The MorphOS lust may soon be over...

[haywirepc]

I agree. I'm going to play with it more this week. I'm pretty sure I'll like it
alot more once I get alot more software installed for testing.
 
Many people here provided lots of sources, thanks!
 
As far as the EMac itself, I really like it. Its compact, nice keyboard and mouse, Apple makes good elegantly designed hardware... I was just never big on paying so much for it. Luckily, g4/g5 hardware is super cheap now.
 
Best regards,
 
Steven

[jj]

Ive been sceptic for quite some time to home plugs sice it's early days. But I gave it a go in our new house due to our position of the living room compared to the computer room where the PfSense box are.

So I tried a home plug solution for the HTPC and I must say I have not had a single problem and the speed is resonable, I have a 1000/1000Mb/s fiber connection and the htpc do not need more then 50-100Mb/s and that the home plugs I use deliver without problems.

I don't use wireless since it works so much better with cables but now I will use home plugs for less critical machines which saves a lot of cable management

So I will recommend haywire to try home plugs, they have matured a lot.

I been using them for years and years.  The newer generations are really small now and you even get ones that have power pass through and wifi though they little more expensive. What I have done in my last few houses, power plug from hub connected to fiber, to power plug upstairs connected to old router.   Swithc DHCP off on router and make sure its in same IP range as other router.  Hey presto wirless throughout house and four ports for wired connection in man den

[AmigaBruno]

I've got a Power Mac G4 "Quicksilver", which has been lying around for some time now unused. I got it free of charge from an office which advertised on http://www.freecycle.org and I just had to carry it home. At first I had no idea how it compared with a Mac I'd been using in a recording studio, but I soon found out how incompatible it was. It came with OSX 10.3.9 and iWork installed, but I didn't get any install discs with it. Eventually, my installation got corrupted. I guessed the password was the name of the company I got it from and found that it accepted it. Unfortunately, I found I was unable to get my hands on any install CDs or DVDs for it. Eventually, I got a DMG file of an install DVD for OSX 10.5 through Dropbox, but then I found that I couldn't manage to burn this either on my Power Mac G4 or on my laptop under Ubuntu Linux or under Windows 7. I finally took the DMG file on a USB memory stick to the recording studio and they couldn't burn it on their Mac Pro Intel XEON either!

Meanwhile, my Power Mac G4 "Quicksilver" has been sitting there unused and has become just a shelf for magazines, books, and floppy disks. I really feel I must do something with it, but I'm not sure what. This speed is 867Mhz, but I can't remember the other specs at the moment. It has plenty of space on TWO hard drives. I think the possibilities are as follows.

1. Finally get an OSX 10.5 or 10.6 installation DVD and install that (unlikely, as I've failed so far)
2. Install MorphOS (I managed to boot from a DVD, so this proves it's compatible)
3. Install AmigaOS 4 (NOT 4.1) using an ISO file I downloaded tonight which says it uses the loader Moana and will install onto a Mac Mini G4. I don't know if my Power Mac G4 is compatible.
4. Install Yellow Dog Linux
5. Install Free BSD for Power PC

What do you think I should do with it and why?

[spirantho]

2. Install MorphOS (I managed to boot from a DVD, so this proves it's compatible)

This is your best option. OS X will be completely unsupported on this machine - Apple seem to pretend that PowerPC Macs don't exist any more.

3. Install AmigaOS 4 (NOT 4.1) using an ISO file I downloaded tonight which says it uses the loader Moana and will install onto a Mac Mini G4. I don't know if my Power Mac G4 is compatible.

Best advice here: forget it. Moana is not complete, and wouldn't work anyway. It was abandoned when it was decided to stick to new hardware for OS4 so that it wasn't tied to obsolete hardware and technologies (but please let's not argue about the pro's and con's of that decision in this thread as it's OT and done to death already).

4. Install Yellow Dog Linux
5. Install Free BSD for Power PC

What's the point? It'd just be an underpowered, incompatible version of what you can run on any old PC.

What do you think I should do with it and why?

MorphOS, definitely.

[AmigaBruno]

This is your best option. OS X will be completely unsupported on this machine - Apple seem to pretend that PowerPC Macs don't exist any more.

