Given how many people run OSX on their Pegasos boards, has anyone contacted the author of XPostFacto regarding adding support to it for the Pegasos and Pegasos II?

For those who don't know, XPostFacto is an open-source program for running OSX on older, unsupported Macintosh (and clone) machines. Given how relatively up-to-date the Pegasos boards are compared to some of the Macs that are supported I would think it to be quite feasible?

I've emailed the author about it, I'll let you know what he says.

Maybe it might help if some others email him too?

Damien
(Wants his Pegasos back..)

I'm pleased to say that I got a response, and a positive one at that. The author went so far as to say "It's the sort of thing I would be interested in looking at".

I've just replied to him asking what he would need, whether documentation would be sufficient or whether he'd need an actual board, so we'll see.

Damin

I just received another reply from the author. He would need a board to do debugging and also any documentation that was available (chipset, firmware). So, who should I talk to about these?

I've asked him if a loaner would be ok, in which case I might send him my own one, but volunteers would be very welcome :)

Damien

This would be really cool but you must also realise that you might put bPlan and the Pegasos at risk. In the past Apple has come down hard on any clone hardware that was able to run MacOS. If OSX would run natively on the Pegasos a lot of people might buy it just to run MacOS on it.

I don't want to come off as being pessimistic but I feel that it's important that you know that this might backfire.

In a way, we need to make sure that bPlan, Genesi are not involved.

Although I'd be willing to help sponsor a board for the developer to make the neccessary work, the biggest hurdle would be to supply documentation without implicating bPlan and Genesi.

One thing to consider is that it XPostFacto already allows one to run OSX on non-Apple hardware. I'm not sure of the specifics of the license, whether it allows you to run OSX on machines that once shipped with MacOS9, but I suspect it does not.

I'll do some more research, methinks.

Damien

Quote:

dear dholm,
I think you haven't work with MorphOS before.
MorphOS is the fastest OS I ever saw in my whole life.
Do not forget that genesi support the development of Linux on Pegasos, why should they be afraid of MacOS?
And they are people who are using MacOS X already under MOL.
Apple should be afraid, and not genesi/bplan.

Liquidbit

Wow thats come neat software!! I would love to see something like that on the Peg! I hate linux and if I could bypass it and install OSX and a 2nd opton on my peg it would something else!!

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Huh? What possible relation does this have to my post??

Quote:

Because Apple has a lot of money and they have already brought down a couple of companies which manufactured Mac-clones in the past.
Apple need the incoming from their hardware sales, it's as simple as that.
You can't compare this to Linux. Apple make money by selling hardware, the operating system is something they use to sell their hardware.

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Yes, and this is illegal if you are not doing it on a Mac. But Apple wouldn't care about this because you lose many of the nice features of OSX (like Quartz Extreme).
I'm sure Apple is just as scared of bplan/genesi as Microsoft is.

dholm

Good points. I highly doubt Genesi will get into the Mac clone market. This is obviously not a good strategy. It is true that you can run OSX very effectivily with MOL and is quite fast and compatible...

This project is interesting though.

magnetic

Of course they won't, that's suicide at this point. But what I fear is that if XPostFacto is able to install OSX it doesn't matter if it's a clone or not to Apple. Simply because it's the same kind of threat that a pure Mac clone would be to them and word would most likely spread like wildfire that the Pegasos can run OSX natively.

Personally I would love to see the Pegasos run OSX natively.

Quote:
You suck :(

I for one would be glad to see XPostFacto run on a pegasos. Morphos is great, but being able to run OS X as well would give users acces to tons of software. I tried the mol/linux approach, but how great linux might be, it is quite userUNfriendly...and could't get MOL running (i suck on anything but amigaos/morphos ).

I don't want to start a flamewar or anything but I would like to say that calling Linux userunfriendly is not really accurate. I found MorphOS to be very unfriendly at first, I've never had an Amiga (my brother had those) and it's really just a matter of what you started using in the first place.
There was an experiment conducted in the US a while ago where they let people without any computer experience try out both Linux and windows (note: this was probably a more user friendly Linux distribution than we have on PPC at this time, like LindowsOS or Lycoris or something). And the majority of people that was in that test found Linux to be easier to use than windows. (I don't know exactly what they did in this test, if it included installation process or just basic Internet/Wordprocessing or whatever).

When people say that Linux suxx it's kinda like me going around saying that Quark suxx. Linux is just a kernel and whatever you build around it is what should be evaluated. All Linux distributions are targetting different kinds of users. Debian is mainly a developers platform, Gentoo is mostly a tweakers/developers platform. LindowsOS is best suited for the totally computer ungifted people, RedHat is a server OS and Mandrake wants to be somewhere in between the LindowsOS and Debian market place imo.


Oops, off topic again ;). phpBB allows splitting threads if they go off-topic, is that possible with this forum?

Okay, point taken; I should have said: the version of linux supplied with the superbundle is quite userunfriendly...for me .

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Sorry, I tried different versions for Pegasos (Debian, Mandrake, Gentoo) and all are unfriendly for users. I cant understand the linux hype.

i am going to throw in my 2 cents. ok i would like to see this on the pegasos as well but i think it would have terible repercussions. apple would be pissed and once they got word of it they would talk to genesi to try and have it removed and gotten rid of, but since that wouldn't work apple would try to shut bplan/genesi down. apple HATES competition in its field. it has crushed rival companies in its field before and it will for sure do it again. though it would be nice to dual boot morphos and mac os......but not a good idea overall

I agree that bplab cant have ANYTHING at all to do with this software if it were to be ported over to the Pegasos, and as long as thats the case I seenothing apple could do to them. Hardware companies cant controll what software writers releasefor there systems. All the virus code on windows shows us that. I do agree Apple would get pissed though.

It's difficult to track down virus writers and to prove who actually wrote it. It is however not that difficult to find the manufacturer of the Pegasos and drag them to court for whatever reasons. Just look at SCO, they went to court with totally bogus accusations and it's still going on, all it takes is money, something Apple has a lot of.

ARGH, I feel like a killjoy now

exactly! and whoever has more moeny wins if by nothing more than waiting the other person out until they go broke fighting...

It can be done and It's only a matter of time It gets done. We already can use osx in our pegs through MacOnLinux. I'm using Firefox/osx panther to post this now :P
A direct osx boot would be a lot better and given the problem is very similar to that in old powermacs with openfirmware, Xpostfacto is a nice starting point.

So quit talking of stupid legal matters and begin the port right now!
I almost can taste it:
boot hd:0 macwrapper "hd:5 bootx -radeon"
;)

Indeed; if mol is possible without any legal problems, than why shouldn't Xpostfacto?

No company or person is going to buy a Pegasos to run OSX through MOL (only). It does not have the hardware support to make it worthwhile. If, however, the Pegasos would run it natively the machine becomes a clone and people who are looking to get a Mac might go for a Pegasos instead because it has a better price and imo better upgrade options. If that happens the Pegasos becomes a threat to Apple's hardware market. As I said, Apple has fought every attempt to create a clone and won, it would be naive to think they wouldn't do it again.

dholm

its an interesting idea but would have to be in europe as Apple is against cloning..

magnetic