> OS4 being one step ahead providing Polaris support

Depends on how you count "steps". If 1 step = 1 GPU microarchitecture generation, then we have in terms of support in MorphOS and OS4:

1. R300-R500: MorphOS (2D+3D), OS4 (2D)
2. TeraScale 1: MorphOS (2D), OS4 (2D)
3. TeraScale 2: MorphOS (2D), OS4 (2D)
4. TeraScale 3: OS4 (2D), *
5. GCN1: OS4 (2D+3D)
6. GCN2: -
7. GCN3: -
8. GCN4: OS4 (2D+3D)

In these terms, OS4 is 5 steps ahead in 2D and even 7 steps ahead in 3D :-)

* "MorphOS will boot, but the display is very flakey."

> you won't miss much if you use at least R600 Radeons. [...] 3D acceleration works

...except if you use MorphOS ;-)

> What benefits you do get from >=Polaris cards?

Better availability of non-used cards, I think.

Qz3fwd

Hope you enjoying your new machine and Radeon RX580 setup. I too have upgraded my card to a Radeon RX550 and quite happy with how it works with OS4. I’d stick with it if I were you as there are some goodies coming your way that will be of benefit to your hardware.

If you really want to try out MorphOS on this motherboard you need a Radeon X1650-1950 card even then be prepared for some disappointment as this most certainly is not the platform or hardware which will get the best out of the OS. On the X5000 with a X1650-1950 card which gives you the most options. You won’t have any legacy Warp3D software compared to a MacMini setup. 3D support is patchy and the further up you go the card tree the worse the support and less things will run.

Linux performance suffers too with anything less than a series 6000 card and as you can see from the postings on here this port to the X5000 was done as some sort of proof of concept with no real interest in solving any issues or catering to what they regard as an indulged user base. They have openly come out and said they have no interest in supporting newer graphics cards, so if you want to run MorphOS get something old with an Apple badge on it.

Enjoy what you have in front of you. Of course if like what you see It’s your choice to shell out for the licence fee. I’ve personally put the dedicated hard drive which had MorphOS running on it to a different use.

Welcome to MorphZone. If you have access to a G4 or G5 Power mac with Radeon gfx card, you'd have a better starting platform for MorphOS than the X5000 to test drive MorphOS. I'll try to fill some in some blanks here.

Quote:

If you think that was a hostile reply, you are most definitely new to the Kommunity. Try reversing the rolls. Go to hyperions forums stating you got a Cyrus Plus board for MorphOS, but you want a gfx card that will work fully with both operating systems. Please report back how it goes Seriously, we are talking about developers that publicly wish their own customers who paid huge sums would die in a fire. I could only imagine someone they think is from the outside challenging them and how they would react.

In my opinion as an end user, X5000 should have never been supported. It was largely done in response to a handful of people who claimed they only would use MorphOS if they could buy brand new hardware, price be damned. I'm sure the team wouldn't mind if some users moved over, but I doubt they expected many.

There is almost zero synergy between the two camps. That typically only happens when a 3rd party on the OS4 side hires the MorphOS lead for a specific task. There are decades old deep issues with both sides, much of it particularly ugly.

Quote:

If truly coming from the outside, sure. If coming from an Amiga lineage that went MorphOS, not so much.

Most MorphOS users use 14+ year old computers. You could probably count on 1 hand how many MorphOS user specifically bought a Cyrus Plus (X5000 board) for it. I got my main G5 2.7Ghz and Radeon (AGP) X1950 *with* license cost me under $300, and that included about $100 in shipping costs. That G5 is faster than an X5000. I haven't even put together to use my PCIe 2.5Ghz G5 model, and this AGP model is faster in most benchmarks than an X5000. I'm not knocking you or anyone else who buys an X5000. I'm just explaining that most MorphOS users have preferred faster and vastly cheaper, over brand new but exponentially more expensive.

Outside of bad blood between camps, there historically have been 2 completely different goals. The OS4 side went completely without 3D acceleration at all on X1000 and X5000, until FINALLY relatively recently did a 3rd party fill the void Hyperion couldn't or wouldn't. MorphOS OTOH has always had robust 3D, but only recently needed to start rolling PCIe drivers.

Quote:

Don't take any perceived snarkiness from devs to heart. To a man they are actually extremely friendly. I can see here why you may have thought it was meant that way, but it actually wasn't. It was being blunt to temper expectations. Cyrus Plus (X5000) is supported hardware, but only for MorphOS. OS4 is not a supported OS.

