As a Hypothetical... (Deciding between AOS4 and MorphOS)

[Crumb]

As far as I know, Morphos is not supported or developed for classic PPC Amigas. I remember trying it back in the day, it was fast but incomplete.

If you add MUI4 and updated Ambient it becomes much nicer. Anyway a mac ppc is a much better choice. You can buy a ppc mac+morphos license with the money you save not buying a ppc accelerator.

[Dragster]

Hello

Morphos is free (AFAIK) for classic systems with PPC acceletators (as the machine you are planning to use), the new versions cost money but they only work on PPC-only hardware (Efika, Pegasos, PPC Macs...), so maybe the Morphos option is not exactly what you are thinking since the version you can use is (again, AFAIK) no longer supported.

Regards,
Efren

...and eventhough MorphOS 1.4.5 is free, you still *had* to register in order for it to work with no slowdowns.. unfortunately it cannot be rergistered anymore, so I'd leave MorphOS 1.4.5 for classics out of the picture.

Just my $0.02


Cheers,
Dragster

[tone007]

For NG OSes, I'd stay away from the classic Amigas.  A better performing NG system can be had for much less than the cost of a CSPPC.

[Matt_H]

For NG OSes, I'd stay away from the classic Amigas.  A better performing NG system can be had for much less than the cost of a CSPPC.

Agreed. Insidious611, a PPC Mac running MorphOS will be your cheapest, most powerful, most feature-complete (given the needs you mentioned) option. You may also want to consider AROS for x86 hardware - it's free and comparable to MorphOS in terms of features. Not sure if MegaZeux is available for those platforms, though.

MorphOS has a free trial. It's fully functional, but slows down after about 30 minutes. After a 6 second reboot, you're running at full speed again. A keyfile to disable the timeout costs 111 Euro at the moment (purchased from within the OS). Add in about $300 (probably less) for a Mac and things are still pretty affordable. QEMU isn't an option. The version of MorphOS that ran on it is an old internal experiment that was never publicly released.

Building up a PPC Classic system will be extremely expensive and will probably take a long time - the needed parts aren't for sale very often. You'll likely be disappointed with the performance. It definitely can't handle web video.

OS4 requires a large upfront investment. The custom hardware is very expensive due to low production volumes. The web browser and video players are far less developed than on MorphOS, but there have been some good improvements lately to bring them more in sync.

I don't know much about the latest with AROS, but it has a cool version of UAE that provides 68K compatibility in a way similar to MacOSX's Classic Environment.

You may want to consider a simpler Classic 68K Amiga alongside a MorphOS or AROS box. The 2 together will probably still be cheaper than a Classic PPC or OS4 machine.

[krashan]

You may also want to consider AROS for x86 hardware - it's free and comparable to MorphOS in terms of features.

With some special definition of "comparable". ;-)

[Crumb]

Agreed. Insidious611, a PPC Mac running MorphOS will be your cheapest, most powerful, most feature-complete (given the needs you mentioned) option.

Indeed! This top of the range G4 Mac Mini would be perfect and the price is very reasonable.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300590868848&ssPageName=ADME:L:OC:US:1123

He can try out MorphOS for $176 (around 134€). If he doesn't like it he can sell it easily for the same price. If he enjoys the system he can register once he has tested it.

[takemehomegrandma]

If you like classics get an 1200 with an accelerator. Individual Computers 030/42Mhz are new and are perfect to enjoy classics (WB, WHDLoad games, some demos...). If you really want to play latest 060 demos and you don't mind paying up a lot for an old accelerator you should get a Blizzard1260. But that's not usually the case, many people is fine running demos on WinUAE*or playing the videos.

Buying an A4000T and upgrading an A4000T to be able to run OS4/MorphOS*will be quite expensive and will be just a toy because it won't provide a "modern" experience.

The cheapest option to try out MorphOS is downloading the ISO and trying it out on some G4 Radeon equipped Mac. Any G4 Mac Mini will do. G4 Powermacs are cheap too. Latest powerbook G4 model is also a very good option if you need/prefer a laptop. The MorphOS*ISO*you download is the complete OS and allows you to do everything you need (you can install it, you can run it from the cd...). If you like it you can register your machine from MorphOS register tool and a key will be sent to the email you provide once you perform the payment (111Euro right now although older machines like powermacs, peg1, efikas will probably be cheaper after MorphOS 3.0 is released. You pay through paypal). If you don't want to register your machine a requester will popup when you have an uptime of 30minutes and the system will slow down until next reboot.