Best advice here: forget it. Moana is not complete, and wouldn't work anyway. It was abandoned when it was decided to stick to new hardware for OS4 so that it wasn't tied to obsolete hardware and technologies (but please let's not argue about the pro's and con's of that decision in this thread as it's OT and done to death already).

What's the point? It'd just be an underpowered, incompatible version of what you can run on any old PC.

MorphOS, definitely.

I know I could only install OSX 10.4, 10.5, or 10.6 which would have to be for Power PC, but it has the look and feel of Mac OSX and can run various old Mac software, which can produce files compatible with other operating systems. This software includes iLife with Garageband and a web page designer.

It seems that I may be able to install AmigaOS 4.0, but at least I can TRY anyway.

I should install SOMETHING else onto it, because it's not doing anything at the moment.

MorphOS is something I'm still considering on installing.

[Matt_H]

@ AmigaBruno

OS4 won't work. Moana is hard-coded to require PowerMac10,2 hardware, which corresponds to the Mac Mini G4 "silent update" (1.33GHz and 1.5GHz machines only). Besides, it's an old, buggy, beta version of OS4. The kernel and drivers are incomplete, barely work and will never be updated. If you want to try it on your Quicksilver, I suggest not spending more time on it other than to see "Well, that didn't work" after the initial boot attempt.

EDIT: And to actually talk about some things your Quicksilver *can* do: I would suggest triple-booting MorphOS, OSX 10.4, and OSX 10.5 (10.6 requires x86).

10.4 is the last version of OSX to support "classic" emulation, meaning you can run programs requiring MacOS 9 and lower - opens up a big back catalog of software.

10.5 runs some newer stuff. Most of the recent programs that still support PPC require 10.5

And MorphOS is to fulfill your Amiga needs

@ haywirepc

You may like this AmigaOS 3.x skin if you're finding MorphOS's visuals not to your liking. I use this one and am quite fond of it!

[commodorejohn]

The Quicksilver can also boot OS9 natively, which is really a better solution if you want to run classic Mac software.

[AmigaBruno]

@ AmigaBruno

OS4 won't work. Moana is hard-coded to require PowerMac10,2 hardware, which corresponds to the Mac Mini G4 "silent update" (1.33GHz and 1.5GHz machines only). Besides, it's an old, buggy, beta version of OS4. The kernel and drivers are incomplete, barely work and will never be updated. If you want to try it on your Quicksilver, I suggest not spending more time on it other than to see "Well, that didn't work" after the initial boot attempt.

EDIT: And to actually talk about some things your Quicksilver *can* do: I would suggest triple-booting MorphOS, OSX 10.4, and OSX 10.5 (10.6 requires x86).

10.4 is the last version of OSX to support "classic" emulation, meaning you can run programs requiring MacOS 9 and lower - opens up a big back catalog of software.

10.5 runs some newer stuff. Most of the recent programs that still support PPC require 10.5

And MorphOS is to fulfill your Amiga needs

@ haywirepc

You may like this AmigaOS 3.x skin if you're finding MorphOS's visuals not to your liking. I use this one and am quite fond of it!

Unfortunately, I've tried to buy some compatible Mac OSX install DVDs from eBay, but I always got outbid, then they started getting rarer. Before I got this Mac, I bought a Blueberry iMac, which runs OS9. On the Power Mac G4, I found that I couldn't do much with OSX 10.3.9 and that OSX 10.4 was a milestone, so I've been trying to upgrade it. I don't know what could be so special about any Mac OS9 software in this day and age to make me want to run it.

I recently read about Darwin OS, but I don't think installing it would enable me to fix this Mac.

I think I'll have to study Uboot to find out how it works.

[skolman]

OS4 won't work. Moana is hard-coded to require PowerMac10,2 hardware, which corresponds to the Mac Mini G4 "silent update" (1.33GHz and 1.5GHz machines only). Besides, it's an old, buggy, beta version of OS4. The kernel and drivers are incomplete, barely work

Did you check?

"barely work"

That's exactly what for A1 G4. So running OS4.

[haywirepc]

Okay so a quick update. Since I have no internet on the morphos machine atm, I just copied lots of stuff to a thumb drive and played with it again all night. One positive thing I'll say is that when I insert the thumb drive, morphos responds well and that works...