Also again, the goal was probably never to try getting converters. To this day OS4 aims to stay on expensive boutique PPC hardware. MorphOS's goal over the last decade or so has been to use inexpensive commodity hardware. That started with the 2nd hand PPC Macs and will soon be brand new X86 hardware. One side wants PPC or bust, the other wants modern common hardware.

> I too have upgraded my card to a Radeon RX550 and quite happy with
> how it works with OS4. [...] If you really want to try out MorphOS on this
> motherboard you need a Radeon X1650-1950 card [...]. On the X5000
> with a X1650-1950 card [...] You won’t have any legacy Warp3D software

Let's not forget that legacy Warp3D support gets lost on OS4 with jumping from a GCN1-based card to a GCN4-based card like your RX550 also.

> 3D support is patchy

What does that mean?

> the further up you go the card tree the worse the support and
> less things will run.

True, and the MorphOS hardware compatibility page clearly states which cards are supported in 2D+3D, 2D+overlay or just 2D.

> Linux performance suffers too with anything less than a series 6000 card

The author of comment #14 pointed out that Linux is good enough with anything from R600 (= HD2000 series) up and that Evergreen cards (= HD5000 series) are among the best supported. Maybe this is different between x64 Linux and PPC Linux?

> They [...] said they have no interest in supporting newer graphics cards

Is this what they really said or just what you think they said? I guess it's more about the available developer resources than about interest per se.

i like to second redrumloa's first point here: If you want to keep OS4 on X5000. better just keep it as it is and get a dedicated machine for MorphOS. My suggestion: Powerbook 5.8/5.6 or an iMac G5 20" isight. These devices are cheap and play in about the same performance league as the X5000 and are fully supported by MorphOS. And best is: You can run MorphOS and OS4 simultaneously.

Cost of an iMac g5 is not much higher than a gfx card you'll need anyway. Add a few bucks for a new ssd, and you're done (IIRC I paid 80 for teh iMac and about 30 for a Kingston SSD).

Only disadvantage I see is the additional required space on/under the desk, but on the other hand you'll win some redundancy which - in my experience - is quite a good thing.

> Go to hyperions forums stating you got a Cyrus Plus board
> for MorphOS, but you want a gfx card that will work fully with
> both operating systems. Please report back how it goes ;-)

The difference is that with any fully MorphOS-supported card installed in the X5000 you can still run OS4 in 2D, while with any fully OS4-supported card you cannot run MorphOS at all.

> developers that publicly wish their own customers [...] would die in a fire

To be fair, this was only one single developer ;-)

> X5000 should have never been supported. It was largely done in
> response to a handful of people who claimed they only would use
> MorphOS if they could buy brand new hardware, price be damned.

Seems they didn't learn from the previous Sam460 fiasco ;-)
(In their defense it should be said that by the time MorphOS was released for the Sam460, the Sam460ex had been superseded by the inferior Sam460cr which had several MorphOS-supported components removed that never could all be replaced by supported PCIe cards due to a severe MorphOS bug even unresolved today, AFAIK.)

> The OS4 side went completely without 3D acceleration at all on [...] X5000

This is not true. The graphics cards the X5000 was delivered with were 3D-supported (Warp3D, Warp3D Nova, OpenGL ES 2) by A-Eon right from the X5000 release in 2016.

> until FINALLY relatively recently did a 3rd party fill the void Hyperion
> couldn't or wouldn't.

We're talking about 5 years ago for Warp3D and 4 years ago for Warp3D Nova.

> MorphOS [...] only recently needed to start rolling PCIe drivers.

The Sam460 port was released half a decade ago :-)

> To this day OS4 aims to stay on expensive boutique PPC hardware.

...and emulators on cheap x86(-64) hardware (see Z3 RAM usage enabled by Hyperion).

> MorphOS's goal over the last decade or so has been to use
> inexpensive commodity hardware.

Yes, one really wonders how the unpaid and certainly non-trivial Sam460 and X5000 ports fit this goal.

> iMac G5 20" isight [...] fully supported by MorphOS

The iMac G5 is actually fully unsupported by current MorphOS 3.13, but it runs quite well on it nonetheless ;-)

Andreas, of course you are right. But you got what I meant anway. It's not officially supported (yet), but MorphOs 3.13 boots up and all inbuild components have a working driver - except the webcam, remote control and the missing bluetooth stack.

Can I suggest a bootimage with a headless option for Sam460ex and X5000 with the VNC Server as the default display ?.

This would allow exploring and using most elements of MorphOS on these machines without having to change video cards.

> Andreas, of course you are right. But you got what I meant anway.

