Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: runequester on July 06, 2012, 07:30:35 PM
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okay so, while I am still without a modern computer, this is your chance to convince me to find an old mac on craigs list and buy MOS.
My computer needs are:
Basic intarwebs, email, some youtube.
Need some access to word processing that can do PDF files and open office (google docs?)
Can anyone confirm if OWB works with google's blogger and google + ? (the latter isn't a big deal)
Basic media/music player of course.
So tell me why I should rock MOS for a while as my only "modern" computer, rather than fix my PC right away.
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Well first you should remove "68k or burst" :)
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haha, good catch :)
It's open to negotiation I suppose
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I'm currently waiting on my MorphOS replacement machine to arrive in the mail, so I'm unable to test those sites for you ATM.
Your best bet is to subscribe and post this question to the MorphOS mail news feed/forum thing mentioned on their homepage, or subscribe and post this to MorphOS zone. They'll be completely honest and very helpful if not very convincing. :)
Anyhow, as I said I can't test those web pages or Google docs, but I do know that the OWB port on MorphOS is FREAKING AWESOME and is very YouTube friendly amonst other things. I don't really remember having any comparability issues between it and my various favorite web sites.
As for Office docs... No idea, I just use Final Writer and or AmiWriter as I'm not in school so I am not bound by Microsoft formats.
About any classic apps that don't call upon Paula or the ECS/AGA chips should work and work well!
Make sure you get a Mac with no less than 64Mb of RAM or else your multi-tasking will be limited as will your gaming experience, GFX apps experience, and so on.
There is a nice app that allows you to search for and download software for MorphOS, and of course you still have acess to a ton of software on Aminet! :)
Um... I'm on an iPod and can't type all this out, but seriously, MorphOS is GOOD under the hood and doesn't just rely on a few flashy games or what not for it's fame (no offence Aros I love you!!!)
It seriously does feel like the next evolution for Amiga OS. I had just as much fun exploring it as I did my original Amiga.
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Make sure you get a Mac with no less than 64Mb of RAM or else your multi-tasking will be limited as will your gaming experience, GFX apps experience, and so on.
You surely meant displayRAM/video memory.
I think for the rest one should aim CPU above 1Ghz and RAM above 512MB.
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Yes, that is what I meant.
64Mb GFX RAM and 512Mb other RAM will get you going, but if you really want to be happy, upgrade to at least 1Gb RAM.
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haha, good catch :)
It's open to negotiation I suppose
IMHO you should ask this question at morphzone.org. I'm waiting for the packultimate 3.0 to test Morphos 3.0 demo and then I'll decide. kamelito
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That's right, don't for get the Pckultimate or Ultimate Pack, what ever its called.
It'll save you so much time...
...unless you want to configure your own MorphOS environment and want to learn how it is done. In which case you may not want it, but either way, if you want a glimpse of what can be done...
That's the ticket!
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@ runrequester
Convince yourself. It's easy: Get a suitable machine (any supported will do for testing), direct a browser of your choice to http://www.morphos.de and d'l the 3.0 iso. Testing is free, absolutely no restriction except each boot up i slimited to 30 mins and freezes after time's up. Rest and get your new 30 mins.
Regarding google: google servives work. I use google docs (sometimes you need to spoof as some other browser to upload files), blogger (well, blogspot to be correct, but that's blogger, too) and the google merchant center. Everything I tested works. google maps and youtube of course, too. OWB is by far my favorite browser for youtube. Dunno about google+ as I am not a member there, but I would wonder if it weren't working with OWB.
With regard to the net, there are really very little issues: Flash support is incomplete (but some flash works if you install the plug in) and there's no JavaVM. But JVM requiring websites became rare over the last decade. I think some banks still use it (not my both banks though, they just work with OWB).
But my advice is really to test it out yourself. Some cheap PowerMac, maybe an eMac or a 1.25 GHz mini is a nice test equipment. If you like MorphOS, you can either register that machine or get a better one as you main system. If you don't like it you at least richer by a first hand experience and know why (I like MorphOS, but I know it's not everyone's taste). The test gear you can dump off to ebay again if you wanna get rid of it. If you're lucky, you can even yield a little profit by reselling the test kit.