While it was cool to see alot of system friendly demos running, many other things gave me trouble...

Milkytracker and several other things I tried to run would not work, needed a different version of the sdl library. I create most of my music with trackers, and no not octamed, but any xm compattible tracker (skale, renoise, ft2, madtracker or milky) so milkytracker not working, not good. Will try dosbox and ft2 tomorrow night.

UAE - Can someone tell me how to set the paths right to find the rom files
and how can I run adf files? I have a legal copy of amiga forever and trying to use those roms but no luck, thought I was setting the paths right, but no good. Another major blow to my liking this setup. Sorry but Icaros lets you insert your amiga forever cd and it installs everything beautifully...

And I'm sorry to compare this to icaros but I've been using icaros for years and these things just come already set up and working. No hassle or hair pulling required, so this is another negative for me so far.

And again, please lets not all attack me, this is just my opinion, and these are the facts of my experience with this so far.

So to sum up : First browser does not work, the the "Ultimate" add on borks the whole system, reinstall, now milky tracker does not work and neither does a bunch of other stuff depending on different sdl libraries (I believe I saw error messages asking for version 10,11,12)

Can't get uae working, but I have gotten uae working on linux, vanilla aros, icaros...

Next bit of criticism is on games. While its nice that people ported stuff, I don't want to spend hours hunting down game data files... most of the good
game ports you'll need to hunt down original copies of those games to get the morphos versions to work, which is quite frankly in my opinion, another project I don't need since I already have enough problems to try and fix with this.


Finally I will just say this... I wish everyone working on any NG amiga project the best, but I am not encouraged or feeling like paying for this is a good idea
at the moment. (Honestly I'd rather contribute 111$ to AROS right now) I will continue to work on my problems and see if I can sort them out and justify paying for this. I would like to pay just to help them continue to develop this... But so far all in all its been an extremely negative experience.
(Sigh) very disappointing.

[itix]

UAE - Can someone tell me how to set the paths right to find the rom files
and how can I run adf files? I have a legal copy of amiga forever and trying to use those roms but no luck, thought I was setting the paths right, but no good. Another major blow to my liking this setup. Sorry but Icaros lets you insert your amiga forever cd and it installs everything beautifully...

I dont have UAE but found couple of links:

http://www.morphzone.info/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=8512&forum=3
http://aminet.net/package/misc/emu/rhLaunch-morphos

Kickstart files go to rom directory according to this post:

http://www.morphzone.info/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=8512&post_id=92460&viewmode=flat&sortorder=0&showonepost=1

Well, it's not complicated. I even provided presets for A1200, A500 and Workbench usage in the archive, in Conf/ directory.
Assuming you put the kickstart files in the right place (roms/ directory), you just start UAE that way:

uae -f conf/A500.conf or
uae -f conf/A1200.conf or
uae -f conf/wb.conf
and so on ...

if you need to pass an adf, you do it that way:
uae -f conf/A1200.conf -0 blah.adf

Now, i suggest you bind UAE to ADF mimetype in Ambient with that kind of commaand : path:to/uae/uae -f path:to/uae/conf/blah.conf -0 %sp to ADF
That way, you can start any ADF just by doubleclicking it.

I hope it helps.

So to sum up : First browser does not work, the the "Ultimate" add on borks the whole system, reinstall, now milky tracker does not work and neither does a bunch of other stuff depending on different sdl libraries (I believe I saw error messages asking for version 10,11,12)

Did you install SDL?

Next bit of criticism is on games. While its nice that people ported stuff, I don't want to spend hours hunting down game data files... most of the good game ports you'll need to hunt down original copies of those games to get the morphos versions to work, which is quite frankly in my opinion, another project I don't need since I already have enough problems to try and fix with this.

It is not always possible due to copyright reasons.

Finally I will just say this... I wish everyone working on any NG amiga project the best, but I am not encouraged or feeling like paying for this is a good idea
at the moment. (Honestly I'd rather contribute 111$ to AROS right now) I will continue to work on my problems and see if I can sort them out and justify paying for this. I would like to pay just to help them continue to develop this... But so far all in all its been an extremely negative experience.