If you want to try out OS4 you could also get a Pegasos2 machine since it's both cheaper and faster than newer machines and also allows you to run MorphOS too.

My advice: get an A1200 with a 030 accelerator and the latest Powerbook g4/1.67Ghz (or a Mac Mini) with MorphOS.

+1

[takemehomegrandma]

With some special definition of "comparable". ;-)

(Maybe what he *really* meant to say was "not particularly comparable at all"... )

Well, to sum things up:

If you are mostly interested in Retro stuff, and want to use the good old Amiga SW without any compromises whatsoever, then there are two options:

1 – If Amiga HW is part of your Amiga interest, then you want a real Amiga, and the A1200 + accelerator option as Crumb mentioned above is a good option.
2 – If you are mainly interested in using the Amiga SW, but on a machine you already have (probably x86), then UAE (WinUAE) is a very good option. The "Amiga Forever" from Cloanto is a complete package, with many extras.

If you are more interested in using the Amiga in a more modern way, for real 2011 stuff (like modern media files, Internet, etc), where new features and high performance is more important than 100% backwards compatibility, you should look at the "NG" options:

3 – If what you want is an OS that runs on x86 (even if only "hosted"), is free and open, then AROS is the only option.
4 – If you are prepared to pay a little money for your hobby (for HW and OS), and what you want is the NG OS that has the best features, the most features, all big Amiga standards (Poseidon USB, Cybergraphics, MUI4, etc) not only included but *integrated*, best Amiga compatibility, etc, then MorphOS is the only option.

Hope that helps!

[antikk]

Why not just get a peg2, and you can run them both? Then you can choose if you favour one over another, or enjoy having both of them.

[Matt_H]

Why not just get a peg2, and you can run them both? Then you can choose if you favour one over another, or enjoy having both of them.

True, except Pegasos machines are very hard to find these days and are typically more expensive than a Mac. You're right, though, it's a good choice if you can find one. And the ability to run both systems on a single board may be the value that justifies the higher cost.

But if you're willing to sacrifice the ability to run OS4, you can get a little more horsepower from the Macs.

It's all down to what you want to do with it.

[redfox]

@Insidious611

As others have said, a Pegasos II machine will allow you to try out both MorphOS and AmigaOS 4.

However, OS4 is not available as a downloadable demo image.  It must be purchased.

AmigaOS 4.1 (Pegasos II version) may be purchased from amigakit.com (stock expected soon).

Python is available with OS4.  I do not know if it contains all the capabilities you require.

---
redfox

[Insidious611]

Looks like a Mac Mini G4 alongside an Amiga 1200 would be my best choice then? Funny, I used to have a PowerBook G4 Titanium that might have been acceptable for MorphOS, but that fell victim to a rather notorious hinge defect in those macs.

[amigadave]

Looks like a Mac Mini G4 alongside an Amiga 1200 would be my best choice then? Funny, I used to have a PowerBook G4 Titanium that might have been acceptable for MorphOS, but that fell victim to a rather notorious hinge defect in those macs.

No, the Titanium PowerBook is not one of the few supported models.  Only the last four 1.67GHz G4 PowerBooks will be supported (and one or two 1.5GHz models, but they must be a certain revision, so you must be very sure you are getting the right model).

There are 6 more of the 1.5GHz G4 MacMini's for auction with a "Buy-it-Now" price of $175.99 on eBay right now, which is a very good price.  Check the other thread I posted about them in the Amiga Marketplace forum.

[Insidious611]

Ah, good to know. And yeah, I checked the one linked earlier and looked around and found a few others. Unfortunately they'll likely be sold out by the time I have the money to afford them, but knowing that they can acquired pretty cheaply is a good thing

If only we weren't coming up right against christmas, I might actually have the money to afford one of those Minis right now.

I actually have a perfectly working mac sitting right behind me, OS-less, but its an iMac G3 so way too old for this sort of thing.