MorphOS on Power Mac G5

[Karlos]

A1200 is obsolete because it doesn't have built in midi-ports and cubase like my Atari Mega ST. Plus the Atari doesn't multitask, so every bit of cpu's prosessing time goes to midi sequencing.

:lol:

However, for the Atari Mega ST:

1) I don't have one

2) As nice as the built in MIDI interface is, it's actually less versatile than the one I already own.

3) It doesn't run OctaMED SS

4) I don't really want to buy another machine to do a job my machine does perfectly well,

5) Irrespective of all the above, the Mega ST probably doesn't the job as well as my existing machine anyway

[Karlos]

I think it's funny that an Amiga enthusiast has to defend his preferred choice of OS and HW for his Amiga hobby here on Amiga.org. This is something I would expect over at slashdot, i.e. "Linux on x86 is cheaper, faster and better". Well it might be, but it won't be MorphOS.

:lol:
Fear not, help is available.

I find it funny that you find a perfectly reasonable question something you need to "defend" against. All I asked was "what do you already do with MOS on your G4 that you actually need a G5 for?"

And frankly, you brought that question on all by yourself with your e-pine rubbing over the G5 slaying all competition

With the G5 support, MorphOS will support the fastest PPC architecture ever made. That's a good thing IMO, not a bad thing.

Nowhere in this thread or anywhere else have I suggested it is a bad thing. That inference is entirely in your going on in your mind.

In fact, I think you will find that the very first thing I did was to ridicule the sorts of arguments I was expecting from certain trolls regarding obvious lack of 64-bit/SMP support. You know, exactly the same arguments that were raised by some people when it was announced that the equally 32-bit, non SMP OS4 would be migrating to a 64-bit dual core processor.

And if it isn't for you, the MorphOS team has showed MorphOS running on a broad spectrum of Mac HW, a whole palette, where each option has it's own individual key benefit:

Mac Mini (Small)
eMac (Cheap)
PowerBook (Laptop)
PowerMac G4 (Cheap, expandable, "real" case)
PowerMac G5 (Powerful)

I am fully aware of the machines MOS is available for. As I have said more than once, I am slightly puzzled as to why migrating to G5 seems to be happening ahead of improving support on the above machines.

To reiterate, there are plenty of G4 class Mac machines that used nVidia GPUs, but you can't run MOS on them thanks to the lack of video driver support. Yet, AROS already has gotten nVidia support thanks to Gallium, so it's no great leap of intuition to contemplate MOS (and OS4 for that matter) to examine the possibility. Or how about getting wireless networking up and running on the boxes that are supported?

I know that it isn't Linux on x86, but for an Amiga enthusiast, this is a lot to choose from depending on your needs and wants. This are the best mainstream machines the PPC had to offer, and none of the options will ruin you. MorphOS doesn't run on x86,

Not yet. But, ask yourself seriously though, where do you go after the G5? Or is the G5 to be to MOS what the 68060 was to OS3.x?

The same argument is true for the PA6T.

and the G5 is the most powerful PPC there is. Supporting it is a good thing, not a bad thing,

There you are again, rubbing your behind as if I just kicked it for asking a perfectly reasonable question.

it makes the picture above complete.

No it doesn't. It would be complete if the major features of each device were adequately supported. They aren't. As I said, fixing wifi and video support would make it far more complete than adding support for one more CPU, which you can still do afterwards.

[Piru]

I am slightly puzzled as to why migrating to G5 seems to be happening ahead of improving support on the above machines.

I'm slightly puzzled why you think G5 is going to happen before the said machines. Sure there will be things that won't be supported anytime soon (nvidia, wlan, bluetooth), but basic robust support for the announced machines definitely comes first. Adding support for any of those technologies would require too much resources for a limited gain.

how about getting wireless networking up and running on the boxes that are supported?

I'd think it's main because adding support for for Wi-Fi Protected Access would be painful. We haven't ruled WiFi out completely but it certainly isn't a high priority at the moment.

[Karlos]

I'm slightly puzzled why you think G5 is going to happen before the said machines.

Well, the initial announcement and subsequent excitement might have had something to do with it The key phrase in the above is "seems to be".

