As the thread title asks, what are the chances of ever getting MorphOS2.x support again for the Classic Amigas with PPC accelerator cards?

I tried to get MorphOS1.4 installed on my Cyberstorm PPC, but the install failed and I gave up after a few tries. Now with AmigaOS4.1 for Classic released at a hefty price of over $133 US dollars, I was wondering if the MorphOS Dev Team would ever consider supporting the Classic Amiga again, or if they would restart the registration of the free 1.4 version for classic users.

[ Edited by amigadave 17.05.2011 - 23:56 ]

Quote:

Well, judging from what various members of the MorphOS Team has previously said about this issue, I would say that the chance is about ~ 0%.

I think supporting PowerUP now in 2011 makes no sense at all, it would only be a lot of boring work for virtually no return. Better to focus on developing MorphOS further, and maybe start migrating it to an architecture that has a pulse! That's my vote at least!

The short answer is "close to none".

The PowerUP version would need a significant amount of work before a release. As far as I remember, none of the developers with the knowledge on how to fix specific Amiga related parts of the kernel even have an assembled, working PowerPC Amiga anymore or - like in my case - they all have it stashed somewhere far away.

That is the answer I expected, but it would be a good counter move to do the minimum amount of work required to re-release the PowerUP version of MorphOS1.4 for free, or at a very low price of $10 to $20 with some screen shots and a FAQ about the differences between 1.4 and 2.7 included.

It would give the people with PowerUP cards a chance to compare AmigaOS4.1 and MorphOS1.4 against each other, plus give them some info about MorphOS2.7 features. If it was free, or almost free, and the PowerUP users were getting their systems out and running again to have a look at AmigaOS4.1, they might well be inclined to have a look at MorphOS1.4 as well and then become interested in moving up to MorphOS2.7 on some better hardware.

Just a thought that might bring us some new users without too much extra work for the Dev Team. Zero work (or very little) if they hand it off to others outside the Dev Team to prepare and setup for download here and/or at other MorphOS file depositories.

If AmigaOS4.1 were cheaper, I would probably buy it for my A4000 PowerTower, but if it were free, or less than $20, it would be purchased and installed today, so the same would be true for MorphOS1.4 for many people and I think that could lead to at least another 40 to 80, or maybe many more new 2.7 registrations over the next year.

Not a huge incentive, but if it could be done for little effort, I think it would be worth it.

It is very unlikely to happen, no need to discuss this over and over again. Most core developers don't even have a working classic system anymore. The discussion about "counter move" is pretty pointless anyway. We are talking about hardware accelerators that have been released around 1997. That is almost 15 years ago by now - the underlying system components are way older, even.

There has been a free MorphOS release supporting this cards and there has been a long registration period to get a free keyfile for it.

If Classic users think that it's worth to spend another 120EUR for what's basically an update to a never updated Classic OS4.0 release, so be it.

If all of the developers on the Dev. Team think the same, that there is no point in trying to get new MorphOS users by restarting the file server that generates the free keyfiles, or doing the amount of work required to provide a generic free keyfile for MorphOS1.4 for PowerUP users, then there is no point in discussing it further, but I guarantee that there are PowerUP owners out there (like myself) that were away from the Amiga scene, or for some other reason did not take an interest in MorphOS1.4 for PowerUP while free keyfiles were available and would like to try it now on their PowerUP equipped Classic Amiga systems. And, I am sure that some of those people would end up moving forward to getting a MorphOS2.7 capable system and buying a license for MorphOS2.x.

Sure, the number of PowerUP equipped Classic Amigas is very small, so no one on the Dev. Team may be interested in spending any time or effort to restart the generation of the keyfiles for 1.4.

I understand, even if I disagree that it is not worth the effort to get those few extra MorphOS users.

Apparently the OS4.0 on classic hardware was the best selling version on any platform

edited to correct 4.1 to 4.0


[ Edited by stephen_robinson 18.05.2011 - 18:25 ]

There are many many more with MorphOS 2 license than there were registered PowerUP users.

Quote:
Sounds like a more important showstopper than the lack of a new version ;-)
I guess it is up to you to fix this issue first...

Edit: disabled the stupid smiley gfx...


[ Edited by Henes 18.05.2011 - 20:45 ]

As I've said in the past, I'd love to have the server up again and register both my pup miggies. I'm sure others would too.

I have read various posts about this topic from my very first days on this forum and the MorphOS scene as a fan and supporter.

I can understand the developer's point that there are no Classic PPC systems available to the team and that there is a lot of work that has to be done for a 2.x PowerUP release.

But I still believe that there should be a way for the registration possibility of the 1.4.5 version to return in action, for free or for some money.

I can understand the team's point of view explaining that back on the days of 1.4.5 PowerUP there was not enough donations made so the project died. At this point it is the user-base that should change this at the current stage and maybe start a new hope for a new PowerUP release:

The first simple step could be to make some polls around the forums t see how many Amiga users owning PowerUP cards are willing to pay an amount of money to get a new version of MorphOS fr their machines.

After that the second and most serious step would be the starting of a bounty for a new MorphOS 2.x PowerUP version, perhaps the amount of money that would be collected for this could be a good reason for the team to start again. Perhaps part of the money paid by each person for this bounty could be gathered in order to get some hardware as well and gift it to the team.

I am sure that all those general thoughts have been expressed in the past or maybe there is someone else who already have thought about those things but ok after all it is my simple opinion and a small starting point.

@stephen robinson,

I doubt that your assertion is actually true, do you have a source that backs up that claim with facts? I didn't think there were any sales figures available for any versions of AmigaOS4.x.

