MorphOS on Power Mac G5

[amigadave]

Right, write me off as a troll, just like the rest of the blue pill crowd - you still have not answered my questions - for me those are real issues, soon enough they will be yours.

Don't whine because I refuse to play your game any longer.  Your "issues" will never be my issues.:lol:

[amigadave]

OS4 or MorphOS on x86 will likely never happen because of the endian-ness.

That might be true, but I think it just depends on how much fun the MorphOS Team is having and the what degree of difficulty/amount of man-hours they think it will take them to make the switch to x86.  Apple proved that a switch from PPC to x86 could be done, but that is no guarantee that MorphOS will ever make the same leap.

As soon as they are done tweaking the most speed they can get and any other optimizing or adding of features to MorphOS, and/or if the amount of work to port to x86 is more than the Team wants to invest in their fun little adventure, and if a different architecture that makes more sense to port to does not materialize before then, the Team may just decide to quit and call it a day, or move on to something else.  If MorphOS ever ceases to be fun for them to play around with, they might turn it over to other programmers in the Amiga/Morph community to continue, or sell it to anyone that wants to continue work on it and thinks they can still make a buck from doing so.

[amigadave]

Times like this I wish we ran on Slashcode. As I'd mod your post up.

P.S. Kolla is taking the day off.

About time, thank you!

[amigadave]

Can we get on topic? I read so much of this nonsense and I still don't know if and when MorphOS will run on g5... I'd like to know this as I was planning on buying a 1.25ghz emac for morphOS but I'd much prefer a g5 mini tower.

Gladly!  Did you really write "mini" tower?!? :lol:

I have no inside information, other than what anyone can find on public forums like these, but I am fairly confident that MorphOS support for any model of the G5 PowerMac will not be released before they first release support for the G4 PowerMacs and G4 PowerBooks.  I might be wrong about the PowerBooks coming before the G5 PowerMacs, but many rumors and I think some statements from MorphOS Team members themselves have said that support for a few of the G4 PowerMac models should be released within the next 2 to 3 months, or sooner.

Buying a G5 PowerMac to run MorphOS on is a risky decision at this point in time.  It may get done quickly, or it may never get finished.  AFAIK, there has been no official promise that G5 PowerMac support will be done, but since a screen shot has already been shown by one of the MorphOS Team members and at least one other Team member has mentioned in a forum posting that he also owns a G5 PowerMac, I would say that the chances are good that some day it will be completed and released.  But that does not tell you which models will be supported yet, unless you decide to get the same exact model as the one shown in the already released screen shot.  That one is probably a better bet than other models that it will get supported.

I have been hoping for a port to the G5 PowerMac for about a year already, but when I first mentioned it I was completely shut down by one or more of the MorphOS Team members who said it would never happen.  I am very happy that they either changed their minds, or they were only trying to conceal their roadmap from any possible competitor a year ago.

Since I have just found and purchased a 17", 1.67GHz G4 PowerBook in like new condition, I am actually hoping that support for it comes before support for the G5 takes up too much of their coding time.

Both the G4 PowerBook and the G4 and G5 PowerMacs are going to be great additions to the list of MorphOS capable hardware if/when they are added.  Those plus the release of new X1000 hardware for the AmigaOS4.1.2 users should keep both camps happy for a while, I think.

Edit: Don't bid on the G5 in Oakland, CA.  It is mine, I saw it first so bid on a different one, because I have plans to pick that one up in person already.:rtfm:  It's mine, all mine I say!

[amigadave]

@All

I'd just like to apologise for the off-topic argument yesterday. I still stand by my points completely but in retrospect the entire exchange itself was, well, pretty pointless.

Probably better handled elsewhere than to further pollute a very polluted thread.

Apology accepted.

Edit:  It is hard for me to believe that this argument about MorphOS on a G5 PowerMac being a waste of time because that much power is not needed for anything we do while running MorphOS.  I can't think of a single post in any forum thread anywhere that I have seen that talks about the X1000 being a waste of time because more power than a 1GHz G4 A1 is all that is needed to do anything on AmigaOS4.x.  Would we be having this discussion if it were AmigaOS4.x being ported to the G5 PowerMac instead of MorphOS2.x?

And as I have tried to point out several times, ALL computer OSes have gotten more hardware power first and a way to take advantage of the power after the hardware was available, with very few exceptions.  Why can't these people still arguing that the G5 PowerMac is a stupid idea, or waste of time for the MorphOS Team to add support for understand that point?

[amigadave]

posted by inoel:

MorphOS team why dont you sell recon emac's/powermacs with MorphOS yourselfs ?