If you want to read a very brief introduction from an Amiga POV I like to point you to my 5 minute read about MorphOS at http://www.via-altera.de/vim.htm - as I do with all thode folks remoetly interested.
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Sound advise from an experienced user, but...
Don't go eMac! I think if you bought one, you might have trouble getting rid of it later, unless you get it really really cheap...
...like free. They are not all they are cracked up to be. They are big, they are heavy, and if your monitor dies, then you get to have fun trying to re-case the thing and adapt it to a PC power pack and monitor which I did once before my eMac fully died, but it was not the perfect solution I was hoping for unless you can find one of those ultra rare monitors that can handle the screen modes which the eMac initially boots into. MorphOS will display fine (with a little tweaking), but during boot time you will see nothing for a while, meaning no errors.
All around drama, and they only have 32Mb or Video RAM and that is just not the way to go with MorphOS which LOVES to chew up that Video RAM. So again I can not stress enough, only pick up a machine with a minimal of 64Mb of Vid RAM, even for just a testing machine.
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Can anyone confirm if OWB works with google's blogger and google + ? (the latter isn't a big deal)
It worked without any problems with G+, at least 3 months ago, until I've decided to delete an account. It also works nice with Facebook.
Basic media/music player of course.
Jukebox (or a few 3-rd party alternatives) for audio, MPlayer for video.
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Buy one of the more modern machines, which are still very cheap - and give it a whirl.
Costs nothing to download. If you do not enjoy the experience that MorphOS offers don't buy it, you still have a perfectly good Mac there to either use under another OS, or sell off at a price close/equal to what you paid for it.
All it'd cost you is the media to burn the OS onto if you were unhappy with it.
MOS is a very good experience, IMO - and the demo gives a very good feel of what it's capable of.
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okay so, while I am still without a modern computer, this is your chance to convince me to find an old mac on craigs list and buy MOS.
My computer needs are:
Basic intarwebs, email, some youtube.
Need some access to word processing that can do PDF files and open office (google docs?)
Can anyone confirm if OWB works with google's blogger and google + ? (the latter isn't a big deal)
Basic media/music player of course.
So tell me why I should rock MOS for a while as my only "modern" computer, rather than fix my PC right away.
@runrequester,
Hi,
OK, I found a Mac mini, 1.25 ghz, 512 mb ram, and 40 gbyte hard drive at a yard sale for oh woe is me an grusome sum of $10. (I probably could of got it for $5 but you know sometimes you have to suffer). Anyhow after calling my friend Rob, to come and take a look at this and see if it was a good purchase (I actually wanted him to carry it home for me, since I didn't want to touch it, contamination and hallucination runs high in the Amiga ranks from doing so), we took it home and fired it up, it had OS X tiger on it, now it came with an old apple keyboard and a one button mouse, (apple was always cheap but charged huge prices after all this was a special Mac mouse) anyhow I asked Rob if it could use an old blue tooth keyboard and mouse package for a PC. He said he didn't know, but lets try it and it worked (happy it did, couldn't find my biohazard gloves to touch that damn apple junk) Anyhow it operated just as I had suspected with OS X tiger it ran about as fast as a C64. We then put MorphOS into it, loaded it and booted it up, this has to be the fastest OS that I have ever seen boot up, it was even faster than my A1200 (and that is darn good) I then tried my email and it worked great, (probably the keyboard helped here), OWB did excellent for surfing the web, still it wasn't as good as IE 9 but , I was really satisfied with the results, now for the big test how would it perform with YOUTUBE, once again I was satisfied, it ran youtube pretty good, but then you have to remember I am a PC gamer and I had some of the fastest machines built, (need to build another one both of my machines are getting up in age, one is now 4 years old and the other (my newest is 2 years old), so what did I think of MorphOS, after several hours trying to get an Amiga adf game to load, no joy, didn't try any productivity software as of yet but will try it, all I can say from what I seen of MorphOS is it worth $99 or 79 euro, not really, after all I can get Ubuntu for free, and it comes with lots of free software, and Ubuntu is FREE.