Sure there will be things that won't be supported anytime soon (nvidia, wlan, bluetooth), but basic robust support for the announced machines definitely comes first.

Thank you, Piru, that's reassuring to hear.

[Karlos]

And I understand Karlos' argument really well. I fact, since I recognize that I'm not going to be doing anything with a G4 Powermac that I can't do with a 1.25Ghz eMac, the first Powermac I've put together is a 1 Ghz Quicksilver. I'm pretty sure I can overclock this to 1.2 Ghz (which is close to my current 1.25) and if third party CPU upgrades are supported I can go as high as a 2.0Ghz 7448 (the fastest MDD upgrade is a 7447 which would be less powerful).

No doubt you'll barely notice any real loss in performance in everyday usage, since most of the things we do on our amiga/amiga-like systems are not compute bound.

I don't expect to be able to decode HD video without high CPU usage or a video card based decoder. And, as before, there's going to be some applications that the system is either not powerful enough for or that software doesn't exist for under MorphOS.

However, I'm guessing that pretty much every Amiga specific application you can run on it, will run extremely well indeed, right?

Will G5 support be cool? Will we be able to keep pace with AmigaOS4 hardware? Of course, its going to seriously kick ass, and we'll be paying less for our hardware.

Agreed. As I said, the "I want to run my preferred OS on the fastest hardware it can run on" is a motivation I can completely understand.

The thing that Karlos is aware of and that I must admit I'm painfully aware of (as someone who worked for a company selling 68K based computers in the late 80's and early 90's) is that even if we have reasonably powerful hardware we're facing an impossible task.

Its simple, with the number of Windows and OSX computers sold each year the market for software for those machines is very large. As the time and energy necessary to create good software is also quite great, developers gravitate toward those markets with the greatest potential to make a profit.

As such, many great ideas and even better alternatives (to the current dominant platforms) have failed in the past. We need to keep our feet on the ground and remain realistic. The chances of a mainstream revival are slim. Our market does seem to be enjoying a period of renewal and growth. But, our systems and our software still serve a hobbyist market. Whether they will ever serve as primary systems of production remains questionable.

QFT.

-edit-

Seems I missed this post:

As to your other question about what do we need the G5 power for, and there are no Amiga apps that need that kind of power, you are obviously right for 99% of the apps, but with the old 68k apps needing to be run through a JIT engine and not natively, any demanding Classic Amiga app, such as 3D rendering, will benefit from the extra power. But more important in my minds eye is that the extra computing power will open a few programming opportunities that everyone thought could not be accomplished on any Amiga computer in the past. With G5, or PA6T power and if/when better graphics cards are supported, it will be possible to create better Amiga applications in the future than might be possible with only the current power of a 1.5GHz G4 MacMini, or in AmigaOS4.x's case, a 1GHz G4 Pegasos2, or AmigaOne.

I have to admit, I'd love to see that, for to me that would be a sign of genuine progress. I honestly think that OS4 and MOS are operating systems without software more than they are operating systems without hardware. Sure they run a large slice of legacy applications, but tiny minority of those actually benefit from the step up in performance, which has been my point of contention throughout.

Aside from apps and codecs ported from other systems where the required performance to run is considered minimal at best, neither OS4 or MOS presently seem to have applications that would appear to have been made possible solely by the improved performance they have over classic machines. And in my book, that's a real pity.

Concerning your argument that we all have other computers that can run anything that can be run on a G5 or PA6T Amiga system faster and cheaper, not everyone wants to have to switch back and forth between different systems and many of us hope that with a sufficiently powerful Amiga system, more Amiga programmers will return to coding new programs for us to use and we might be able to do 100% of what we now do on multiple computers on just one powerful Amiga computer. Not everyone here HAS to have all the latest software, or web plug-ins to satisfy our computing needs and I would say that many of us here at A.org are the die-hard few remaining Amiga enthusiasts that would prefer to ONLY use an Amiga computer and OS and not have to boot into any other OS ever again. Maybe that is not realistic, and some will say it is not possible, but everyone has different computing styles and needs, so I say to those nay sayers, don't tell me what I have to own, or have to run to be happy with my computing experience.

