good to here, will be even better when the r300 drives come out.

Welcome back Cego! It is always good to see former MorphOS users return and begin using MorphOS again. Do you have any idea how many MorphOS1.4, or earlier free versions of MorphOS users there are who have still not returned to using MorphOS2.x, and now 3.0, or 3.1, because MorphOS changed from being a free OS project, to a commercial OS, when they switched to version 2.0 and started charging for it.

Someone once wrote that there were 2,500 to 3,500 MorphOS1.4 users at one time. This is rather shocking to me, since my estimate of the number of MorphOS2.x & 3.x users is probably about 700 to 900, but could possibly be as low as 550 to 650, if many MorphOS2.x/3.x users have 2, 3, or more registered MorphOS2.x/3.x computers like I do. I currently have 5 licensed/registered MorphOS3.1 computers, but I am not your normal MorphOS3.1 user, as I also show and promote MorphOS3.1 at each year's AmiWest Show, so that makes the number of registered/licensed MorphOS3.1 computers I own the exception and not the rule. I think that there are many users who have 2 or 3 MorphOS3.1 computers. Perhaps they have one desktop and one PowerBook for portability while running MorphOS3.1. Some users might have a Pegasos 1, or 2, or an Efika 5200b from the early days of running MorphOS1.4 and then MorphOS2.0 and beyond.

I hope that you can convince more MorphOS1.4 users who have so far decided not to purchase any of the versions of MorphOS2.x/3.x yet, to install the free demo of MorphOS3.1 and then purchase it. Then we will have more registered MorphOS3.x users to draw experience from and possibly there will be one or more MorphOS2.x/3.x programmers who will join us and contribute more new software for all MorphOS3.1 users to use in the future.

> Efika 5200b from the early days of running MorphOS1.4

Efika 5200B support was introduced with MorphOS 2.0.

Coming back to the PowerBook topic.

I have successfully installed MorphOS 3.1 in parallel to NetBSD. Unfortunately, while playing with it for a few minutes, I detected three problems which make it unusable:

1. A well known problem of the international PowerBook USB keyboards is that the key right to the left shift (not present on US-keyboard) is switched with the key left to the "1". And the key between the german Ä and the Return key (also not present on US-keyboard) is also swapped with something I forgot. The last key is especially annoying as it is used for '#' on german keyboards, which is missing now.

2. The internal SunGem (GMac) NIC doesn't work for me. The cable is ok. I tested it with a different computer. The NIC should also be ok, because it works with NetBSD. I configured the network and tried to ping something in my LAN. No response.

3. From time to time the PowerBook starts with graphics corruptions on the screen. This could also be hardware problem, but I don't remember having seen that with OSX or NetBSD.
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[ Edited by phx 24.10.2012 - 13:29 ]

Well... There was an unofficial 1.5...

amigadave,

I think the main reason why people turned their back on MorphOS when 2.0 came out is the dongled key. They did not want this kind of treatment on their system. I only know one user and afaik he still uses MorphOS 1.4.5
He says as long as morphos is bound to the hardware he wont support it. And honestly i think OS4 wasnt pirated even though it is not dongled so why not remove it from morphos? Thats also the main reason why a lot of classic amiga users don't want to use MorphOS. They say these are Microsoft methods.

I can't really do much about the promotion of MorphOS. I think the best target group would be the classic and OS4 Users. OS4 is losing more and more ground and credibility. and the product itself is less then satisfying and convincing and with the fact that the gap between morphos and os4 is growing even further it is only a matter of time when people will switch to MorphOS. And just look at the Hardware problem with OS4. This won't last long
I do know a few ex-OS4 diehard Fanboys who totally switched to MorphOS and admit that MorphOS is Amiga made right. OS4 for them is a toy with no advancement at all, no perspective. Other ex-OS4 Users totally turned their back and only use classic or nothing at all.

> i think OS4 wasnt pirated even though it is not dongled so
> why not remove it from morphos?

Because other than is usually the case with OS4-compatible systems and OS4, you can actually buy MorphOS-compatible systems without accompanying MorphOS license. With OS4 hardware you can't usually do this, which has even been presented by MorphOS Team members as one of the reasons for not porting MorphOS to it:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=6918&start=86

> Thats also the main reason why a lot of classic amiga users
> don't want to use MorphOS.

I don't believe that's true. It may be one of the reasons, but the main reason to my mind is that they are simply not interested in anything "Amiga" beyond satisfying their occasional retro fix by playing with what m68k machines were produced by Commodore and Escom, including 3rd party expansions for those machines.

> just look at the Hardware problem with OS4. This won't last long

You mean there's a solution in sight? ;-)