Absolutely, see the smiley. I was just jesting about the very different meanings of the word "supported", ranging from "can somehow run on it" to "being entitled to personal help by a MorphOS team member in case of problems" :-)

> Can I suggest a bootimage with a headless option for Sam460ex and X5000
> with the VNC Server as the default display ?

MorphOS supports the onboard SM502 graphics of the Sam460ex fine. Or is there a problem with MorphOS using the SM502 as soon as an unsupported PCIe graphics card is installed (similarly to the X5000)? It would make sense for the Sam460cr in any case.

On the Sam460ex you can select which video card is initialized first via U-Boot.
Not sure what happens if there is also a non supported PCie graphics card installed as well with MorpOS.
(AMIGAOS 4.1FE does boot to Workbench in this case. Linux would also give a text console on the SM502 as well when I list tried).
I can't remember every getting the onboard video to work with MorphOS but this was a couple of years ago.
May give it a try again . Now have a single slot Polaris Rx550 installed so easier to swap
cards for testing.
My problems then were with the onboard Ethernet also booting from the SDcard image for some reason .
I no longer have a DVD drive attached to the Sam460ex.
The SDcard image worked perfectly with my X5000 at that time though .


Quote:

Answering Myself .

This is with the Polaris card installed but the SM502 as the first card initialized .

usbscsi.device@0: Mount <SDH0>
usbscsi.device@0: Partition <SDH0> DosType 0x444f5307 BootPri 5
!!! OpenScreen(): Could not find any valid modeids. No graphics card? !!!
!!! OpenScreen(): Could not find any valid modeids. No graphics card? !!!


[ Edited by Spectre660 27.05.2020 - 11:22 ]

> This is with the Polaris card installed but the SM502 as the first card initialized .
> [...]
> !!! OpenScreen(): Could not find any valid modeids. No graphics card? !!!

Oh, this is bad and unexpected. Thanks for trying. I really wonder why MorphOS acts this way. Very unfortunate.

Can confirm that MorphOS boots using the onboard SM502 video card once the Rx550 is removed.
However my original problem with the onboard ethernet still exists.

If I recall correctly from 2 years ago the X5000 would boot with an unsupported graphics card but no display if the VNC server was installed.could not always connect via VNC though .


Quote:

There's a Virtual driver supplied which can be used if no physical card is found - for VNC.

I am aware of that.

When I was experimenting with it on an X5000 i could not reliably get a VNC connection on booting for some reason. That is why I was suggesting a properly onfigured bootimage with everything preconfigured to work at boot. No longer have the X5000 .

With my unusual Sam460ex Ethernet issue it would not work with the Sam460ex.

Quote:

I bought the x5000 board primarily for OS4, then stumbled upon MOS after reading about some past red vs blue war. Very sad for both sides. Like little children on both sides. I wanted to triple boot OS4, MOS, Linux but I now see PPC BE is largely dead from mainstream developer support. Linux 3D drivers have some long standing bug, Javascript engines with broken BE behavior, Hyperion nowhere to be found but maybe in court. Thank god for Trevor and A-Eon bringing new hardware to market and seeming to pick up software/kernel development too. It is what it is and I knew there were limitations going in. Expensive board yes-but I like it. I really do think there is an advantage in supporting new hardware-not stuck in decade old hardware. Thanks for porting MOS to the board. I will probably buy 1 of the suggested cards for MOS. OTOH I came to "niche" systems precisely as they are not x86 and with that being said I have little interest in MOS-x64.

My next project is an ARM64 workstation build. Dan A4 case, SolidRun LX2160 board, NVMe, DDR4, PCIE, undecided on which AMD GPU.

Thanks for all the suggestions

Heck once MOS-x64 is out, surely the devs write architecture agnostic code and will support modern GPU's & features they might think to themselves about those forum posters asking about GPU drivers and just maybe change arch from x64 to PPCBE and "port" their new drivers to the "old" system? Haha

Quote:

Quote:
Yes, I agree. Such red vs blue wars are stupid. Unfortunately they are very common since Amiga birth I can say it is our hobby

With graphics cards is allways problem if you want have two or three OSes on one machine. You have to select priority an buy card according to it - I have:
Pegasos2 with Radeon 9800PRO (+MOS, -AOS, +lnx)
Powermac G5 Quad with Radeon X1900-G5-ed (+MOS, no lnx), Radeon HD6570 (-MOS, +lnx)
AmigaOne X1000 with Radeon HD7970 (+AOS, -lnx), Radeon HD6670 (-AOS, +lnx)
fortunatelly my 'bigger' machines are two gfx card capable, with X5000 is harder situation. Personally - I will select here Radeon HD6970 (Cayman XT) - it have 2D with MOS+AOS, 3D with linux. But I don't play fps games.

