card output in mix mode. Regarding general Paula audio interception, is Nalle Puh available for MOS? I haven't looked at that for a long time.
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It flies !!! Really recommended, i use it every day ... The fastest and cheapest next gen amiga out there... Its really a nice experience, you can test the free demo first..
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Well, I have it up and running! I had some problems with the mac mini, the previous owner set the firmware password. I had to find a leopard disk which and disable it. But after shrinking my osx partition and setting everything up it works just great. It did not however work with my apple keyboard (the new aluminum versions) so I pulled out an old PS2 keyboard with USB adapter. MorphOS likes it but the mac does not, so there is some swapping required. Overall this is the nicest "Amiga" experience I have had in modern days. Not sure if it's really "useable" as a daily os, but it is fun to play in as it feels like my Amiga... except it's fast and it's not flickering at an ungodly low resolution :)
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Can you not leave both keyboards attached and just use the appropriate one for the booted OS? Just curious. I am about to get my hands on a Mac Mini solely for MorphOS. I am a little excited.
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It did not however work with my apple keyboard (the new aluminum versions)
This will be fixed in the next MorphOS release.
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When will that be Piru.. also any other machines that look like they will be supported in the next release?
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When.. what..
We're traditionally quite tight-lipped about these things, sorry :-)
I'll be happy to discuss all about the new stuff, as soon as it has been released. Stay tuned ;-)
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You might be able to leave both keyboards connected, but this isn't useful because then you have no mouse, which is even MORE important than the keyboard if you are dual booted.
After making my last post in Sputnik, I was sent to a blank page of no return upon clicking submit. Then I tried http://www.cnn.com, and was rewarded with an eternally reloading page which effectively tied up the machine. I killed it, and tried OWB. OWB ran MUCH better... cnn loaded correctly, and other pages behaved as they should. It also handled popups better by forcing them into tabs.
Unfortunately, I ran out of things to play with before I was forced to reboot due to the timeout. I rebooted, and played a little more and found I had nothing much to do except browse the web. I briefly romped around in shell and it looks and feels just like the Amiga (modernized) however it also reminded me of how far computers have come since then. MorphOS begs for customization such as a dock, etc. (which I know exist).
One irritating issue is that when I boot back into OSX it sees the Boot partition and tries to mount it, and then pops up a dialog warning me that it could not be repaired. There is no way in Leopard to disable the auto mounting (I tried editing /etc/fstab and /etc/fstab.hd) so it's always there and always giving me an error on login.
Once I dig out my Amiga app collection I'll play with it again ... this is going to be my daughter's machine so I won't have unlimited access to it. I wish this could run on a macbook G4.. I've always dreamed of an Amiga laptop.
Anyone know what I need to do to run an old 68k app? Do I just run it as normal or are there any emulation wrapper settings I need to adjust,etc?
Thanks!
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After making my last post in Sputnik
I'd recommend using Origyn Web Browser. It's far better than Sputnik.
OWB is available from:
http://fabportnawak.free.fr/owb/owb-morphos-1.7.lha
http://fabportnawak.free.fr/owb/owb-morphos-1.7.readme
Anyone know what I need to do to run an old 68k app? Do I just run it as normal or are there any emulation wrapper settings I need to adjust,etc?
Just run it. There's no need to configure anything.
Obviously some applications might require installing some 3rd party MUI classes for instance.
Also, some applications bang the amiga custom chipset directly. These must be in in UAE.
You can find a lot of great software from MorphOS Files, for instance various emulators:
http://morphos-files.net/categories/utilities/emulation
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68k emulation is transparent. But note that 68k software that doesn't play nicely with the system or that bangs amiga chipset won't work too well. :)
But programs like ImageFX, TVPaint, Ibrowse, Magellan, and many many others work just fine (and fast).
Now, if you don't know what to do except browsing, you could try movie playback with MPlayer, or some games/emulators if you feel like playing :)
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Thanks Piru