MorphOS 2.0 Released

[Matt_H]

Also, for comparison's sake, what is the speed difference between an Efika and the fastest PegasosII ever produced?

600MHz, maybe?

In practical terms that's hard to say. MorphOS 1.4.5 is perfectly tolerable on a CSPPC and an Efika is twice the clockspeed and lacks other old hardware bottlenecks. Like all Amiga stuff, I'm sure it's responsive, but lacks raw crunching power for heavy duty stuff.

[Matt_H]

@ pkillo

A little heads up if you buy from Directron: their complete systems seem to come with XGI graphics cards, which I don't believe are supported in MOS. Just go for the board and case and grab a $20 (low-profile) Radeon from eBay or an Amazon third party.

[Matt_H]

Too bad the manufacturer is not offering a 512mb RAM version, or are they?

It would probably have to be a special order. I don't think any have been built with that spec so far.

There are traces for adding an additional set of RAM chips on the underside of the board, so you might be able to go up to 256MB total without huge difficulty, other than the danger of SMD soldering. And finding the correct chips. And hoping there isn't additional support circuitry needed to use RAM at that location.

[Matt_H]

Indeed. Since I don't use WW myself, I don't remember any possible limitations regarding it. With regard to FW97, one is limited to open it on 8 bit screens, though, because otherwise the paper is black instead of white. Other than that, it still runs fine on MorphOS (screenshot).

Glad to see that's been fixed - FW97 gave me a full lockup under 1.4.5

[Matt_H]

An observation I've had about MorphOS software over the past few years is that it's not always easy to find. There's no dedicated repository like OS4Depot, and lots of stuff doesn't even make it to Aminet.

Fortunately, there's this fantastic site that keeps track of MorphOS native and compatible software.

[Matt_H]

or do most non-hardware banging apps just work?

Yes.

[Matt_H]

Senex wrote:

Glad to see that's been fixed - FW97 gave me a full lockup under 1.4.5

No, nothing has been fixed with regard to FW97 - it's running as well or badly under MorphOS as always: i.e. on 8 bit screens only.

It works well enough for you to have been able to grab a screenshot! It would lock for me right after clicking the icon - before the screenmode requester popped up. I'll try again next time I boot into 2.0.

[Matt_H]

Only, I don't know how to make Mos boot without typing "boot ide:0 boot.img"

I don't remember the exact variable (you can see it if you type "printenv" at the firmware prompt; it might be bootcmd), but just set it to the string you use to boot, I.E., what you wrote above. There's also an autoboot variable to set to "true".

[Matt_H]

Regarding the price, it's higher than I budgeted for (and the terrible American dollar doesn't help either), but it's fair.

Given that the 0.x and 1.x releases were all free, this is the first time the developers are seeing money from end-users. They absolutely deserve to see some income.

Besides, it's free to try - that's what'll attract new users. How many other non-Unix variant OSes allow that?