I also agree that Trevor made good job. Yes, it is old-designed, underpowered and expensive. But it is. I bought A1X1000 an I will buy also Tabor if ever will be. And I know that here is price/power nearly nonsense, but for me it makes sense.

For future will be great x64 - here I mean PPC(be)x64 + SMP to utilize todays NG Amigas and old Powermac G5.
Next makes me sense go to PPC(le) - like Talos or Blackbird, or ARM - why not?
It is hobby, or "niche" or freedom or simply it is different.

But migration to x86-64 for me means show stopper. Yes, we will have cheap powerful hardware. But what advantage MorphOS have over Win, linux or unix? Do I need gaming or modern features ? I have win or Ubuntu, maybe SteamOS. Do I need stability ? I have Fedora or Open Suse or BSDs. Do I need fast OS? I don't take MorphOS - I will buy Threadripper, DDR4, NVMe...

Sorry, Radeon HD6970 not among MorphOS supported - then Radeon HD6850 seems be better.

> Such red vs blue wars [...] are very common since Amiga birth ;-)

I'd say they started much later, namely with Commodore's death that was followed by weak leadership, or none at all, and in consequence the remaining 3rd parties weren't able or willing to agree to common standards, so that often at least two incompatible standards existed concurrently. I don't remember such intra-Amiga "wars" being prevalent during the Commodore era.

> Powermac G5 Quad with Radeon X1900-G5-ed ([...] no lnx)

I'm surprised that Linux doesn't support this. That's not what I had expected.

> For future will be great x64 - here I mean PPC(be)x64 + SMP to utilize
> todays NG Amigas and old Powermac G5.

What's "PPC(be)x64"? Some hybrid-ISA CPU yet to be developed? :-) PA6T, P5020 and PPC970 are PPC64(-BE), no x64 inside. Btw, Tabor/A1222's P1022 is just 32-bit.

> Next makes me sense go to PPC(le) - like Talos or Blackbird

The nice thing about POWER9 is that it can still run in BE mode for legacy compatibility (AIX, IBM i).

> migration to x86-64 for me means show stopper. [...] what advantage
> MorphOS have over Win, linux or unix?

Linux/Unix also run on non-x64 (ARM, Power etc.).

> Do I need stability ?

Stability is always nice, but indeed hard to achieve without memory protection as soon as you don't just want to run OS components.

> Do I need fast OS? I don't take MorphOS

MorphOS is a lightning-fast OS, mainly thanks to its lack of memory protection :-)

> Sorry, Radeon HD6970 not among MorphOS supported

True, the GPUs of HD69xx are TeraScale 3 microarchitecture (see comment #16).

> then Radeon HD6850 seems be better.

...or HD6870 :-)

Quote:

Indeed. I have learned only recently from Dave Needle (RIP) interviews how much of an asshole Jack Tramiel was. Like Hermans, but actually competent, and in a much wider market where you could get away with such things.

I'd like to say that it shouldn't affect your hobby, but clearly it has.

Anyway off topic. Please continue.

>> Powermac G5 Quad with Radeon X1900-G5-ed ([...] no lnx)
>I'm surprised that Linux doesn't support this. That's not what I had expected.

Doesn't. At least not out-of-the box. It runs framebuffer with modesetting disabled, but enabling causes 'invalid ROM contents' - it has something to do with Atom bios, which is not present on G5 edition. Standart X1900 cards are reported as working with powerpc linux.

>> For future will be great x64 - here I mean PPC(be)x64 + SMP to utilize
>> todays NG Amigas and old Powermac G5.
>What's "PPC(be)x64"? Some hybrid-ISA CPU yet to be developed? PA6T, P5020 and PPC970 are >PPC64(-BE), no x64 inside. Btw, Tabor/A1222's P1022 is just 32-bit.

It means PPC64 big endian, with fully-64bit/SMP MorphOS on it. For G5, PA6T, P5020/040, T2080 and whatever obscure.

>> Next makes me sense go to PPC(le) - like Talos or Blackbird
>The nice thing about POWER9 is that it can still run in BE mode for legacy compatibility.

yes. And POWER8 also.

>> migration to x86-64 for me means show stopper. [...] what advantage
>> MorphOS have over Win, linux or unix?
>Linux/Unix also run on non-x64 (ARM, Power etc.).

of course, but ARM in general not yet so powerful like x86-64, so there is a gap for MorphOS.
And both ARM and Power are used by enthusiast - also gap for MorphOS.
But in x86-64 world? I don't know - I am not developer or project leader - it is not my decision. But me personally don't have any reason to use MorphOS on standard PC.