MorphOS is out for MacMini G4! No cheaper Amiga available today!

[zylesea]

I very much dislike the licensing scheme though. If the MorphOS team "pulls a Holger Kruse", registered users may be screwed if they require a re-install.

Only if
a) you lose your backup of the key (i have copies of my keys  in my regular general back up files, an usb pen and a webdrive).
AND
b) The MorphOS team leaves the scene w/o a general MorphOS key (which I doubt they would).

That said the reg scheme could be better indeed.

[zylesea]

Last time i checked it  was much cheaper to buy an X86 and run the real Aos under emulation

Can be cheaper, but ain't the same fun and power (I used UAE quite a lot and use it still today (but much lesser)). But for sure that depends on taste and usage. UAE is pretty important of course.

[zylesea]

People asks about the cheapest way to enter Amigaworld on? Get a MacMini G4 and you have a superb Amiga system which your gf or wife even will tolerate. What stops you going for a cheap MacMini really?

You can get it upto 1.5GHz with lots of MEM and good HD space... Amiga community should start to care more of each other, either its red or blue or black. Inform people that cheapest way to enter Amigaworld at the moment is to get a MacMini and it got the SPEED!...

Think of it! Help Amigaworld community you also!

And while MorphOS for the Mac mini is available since October 2009 the next update will introduce support for even cheaper hardware: PowerMac G4!
3rd party accelerators reach clocks up to 2 GHz.
Bog standard ~1 GHz PowerMac g4s are ridiculously cheap.
Also on the list: eMac (not confirmed when support is thought to be included)
 and probably some Powerbooks (no final decision if and when).

[zylesea]

What if you still have your key, but your Mac Mini gives up the blue smoke? Will your key work on another Mac mini? My understanding is no. In that case if the MOS team pulled a Kruse, the user would be screwed. I'm not saying they would, just they could and there is precedence for it in the kommunity.

No the key works only on teh maschine you reg'ed it to (MAC). But as long as the team is there and you can provide evidence that your maschine is broken, you'll get a new key. If the leam leaves and doesn't provide a general key then, you're indeed in the Kruse situation. But I doubt the team will give up within the next 24 months - and after 24 month I think the cost is written off anyway.

PS: I understood reinstall as a new installation on a new hardware. And for that situation post #11 is true.

[zylesea]

Do you have a link?? I asked about PowerMac G4 (on AO, not MOS team) support a week or so ago and was told this was not planned nor likely. That would rock.

http://www.morphzone.org/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6684&forum=11

[zylesea]

Has the question been asked as to the possibility of upgrading say an Efika MorphOS license to a MacMini License?  I have an Efika, but would love to have my MacMini 1.5 running without the registration reminder:).  I have a MacMini 1.5 running dual boot Mac OS X and MorphOS 2.4, but I have not been able to get around the fact that I own a license on MorphOS on an inferior hardware setup.  If I could pay a "small" upgrade price to move it from my Efika to my MacMini would be appreciated immensely.

The Dawg

Yes, the question has been asked before. The answer to that question is: no, you cannot move the license from your working Efika to the Mac mini.
I think this situation is a bit unfortunate, but also understandable since there is no way to warrant that the Efika key ultimately gets destroyed (only the word of the user).
Suggested approaches for now:
a) sell your Efika w/ key for a fair price and re-register your mini for the retail.
b) bite the sour apple and do a 2nd registration (I did).

Once/if MorphOS gets a bit wider spread maybe the registration scheme can get a bit more friendly. For now the team decided for a very strict scheme because it is relatively easy to maintain. But I would favour a odification of the current scheme, too (my best suggestion: lower the registration price to 99.99 EUR).

[zylesea]

I never knew that about the liscense. Thats a strange thing, wanna upgrade your computer? You have to pay us AGAIN.

Not if you want to upgrade the computer, but if you want to switch the computer. I.e. get a PowerMac G4 1 GHz. Upgrade to 1.8 GHz later and it works. Plus, at least all 2.x updates are free! Other OS vendors charge with updates.

As said, the licensing scheme is not ideal, but currently the only way to avoid mis-usage of licenses (use one license on several maschines). I'd be happy if the fee was a bit lower, since I think more ppl would register then.
But if you calculate a bit it ain't that expensive. If you expect just 2.5 years of usage (I used my Pegasos for 7 years 2002-2009 as main MorphOS maschine) that is 5 EUR/month. My internet account is way more expensive... It is a thing of calculation and relation. Let's see if I will find this thread in spring 2012 to post whether my Mac mini with MorphOS was used 30 months (I noted the date and forum link in PolyOrga now)...

[zylesea]

I should explain. A broken machine would be more useful to me, because that way I could throw it in the bin without feeling guilty. As it is, I can't, because there's nothing actually wrong with it. The 128MB ram limit makes it totally useless as a computer, by design.

Try to sell the Efika and buy a key for your mini. The demand for Efikas is not the highest, but there are ppl out there who like to play around with them. If I hadn't one already, I'd be interested. It is a nice maschine for playing around and build your very custom thing from it. It is a good base for projects like this: http://via.i-networx.de/eframe/eframe.htm

Edit: Note also that the next version of MorphOS will probably provide mor available RAM, since L3D will introduce teh option to keep video data in VRAM exclusively (no RAM copy required). Dunno how well this will work though.

[zylesea]

I was trying to sell my Efika, as I have had a 1.5GHz G4 MacMini running a registered copy of MorphOS2.4 for several months now, but since it has not sold I think I will copy that idea to make it into a picture frame media computer.  I have an old 500MHz Celeron laptop that is literally falling to pieces (the hinges have broken the plastic laptop casing) that I could get a 14.1 inch LCD display from, if I can figure out the wiring to convert it to accept an input cable from the DVI port of the Efika's ATI 9250 video card.  The picture frame project linked to above looks very nice and it is only a 10.3 inch LCD.

Nice to hear you like the project. My next step on the to do list is to finish my simple program interface and do a rework of the LED and display control. The disk aktivity LED sucks in the dark - am thinking of moving the whole thing to get controlled by a µC (but never worked with µC yet, maybe a good task/opprtunity to start actually).
Good luck for your project - I hope you'll share your project progress once started.

[zylesea]

Really?  I did not think it would be that difficult to figure out and why wouldn't there be some kind of standard for LCD screens?  

LVDS only defines standards for the electrical properties of the signal but nothing more. You need to google around to find out the signalling of your display. My frame uses a Sharp industrial panel and a display controller from Kontron.