MorphOS on Power Mac G5

[spihunter]

Wow! that @$#*& is going to fly!.

http://bigfoot.morphos-team.net/test/powermacg5_showconfig.jpeg - only a day late, but oh well


And as always, questions about availability and offers for beta testing will likely be quite pointless at this time.

[spihunter]

It's good to get that out of the way in advance!.

Nice

Now, to respond in the manner I've come to expect of many in the community:

This really sucks. Old hardware that's less powerful than my N year old PC. Bet there's no 64-bit support and dual G5 boxes are totally out. A 32-bit OS running on just one 64-bit capable CPU out of a possible 2, yada yada etc.

[spihunter]

Not to be to nit picky but Snow Leopard only runs on intel Macs.

I know I'm OT here so please forgive me but, I have several G4 Macs, all running Mac OS X Snow leopard and not one of them can play 720p - not even close, it's like watching a slideshow.

On the Mac forums I frequent I was told that the G4, even at 1.5Ghz or 1.67Ghz just isn't fast enough to decode a 720p x264 stream in real-time.  If that is the case, how can MorphOS play back the same stream on the same hardware?

[spihunter]

It could open the door to port more powerful programs and games that may struggle on a G4. But, as you already said "Why not just use a $50 PC and be done with it! "

What, like it's actually slow on a 1.5GHz G4, is it? I mean we are talking about software that ran respectably on actual RTG 680x0 machines here.

[spihunter]

@Karlos,

One thing I don't understand where your coming from is that you keep asking us why we would want to run say Blender on a G4/MorphOS machine when we have a PC sitting here.
when you yourself just said that An A1200 is your main music production machine?

Under your logic, why use an A1200 and not your new x86 PC to do your music production?

I still use my classic amiga machines and they are of more use than an arcane hobby. My 1200 is still my main music production system, for example. It doesn't make it any less obsolete.

You may contend it is a relative term but, well, you correct yourself here:



Your entire computer may not be produced and used but the components that it is made from are. However, no desktop systems are built with G5 processors, nor have been for some time.

You say "a G5 would absolutely be useful to me". To do what, exactly? This is what I have been asking. What do you routinely do in MOS (assuming you are a user) that is too slow on your current machine that none of your other machines (core2 macbook included) can't do for you already?

I dunno why people are interpreting my position here as particularly contentious. All I actually asked was what do people need G5 (or PA6T) for when it comes to running amiga apps? And, to be entirely honest, I only asked that thanks to the stupid and utterly predictable "yay G5 mac FTW totally pwns PA6T!!111!" remarks from certain members that have posted in this and related threads. Sure, a 2.7GHz G5 is going to outperform a 1.6GHz PA6T, I'd be surprised if it were not true, but what does it actually matter? It isn't as if G5 is an option for OS4 users and nor is PA6T an option for MOS users, so who cares either way?

Now, I've already said I totally understand the "I want to run my favourite OS on the fastest hw available" motivation. However, there is not one single amiga application that actually requires a G5 or PA6T that you can't get for an x86/64, so if you need to run those apps, cheaper and faster alternatives exist. Logically, you can only justify the former option if you are basically opposed to the latter one.

Now, for a long time, the point of how insanely fast and efficient MOS is on G4 mac hardware has been stressed and I am quite sure of it. Moving to G5 is an obvious and natural progression but why now, exactly? Obviously, I'm not privy to the development plan for MOS, but I am aware that there are plenty of other things that could be focused on instead - support for more graphics cards (especially now that gallium opens up nVidia support, also used in apple machines), support for wifi and other stuff that is surely of more immediate use to more people.

[spihunter]

I think this answers your original questions of why anyone would want a faster MorphOS/OS4 or classic machine. There are apps that run on the Amiga that people really like or are used to using. many of them run just fine on the next Gen Amiga systems.

Octamed is not one of them but, there are many trackers for the PC that have many more features including VST support. Why not tell people to just use those? You like Octamed, maybe another user really likes ImageFX?. That program would fly on a G5 and only runs on Amiga's.

Well, that's a case of chalk and cheese. You are comparing very different tasks.

My A1200 runs OctaMED SS as a MIDI sequencer. First of all, OctaMED SS is my preferred tool as I have years of experience with it. There is, or was, a version for windows but frankly, I didn't like the interface and secondly I tend not to run windows. Now, MIDI sequencing is not an intensive task; the 68040 in that machine is already more than fast enough for the job, hence there is nothing to be gained from running it on a faster box. In fact, I did try using UAE but in the end, there was little gain and rigging up my existing MIDI gear to it was a PITA. So, my A1200 is totally up to the job I ask of it. When I'm making music on it using my preferred application, it's already as good as it needs to be and no amount of additional go faster stripes actually help it.

Secondly, my PC does factor into music production. Recording, mixing, post production and soft synthesis. All of which IO/compute bound tasks for which my A1200 is underpowered.

Unlike MIDI sequencing, raytracing, is very much a compute/memory bound task. It's great that blender exists for AmigaOS4/MOS and hopefully time will see it fine-tuned and optimised, but even by then, I don't see it competing with an SSE3 optimised build on a fast x86-64 machine with several GB of high speed memory, running parallel render tasks on a true SMP platform.

In short, it's horses for courses. If you start justifying your choice of hardware by choosing compute bound tasks, why pick underpowered hardware to run them on? As cheap as you can pick up a G5 for, it isn't going to compete with an x86 box you spent the same total on (assuming you factor in the cost of the OS, which if you pick linux, is nada).