At least you can try before buying

[pVC]

Milkytracker and several other things I tried to run would not work, needed a different version of the sdl library. I create most of my music with trackers, and no not octamed, but any xm compattible tracker (skale, renoise, ft2, madtracker or milky) so milkytracker not working, not good. Will try dosbox and ft2 tomorrow night.

Which version of powersdl.library do you have installed? Dosbox is probably too slow for anything with that CPU.

UAE - Can someone tell me how to set the paths right to find the rom files

Edit your UAE config file (.uaerc or if you use separate config then some .conf file). There's line: kickstart_rom_file=path:to/romfile
If you have your ROM in your UAE dir you can use PROGDIR path. For example:
kickstart_rom_file=PROGDIR:Roms/Kick40068

and how can I run adf files?

Look at the Bonus dir in your E-UAE installation, there's instructions how to add E-UAE launching for ADF files in Ambient. After that you can double click ADF files to run them, or right click to get different options to run it (A1200 vs A500 environment).

Sorry but Icaros lets you insert your amiga forever cd and it installs everything beautifully...

Well, maybe E-UAE could have some installer to be easier, but it's not OS's job to do that. It's probably more important in AROS to have the emulation setted up in first place, because it isn't binary compatible otherwise. In MorphOS you can run Amiga software directly, so it probably hasn't been that important to everyone. At least I just use UAE for occasional tests only and do real gaming/demos on real Amigas... never felt that comfortable with any UAE variation.

And I'm sorry to compare this to icaros but I've been using icaros for years and these things just come already set up and working. No hassle or hair pulling required, so this is another negative for me so far.

BTW. is this Icaros thing official base setup for AROS or rather like Chrysalis pack on MorphOS?

Next bit of criticism is on games. While its nice that people ported stuff, I don't want to spend hours hunting down game data files... most of the good
game ports you'll need to hunt down original copies of those games to get the morphos versions to work, which is quite frankly in my opinion, another project I don't need since I already have enough problems to try and fix with this.

I'd find it surprising if AROS or some other versions would have made the deals to distribute those copyrighted data files, but is it really so? Unless there's licence, then it's illegal to have them spreaded with the game ports. If the game needs separate freeware data files, then the link is provided with the port. Anyway, I can't see how this could differ between platforms.

[OlafS3]

"BTW. is this Icaros thing official base setup for AROS or rather like Chrysalis pack on MorphOS?"

The base are the nightly builds that are rather minimal and primitive, there is no "official setup" but the different preconfigured distributions. Chrysalis pack is a addon as I understand it installing additional software to the standard setup but the standard setup already perfectly working for its own. On "AROS" there is nothing that can be compared to the standard installation of MorphOS. It is propably more comparable to the Linux world with its kernel and the different distributions.

[Iggy]

I know I could only install OSX 10.4, 10.5, or 10.6 which would have to be for Power PC, but it has the look and feel of Mac OSX and can run various old Mac software, which can produce files compatible with other operating systems. This software includes iLife with Garageband and a web page designer.

It seems that I may be able to install AmigaOS 4.0, but at least I can TRY anyway.

I should install SOMETHING else onto it, because it's not doing anything at the moment.

MorphOS is something I'm still considering on installing.

You can only run up to leopard/10.5.
I have that on one of my G5s, and with the TenFour Fiox browser it is tolerable.
MorphOS would be better for the Quicksilver as its less resource intense.
My first MorphOS system was a 933 MHz Quicksilver.
It ran fine under MorphOS.

[_ThEcRoW]

@ AmigaBruno

OS4 won't work. Moana is hard-coded to require PowerMac10,2 hardware, which corresponds to the Mac Mini G4 "silent update" (1.33GHz and 1.5GHz machines only).

I can run it on my Mac Mini 1.42ghz 32vram, both the kickstart screen and system booting into the os. it's just too limited, but you could made an idea how it could be. But after getting MorphOS, i wasn't bothered to tinker with it anymore.

[jj]

Leopard would crawl on that thing.  Crawled on my mac min 1.5.   Tiger was just about bearable on mac min.  I wouldn't bother with mac osx on that machine will not give you a very pleasant experience.  Try MorphOS for sure or get a newer mac