So my final thoughts,
If you want to spend money and waste it, and get an old abandoned MAC, and then spend money on an OS that so far I have found (as of 3 days of having it) just about useless, then MorphOS is for you.
Now remember, I have only had it for three days, and have maybe 24 hours total time sitting behind the keyboard of the MorpOS. So to be fair, I would have to say find someone like Kesa, to give you more info, why Kesa, because he seems to be a pretty fair person, I understand he has had his MorphOS Mac for a while and is probably more knowledgeable than I with MorpOS.
So that is my review as of yet on Amiga Emulation on an old Mac.
Me, myself and I would rather stick to WinUAE, using Cloanto's Amiga Forever, so far it has done everything I wanted with no problems and even loads the games that I tried on the Mac. It also does productivity software like PenPal, Wordsworth, VIP, DBman, Scala, and others that I haven't even tried as of yet.
For what you posted, I think MorpOS will be fine. I know it will do PDF's, but Google, hey what do you expect I only owned it for 3 days, do you think I am a bloomin genuis.
30 minutes trial time sucks, $99 sucks lots more.
smerf
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@smerf
If you dont like Macs you could always run MorphOS on Pegasos or Efika.
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@smerf:
after several hours trying to get an Amiga adf game to load, no joy
I have good news for you: There's a MorphOS E-UAE tutorial here (http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?act=url&hl=pl&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=pl&tl=en&twu=1&u=http://www.ppa.pl/programy/amiga-pod-morphos-em-czyli-e-uae.html&usg=ALkJrhhxBaHSlowzeb1DrQCdlJLO-TkAag) (unfortunately you need a Google Translator for that, unless you read Polish) to help you.
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I bought the Peg II years ago and have been very happy with MOS. Recently I bought a powerbook 1.67 with an SSD and it is insane, simply insane. The speed is just amazing, boots in under 5 seconds, most all apps come up instantly, browsing is very good. As said above it won't beat google chrome or Internet Explorer, but it is very, very good. Some flash stuff will diminishes the experience.
I still like the classic hardware for some things, but MOS really the modern Amiga OS, imho.
Try it you will like it... I would buy a decent Mac for the effort. A decked out mini or a Powerbook...
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@smerf
If you dont like Macs you could always run MorphOS on Pegasos or Efika.
Hi,
Sorry but I am now retired and really can't afford a machine like that, I found my Mac mini at a yard sale for $10 and really, even though I do make fun of the Mac's I do it because of my real hate is for it's maker, may he rest in hello with only PC's or C64's to use.
Now I even hate PC's more, but hey the younger generation has chose it for it's computer needs. (actually they were forced to chose it by Bill Gates underhanded practices), that is why I use mostly Linux for my everyday computer needs, and windows for playing modern day games, but recently I have enjoyed playing Farcry II, and Half Life 1 and 2 on the Linux system, and from what I understand there is more coming.
What do I think of MorphOS, don't really know, have less than 36 hours appraising it, still trying to find my way around. Now you have to remember, I bought my original Amiga 1000 to replace my old Otrana that died, the Otrana was an old suitcase carry around that I used to write programs for business on. I ran into the Amiga, and after 2 weeks of debating between a Radio Shack and an Amiga, I chose the Amiga after a salesman told me about an emulator for IBM PC's.
My first 6 months with the Amiga I hated it, everything was different, why did I have to type in DF0: instead of just A: lots more keypresses, especially if you are programming. You programmers know what I mean.
You know I have several different computers here, and the one I like next to the Amiga is the old Radio Shack TRS 80, loads fast and gets you to the business end of doing business quickly all on 8" disks.
So you see sometimes it take me awhile to approve of a system, took me 6 months for the Amiga.
smerf
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@smerf
If you dont like Macs you could always run MorphOS on Pegasos or Efika.