It was only wishful thinking that there would ever be a MorphOS2.x version released for PowerUP machines, and I don't blame the Dev. Team for not wanting to work on such a version, but I sincerely did hope that there was some way, with minimal effort by any of the Dev. Team members, to get either new keyfiles for MorphOS1.4.5, or for a generic keyfile to be released.

I believe that the Dev. Team is correct and that there are not sufficient numbers of PowerUP systems and users to warrant the amount of work required to create a MorphOS2.x version that supports PowerUP systems. But, if any of the Dev. Team members will agree to do the minimum work required to restart the keyfile server for 1.4.5 PowerUP registrations, or if they will allow a trusted person who is not a member of the Dev. Team to do it, so it will not take up any of the Dev. Team's time and effort, away from what they should be working on to improve and complete MorphOS2.8, that would be two possible solutions that would have minimal impact or disruption of work from the Dev. Team members.

I do not want this request to turn into a negative reflection toward the Dev. Team, as I do understand their reasons for not supporting PowerUP any longer, but hope they will allow the re-release of their already completed work on MorphOS1.4.5 for PowerUP systems, as I do see that there is some interest in it still.

Quote:

That would require a new release, actually. It's not possible to generate a 'generic' keyfile. We'd have to build MorphOS 1.4.5 w/o any key mechanisms at all.

Quote:

Like I said, most of us still have the actual hardware stashed somewhere, so there's no point in getting us more junk.

Quote:

@ jacadcaps

ok thought it was only your case -of having the machine stashed-, so if others are in the same situation as well, there is no need for more hardware...

[ Edited by CountRaven 19.05.2011 - 09:39 ]

For me, it's rather ironical to see people claiming for more powerful MorphOS hardware (capable of doing full-hd and stuff) on the one hand, and demanding a Classic PPC version on the other hand. Personally I can fully understand the reasons why the MorphOS-Team doesn't want to artificially limit the MorphOS experience by supporting "sillicon dinosaurs".

Just forget about the old ppc boards. It is too old, too underpowered, too limited.
Indeed I had some fun with MorphOS 1.4.5 on my old A1200, but that was years ago.
The old ppc boards are just not powerful enough to run the real gems of MorphOS. The cpu is weak, the RAM is usually in the 128 MB range.
Plus, MorphOS 1.4.5 feels rather antique once you've used 2.x for a while. A few weeka ago I tried to pimp my 1.4.5 Peg1 setup a bit, but instead stacked it away after a few hours.
It runs, it runs stable and reliable, but the difference to 2.x is huge. I am not sure whether it will be the best ad for MorphOS 2.x.

Thing is: Whoever is even remotely intersted in MorphOS can get a cheapest Mac G4 and try 2.x out for free. The old C= Frankenamiga users will probably not change to a MorphOS 2.x G4 Mac only becaue they were impressed by 1.4.5 on their Pup board.

Maybe as a little improvement it would be good to place a link for the 1.4.5 Pup demo on the morphos main download page though. Those who are interested may check out MorphOS on their PuP board, but I guess there are not many ppl interested.

> the RAM is usually in the 128 MB range.

I didn't conduct any statistical survey to see what's usual here but I know that the BPPC can have 256 MiB RAM. That's twice the RAM of the Efika 5200B.

I'm not even sure if 128MB is a common setup for most PPC cards out there, my CS PPC had 64MB (4x16MB modules) afair.There are definitely way more BlizzardPPC cards than there are CSPPC ones. Not sure how many are still operational, though. This hardware is definitely no indicator how well MorphOS 2.x performs on supported Apple hardware for sure.
This discussion is all rather moot, anyway. The situation hasn't changed much recently regarding release of an updated MorphOS version for Classic machines. IMHO, the impact of it in 2011 would definitely be too little, too late. If anyone with BPPC/CSPPC following the post C= era hasn't shown any kind of interest for MorphOS so far, he/she probably never will.

The thing is, many bppcs and csppcs have changed hands during the last few of years who would be interested in registering 1.4.5 and they can't. I think that there'd be at least 20-30 powerup boards registered if the server went up, but that's just my estimation and I'm not sure if that amount of registrations makes it worthwhile to get the server back up and running.

@amigadave

Quote:
ben hermans mentioned this at amiwest 2011. folks were very pleased to hear OS4 was to be updated for the classic systems, but didn't understand the commercial logic of investing the effort into development. he replied that the 'classic' version of OS4 was a greater seller than any of the NG platforms.

off-topic: you planning on returning to amiwest this year?

-- eliyahu


[ Edited by eliyahu 19.05.2011 - 10:24 ]

What about just running the classic 68k Warpup Workbench?
I would rather run something like classic AmigaOS and not so heavy as torture my classic Amiga with AOS 4.1 or MorphOS 1.4.5.


Classic Amiga Hardware? run classic AmigaOS, I allways did, allways will.

X

> torture my classic Amiga with AOS 4.1 or MorphOS 1.4.5.

I wouldn't call using the PPC CPU more effectively a 'torture'.

Guess I'll dump some random links for those who missed them:

http://dreamolers.binaryriot.org/priv/powerup_tease.png
http://dreamolers.binaryriot.org/priv/powerup_tease2.png
http://dreamolers.binaryriot.org/priv/powerup_tease3.png

Tease indeed!

Not that I own one anymore, but I'm sure owners of PowerPC Amiga accelerators will be VERY interested to see MorphOS 2.7 running on a 175MHz Blizzard-PPC equipped classic

"You're terrible, Muriel!"