That is not an additional responsibility and time consumer that the Team needs to take on and take away from their time to write improvements to MorphOS and do work on supporting the next target hardware model they are trying to complete.  If any individual, including someone from the MorphOS Dev Team wishes to purchase old G4 Mac's and pre-load the demo version of MorphOS on them to ready them for resale, they are free to do so, but the time required as well as the investment of money and all the potential headaches that could happen when selling used hardware, are probably something none of the Team members want to bring upon themselves.  There have been a couple of MorphZone users that have tried doing this on a very small scale, with just a few machines, but I think they quit when they realized that it is very hard to buy and pay shipping for the used hardware and then sell it to other Amiga users (be they 4.1.2, or 3.1>3.9 users), without losing money, let alone trying to make any profit.  Part of the problem is that the prices for the used G4 Macs varies wildly from one location to another and from one week to another and with their low prices, adding shipping to the cost to get them to a potential buyer can easily make them much more expensive that the buyer could get one for themselves locally.  Lastly, the prices of PPC Mac hardware continue to fall at a fairly fast rate, so if you buy one with the thoughts to sell it to another potential MorphOS buyer, you had better sell it very fast, because the longer it takes you to sell it the higher the risk that you will lose money as the prices of competing PPC Mac sellers may drop below what you have invested in your PPC Macs and you will not be able to get back your money.

posted by arnljot:

I'm waiting for a wave of third-hand mac minis when the mos mini owners upgrade

I don't think you have long to wait as some current G4 MacMini owners are anxious to upgrade to the G4 PowerMac due to the expansion slots they will then have to play with, which is a famous trait of Amiga users, their love to upgrade and play with the configuration of their computers.  I think I am going to probably use my G4 MacMini as my desktop MorphOS2.x machine for as long as it takes until support is released for the G5 PowerMac models.  Then I might sell the Mini, or I might move it into the RV and keep it.

posted by Karlos:

If you look back, you'll see that I also mention the PA6T in many of the posts that make this point.

Yes, I should have qualified my comment as I was thinking outside of this thread, which for me anyway, is a thread only about MorphOS on the G5 PowerMac, so I have pretty much tried to forget any references about the X1000 and PA6T running AmigaOS4.1.2 (even though I did make a few comments where I stated that the X1000 and PA6T w/AmigaOS4.x, is in the same, or similar situation as MorphOS2.x on the G5 PowerMacs).  I was thinking that I had not seen a similar reaction toward the X1000 being announced.  Yes, many people, from both camps, have made comments that the X1000 may not be a good idea, but for the most part every one of those dissenters have used the price as the number one reason that they are not interested in the X1000, not the argument that the X1000 is not needed because there is no AmigaOS4.x software that needs the power that will come with the production of the X1000.  Maybe I have just missed such threads and there really several such threads and complaints out there, just like the complaints made in this thread.

[amigadave]

@ Karlos,

Fair enough!  Not much use beating this horse any further until the X1000 is selling to the general public and if/when support for the G5 PowerMac is released by the MorphOS Development Team.  Then we can go back to fighting with our biased comparisons of each computer and OS in real earnest.  :lol:

[amigadave]

@Iggy,

the last generation of the G5 PowerMacs did have PCIe and no AGP slots, up to 4 cores @2.5GHz, and they have a maximum RAM capability of 16gb, not 8gb, so if that model is ever supported by the MorphOS Team, there is the same potential for PCIe video cards to be supported on MorphOS2.x as there will be on AmigaOS4.x with the X1000.

And IMHO, most developers stopped writing code for the Amiga community because Commodore stopped doing any meaningful engineering to advance the Amiga hardware long before they went bankrupt, and most of the developers could see the writing on the wall and knew the Amiga was not going to be able to compete with the PC's and Mac's in the near future.  The subsequent owners of the Amiga IP never did anything to revive, or advance the Amiga and the Amiga user base was shrinking so fast developers were forced to move onward to other more mainstream OSes to make a living, or give up on writing apps, or games for profit and get into another occupation to pay the bills.  The only developers we have left in the Amiga community are ones that do it for fun, not for profit, even if they do charge a small amount to pay for their beer and pizza's, you can't really call their work profitable, or compare it to commercial software development.

Edit:  I wonder if the MorphOS Dev. Team is regretting releasing that screen shot of MorphOS2.x booting on the G5 PowerMac so early?  No one outside of the Team can know how much work is needed to complete the support for any of the G5 PowerMac models, but several Team members have stated that the next release will focus on support for the G4 PowerMac.  Since there have been more YouTube video's showing demonstrations of MorphOS2.x on the G4 PowerBook, and there was a demonstration of MorphOS2.x running on the G4 PowerBook at the Essen show recently, it is very likely that the G4 PowerBook will be the next target platform after the G4 PowerMac and before the G5 PowerMac, so it may be quite a long time before a release of MorphOS supports any of the G5 PowerMac models.

[amigadave]

It is simply not true. Maybe except sorting you under "trolls" ;-).

It is a waste of your time and effort to respond to anything that Troll writes.  It only makes him more active here.