Hi,
Sorry but I am now retired and really can't afford a machine like that, I found my Mac mini at a yard sale for $10 and really, even though I do make fun of the Mac's I do it because of my real hate is for it's maker, may he rest in hello with only PC's or C64's to use.
Now I even hate PC's more, but hey the younger generation has chose it for it's computer needs. (actually they were forced to chose it by Bill Gates underhanded practices), that is why I use mostly Linux for my everyday computer needs, and windows for playing modern day games, but recently I have enjoyed playing Farcry II, and Half Life 1 and 2 on the Linux system, and from what I understand there is more coming.
What do I think of MorphOS, don't really know, have less than 36 hours appraising it, still trying to find my way around. Now you have to remember, I bought my original Amiga 1000 to replace my old Otrana that died, the Otrana was an old suitcase carry around that I used to write programs for business on. I ran into the Amiga, and after 2 weeks of debating between a Radio Shack and an Amiga, I chose the Amiga after a salesman told me about an emulator for IBM PC's.
My first 6 months with the Amiga I hated it, everything was different, why did I have to type in DF0: instead of just A: lots more keypresses, especially if you are programming. You programmers know what I mean.
You know I have several different computers here, and the one I like next to the Amiga is the old Radio Shack TRS 80, loads fast and gets you to the business end of doing business quickly all on 8" disks.
So you see sometimes it take me awhile to approve of a system, took me 6 months for the Amiga.
smerf
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I dont like Apple company either (iLame this, iLame that...) but they are not getting any benefit from MorphOS running on their hardware.
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Sorry but I am now retired and really can't afford a machine like that (that is: Pegasos or Efika)
Once again, a good news my friend. I can sell you my Efika (Mobo plus PCI to AGP riser and a MorphOS license) for a mere 30$ (plus shipping cost). No iCrap attached. "It's new, (well, newer than any PPC Apple) it's German, it's supertough!"
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I dont like Apple company either (iLame this, iLame that...) but they are not getting any benefit from MorphOS running on their hardware.
That PowerMac G4 you bought could be funding someone's new iPad. ;)
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Once again, a good news my friend. I can sell you my Efika (Mobo plus PCI to AGP riser and a MorphOS license) for a mere 30$ (plus shipping cost). No iCrap attached. "It's new, (well, newer than any PPC Apple) it's German, it's supertough!"
People actually paid to run MorphOS on that little piece of junk with 128MB of RAM? I used the demo on mine for one or two 30 minute demo sessions before deciding to retire the machine to the garage.
Probably soured me on the whole MorphOS experience, as I have capable Apple hardware lying around but haven't given it another shot.
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I admire your logic Smerf.
PC's and C64's indeed! :)
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Recently I was setting up my A1200 to mount ADF, ISO, HDF, and other images as virtual drives. It was kind of a tedious task, but well worth doing.
As for MorphOS all these features are part of the OS and are VERY easy to use. GUI and all!
Also you can read and write to NTFS partitions, and PFS is now part of the OS as well!
Oh, and it's portable now! ;)
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People actually paid to run MorphOS on that little piece of junk with 128MB of RAM? I used the demo on mine for one or two 30 minute demo sessions before deciding to retire the machine to the garage.
Remember that there was a time when it was pretty much the only option (except for a rather pricey Pegasos II or a PPC equipped classic - that is both more expensive and weaker than the Efika - as seen here (http://www.apc74.ppa.pl/PPA/Efika_vs_reszta_swiata.html)). Today it makes no sense (unless you just love silent and low-wattage computing) as there's a plenty of cheap and powerful Mac hardware available (provided of course you're not allergic to Apple hardware).
There's an article covering MorphOS on Efika here (http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?act=url&hl=pl&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=pl&tl=en&twu=1&u=http://www.ppa.pl/sprzet/o-efice-w-praktyce.html&usg=ALkJrhi7VVMMTj3gDvHWTj0Uv4c9_LFfHQ) (I apologize in advance for Google Translator).
@smerf: See? You could probably get tone007's Efika for even less. Plus the shipping cost would be much lower.