A reasonable argument, honestly presented. However, I don't think the various polls over the years (not to mention the server stats) really support your idea that many regular visitors here are amiga-only folk. There is a vocal minority, but the majority would seem to have other machines, at least for internet access.

[Karlos]

G5 on morphos is perfect and the fastest "amiga" never see, you can launch a amiga program, like lightwave 3d, aladdin, art effect etc at the speed of 75% of ppc cpu using jit trance... this is a lot and a lots of mips, 1.8ghz give more than 5.000 mips for amiga native 68k aplications, warpos/powerup and morphos more than 7.000 mips, i think morphos can boot on a micro sencond

Whereas I think you'll find that you could get a similar percentage of native speed for any of the above applications a core i7 just using UAE. Or just run Lightwave 3D at 100% native speed on the same machine, since all versions from about 5.0 onwards are for x86 anyway

Of course, you could say "yeah but you have to emulate the chipset". Funny that, because running it in RTG mode seems to cause that problem to vanish. And, of course, it still can emulate the chipset, so it's even more compatible with original amiga applications.

and with very little memory usage windows is slow loading system, loading, loading loading... and consumes a lot of ram, morphos is ultra fast and mega-optimized, and of course, amiga compatible.

Super effective meme, much?

FYI, not all x86 machines are running super slow slow mega drag lag winblows

[takemehomegrandma]

But, ask yourself seriously though, where do you go after the G5?

When all the above mentioned machines are covered, there doesn't seem to be any more PPC options left to port to that makes sense. They will then have covered the smallest machine, the cheapest, the laptop, 'the cheapest normal case', and 'the most powerful normal case'.

As far as I see it, it would make sense to migrate to a different CPU architecture. ARM or x86.

"But why would they go x86, I mean, how could Amiga *possibly* benefit from the power of modern x86 HW...?" :rolleyes:

[Karlos]

As far as I see it, it would make sense to migrate to a different CPU architecture. ARM or x86.

"But why would they go x86, I mean, how could Amiga *possibly* benefit from the power of modern x86 HW...?" :rolleyes:

It isn't the power it would benefit from, at least not for some time*, it's the fact that they are cheap, plentiful and are extremely unlikely to go out of production at any time in the foreseeable future. In contrast to the G5, which has already been out of production for some time.

-edit-

*Of course, one obvious benefit of all that horsepower is that you'd be able to preserve backwards compatibility for PPC applications via emulation. After all, Rosetta and PearPC have shown it can be done.

[Iggy]

I don't know Karlos, with current AOS and MOS revisions not supporting SMP I'm not convinced that X86 is the way to go yet.
And how would a 32bit OS without memory protection (and in the case of MorphOS a 1.5GB memory limitation) compete against existing X86 OS'?

With MorphOS, assembly language is still within my reach (as the number of PPC instructions is still manageable). With an X86 processor? No, I'm going to need higher level programming tools.

There are a lot of reasons I can't support another platform change just yet.
And AROS is there's for those that want to switch. Right now we're spread across 68K, PPC and X86 platforms. That diversity may be of benefit to us.

[Karlos]

I don't know Karlos, with current AOS and MOS revisions not supporting SMP I'm not convinced that X86 is the way to go yet.

Point taken, but both OS4 and MOS as 32-bit non SMP are moving towards hardware SMP capable 64-bit platforms regardless, so really, that boat has already sailed.

And how would a 32bit OS without memory protection (and in the case of MorphOS a 1.5GB memory limitation) compete against existing X86 OS'?

The same way AROS does - or rather doesn't; by appealing to an existing user base instead of taking on the world. In truth, the only competition OS4 and MOS have is each other and that isn't going to change by moving to a more popular hardware platform. Alternative OS for x86 are legion; none of them are curling up and dying just because windows, osx and linux are in town.

I actually think that an x86 port of MOS (or OS4) would face far more of a threat from AROS than it does any of the "big" ones.

Regarding the memory limitation (which I wasn't actually aware of TBH), the observation applies equally to the PPC mac hardware it already supports.

With MorphOS, assembly language is still within my reach (as the number of PPC instructions is still manageable). With an X86 processor? No, I'm going to need higher level programming tools.

Actually, the assembler for x64 is quite clean. You'd be surprised (I know I was), it's a far cry from the arcane old x86 stuff. And of course, you can dispense with the horrid old stack based x87 nonsense and go straight for SSE. Of course, there's not as much call for it, but if you must, it is still there.

That said, I still prefer writing m68k assembler over everything else

There are a lot of reasons I can't support another platform change just yet.
And AROS is there's for those that want to switch. Right now we're spread across 68K, PPC and X86 platforms. That diversity may be of benefit to us.

Sure, that's understandable and FWIW, despite how it may sound, I actually enjoy  PPC. Variety is the spice of life. What worries me is the long term viability of supporting hardware that is no longer in production (not the PPC per se, but desktop systems built on it).

[iCreate]

Anyone considering purchasing a G5 tower should stay away from the water cooled models, as they have not aged gracefully and are leaking all over the motherboard.
Unless of course you're handy repairing water cooling systems.

[minator]

G5s have definitely gotten a bad rap as far as their thermal properties go. Apple didn't help by using liquid cooling on the last units. It makes it look like that was necessary, it isn't, it's quieter. G5s at 2.7 Ghz have no more rigorous cooling requirements than an Intel or AMD processor (in fact, compared to some of those, their cooling requirements are lower).

The problem wasn't power consumption but power density.  The 970 was so small it spread it's heat over a smaller area (i.e. the chip was small the heat per mm sq was higher) and the only way to avoid this was use liquid cooling.  The actual power figures were close to AMD and better than Intel.

[kolla]

ImageFX?. That program would fly on a G5 and only runs on Amiga's.

A multicore PC with multiple instances of UAE beats a G5 running MorphOS easily.

[amigadave]

A multicore PC with multiple instances of UAE beats a G5 running MorphOS easily.

Really?  You will just have to show me how a PC running UAE can run MorphOS.  (before you get all riled up, I know you were responding to the ImageFX running on MorphOS being faster on the G5 posting)

If ImageFX and other Classic Amiga programs were the only apps us MorphOS users were running on our MorphOS computers, I would agree that there is almost no reason except the OS experience itself, which is good in my opinion, to use MorphOS at all.  But that is not the case, there are MorphOS native apps that can only be run on a MorphOS capable computer.  Granted, as Karlos likes to point out, most of those apps that we can run on MorphOS (AmigaOS4 is in the same boat) exist on other platforms that run orders of magnitude faster than any MorphOS2.x or AmigaOS4.x machine at a fraction of the price, but I fail to see the logic of why any MorphOS or AmigaOS4 user would want to keep using underpowered hardware that limits the kinds of things we can do on the OS we prefer to use, not are forced to use because the software we want to run is only available on other OSes that we do not enjoy using as much as an Amiga-Like OS.  Does Karlos use either MorphOS2.x or AmigaOS4.x?  I know he uses AmigaOS3.x as he uses his A1200 for music.  Maybe we should look backward to the days when there were many more Amiga programmers and remember how after the PC and Mac moved to Pentium and PPC CPU's they were forced to make a choice between limiting what there software could do, or look like compared to what they could accomplish on PC's or Mac's, or they could walk away from programming for the Amiga and follow the money to the mainstream computing world.  What I mean is that without the added power provided by the Pentium, or PPC and later more powerful CPU's much software that is available today would not have been written.  MorphOS2.x and AmigaOS4.x need the power to enable the few remaining programmers we have to write more power hungry applications and games.  It is kind of a chicken or egg situation.  Does the software that requires more power and graphics capability come first and run crappy on what we have today, or do we port our OSes to more powerful machines so that more power hungry software can be written?  I think it is the latter.

Why not just use the more capable OSes and hardware in the first place?  Because we are MorphOS2.x and AmigaOS4.x users that wish to use those OSes and computers, that is why we are here discussing this.  I don't see many PC and Mac users here that are not at least in some way interested in MorphOS2.x and/or AmigaOS4.x.

Doesn't that make sense to everyone?

[Iggy]

The problem wasn't power consumption but power density.  The 970 was so small it spread it's heat over a smaller area (i.e. the chip was small the heat per mm sq was higher) and the only way to avoid this was use liquid cooling.  The actual power figures were close to AMD and better than Intel.

That is a common misconception about the 970 (along with the idea that Apple overclocked the processor to run at 2.5 and 2.7 Ghz).
It can and has been air cooled in other applications.
I have considered switching cooling solutions as part of a repackaging project, but it might be easier to retain the cooling blocks.

A multicore PC with multiple instances of UAE beats a G5 running MorphOS easily.              

                                                    

As UAE only runs 68K apps, that's hardly the point. We're talking about a PPC OS.

[kolla]

Really?  You will just have to show me how a PC running UAE can run MorphOS.  (before you get all riled up, I know you were responding to the ImageFX running on MorphOS being faster on the G5 posting)

Yes, I was responding to the issue of ImageFx - your comment above makes no sense.

If ImageFX and other Classic Amiga programs were the only apps us MorphOS users were running on our MorphOS computers, I would agree that there is almost no reason except the OS experience itself, which is good in my opinion, to use MorphOS at all.  But that is not the case, there are MorphOS native apps that can only be run on a MorphOS capable computer.

Like what exactly? I have yet to see any native MorphOS app that justifies the hassle over running equivalent m68k software under UAE or native app under host OS.

Granted, as Karlos likes to point out, most of those apps that we can run on MorphOS (AmigaOS4 is in the same boat) exist on other platforms that run orders of magnitude faster than any MorphOS2.x or AmigaOS4.x machine at a fraction of the price, but I fail to see the logic of why any MorphOS or AmigaOS4 user would want to keep using underpowered hardware that limits the kinds of things we can do on the OS we prefer to use, not are forced to use because the software we want to run is only available on other OSes that we do not enjoy using as much as an Amiga-Like OS.

The hardware is not the problem - the OSes themselves are, it's the OSes that are underpowered, and lacking just about any modern features I can think of - providing kick ass hardware is rather pointless when the OS you want to run on it is a relic of 20 years ago with some 3D fluff and nice icons thrown ontop of it. Glorified emulators are what they are, with a handfull of native apps each.

Does Karlos use either MorphOS2.x or AmigaOS4.x?

I have both, but I rarely use them since they lacking so much behind that I dont really see the point - I get more done with UAE and old m68k apps than with any of OS4 and MorphOS, since the host systems I run UAE on can transparently give UAE and the m68k apps access to data over modern protocols, something none of the so called NG systems are capable of. And as a bonus I also get much faster amiga systems, that can be live migrated, backed up and have hardware upgrades whenever it fits _me_, without having to jump through burning hoops and whatnot.

MorphOS2.x and AmigaOS4.x need the power to enable the few remaining programmers we have to write more power hungry applications and games.

Nonsense. Programmers flee MorphOS and AmigaOS4.x mostly due to lack of modern features in the OSes, features that core developers see no point in adressing for whatever reasons.

It is kind of a chicken or egg situation.

No it's not, it's a "too many old hens laying rotten eggs" situation.

Does the software that requires more power and graphics capability come first and run crappy on what we have today, or do we port our OSes to more powerful machines so that more power hungry software can be written?  I think it is the latter.

You are wrong. There is no need for more CPU power, there is a desperate need for updating the core functionality of the OSes, providing modern features to them so that it becomes even slightly interesting for developers to provide software for it.

Why not just use the more capable OSes and hardware in the first place?  Because we are MorphOS2.x and AmigaOS4.x users that wish to use those OSes and computers, that is why we are here discussing this.

Not really - MorphOS and OS4 were originally meant to be quite different beasts than what they are today - both went from being systems with promising roadmaps to glorified emulators with nice icons. Do you remember what OS4 looked like on the paper back in 1996? Or how abox in MorphOS was just meant to be a temporary stopgap? Today they are just short of being cought up by AROS - I find that highly ironic, sad and hilarious at the same time.

I don't see many PC and Mac users here that are not at least in some way interested in MorphOS2.x and/or AmigaOS4.x.

OS4 and MorphOS are not that much more interesting than OS3.x, really.

Doesn't that make sense to everyone?

Nope