Hi all,

New here and new to MorphOS. I have a G4 Mac Mini on the way for MorphOS.

Been an Amiga user as a teenager, had a sweet A500 setup but sold it on when I got a PC. Biggest mistake of my life. I now have an A500, A600 and A1200.

Decided to look into MorphOS and am very impressed. My plan is to try it out for a few days and register it if it does all I want.

I hope to make it my main, every day OS

I'll be reading through these forums daily so just thought I'd introduce myself.

Now on the hunt for a good word processor for it as this is the only thing that seems to be missing.

Cheers,

Pete.

You could try Google docs ? I do think Amigawriter and Finalwriter are working with a little trial and error

Th ehunt fo rthe good wordprocessor offers three options.

#1 - online service like gogle docs - works nicely with OWB, but well, its an online service
#2 - use one of the rather aged wordprocessors from teh Amiga heritage, i.e. wordworth, final writer or AmigaWriter. All of them are nice, but cannot handle .doc files properly.
#3 - forget abozt a word processor on MorphOS and use another machine or a dual bot setup with Linuy or OS X for that particular purpose.


I do a mixture of all those three options. But jonestly I must admit, that for serious and *longer lasting* work I boot into OS X and use OOo or MSO.

I'd like to use MorphOS for everything I do and I guess that will happen given time.

I have a laptop running Linux with LibreOffice. It's no big deal using that for my writing.

.doc support isn't a major priority as I only use .odf or .rtf in my work.

Can't wait for my Mac Mini to arrive, it's on its way and I have a 4 day weekend coming up. Hope it gets here in time.

Thanks for the replies,

Pete.

[ Edited by Badders 02.11.2011 - 10:33 ]

Badders,

Enjoy your new-old mini and Morphos! Please drop by and let us know how you are getting along.

If you work with .rtf - you can pick up something like AmigaWriter rather cheap from the uk vendor Amigakit.com. I myself use Google Docs and MagicalInk with Morphos for what I do - and if need be, LibreOffice on my linux laptop.

Well, looks like the Mac Mini is a Lemon, not an Apple. Refuses to boot from the MorphOS CD and even spits out the OS X disk. Bombed when using OS X and now just a black screen.

No booting of anything.

Pete.

I use quite a few old Word Processors from Amiga and PageStream too.
There was a Word Processor released for 68k that handled MS Office docs.
Last one to come out that I remember.
You can use datatypes also to read MS Docs.

Quote:

That sucks!

I hope you can get your money back, or get it fixed cheap or free. I have mistakenly made a lot of drink coasters out of CD-R discs when trying to burn an ISO image to a CD-R disc from MacOSX.

You must make sure that you are not just burning the "Contents" of the ISO to the CD-R, when you click on the burn to disc button. What you end up with when you do that is a CD-ROM that is formatted with HFS+ like a hard drive and has the files written to it that are contained in the ISO image that you are trying to burn to disc.

Was the OSX install DVD an original, or a copy?

Welcome to MZ.org and I hope you can get your MacMini fixed and set up with MorphOS2.7 soon. Ask as many questions as it takes to get your install working (after you get your Mini fixed that is). Don't give up too soon.

Badders,
Quote:

Welcome Badders,

It looks like that your mini have a broken CD drive. You still can try to boot from USB. Here is a tutorial on the subject : http://obligement.free.fr/articles/demarrer_morphos_cleusb_macmini.php

In french (sadly?) but google translate might help if you don't manage to read the article.

If you have an external CD drive working on USB, it migth do the job... Never tried but well, looks like you have 4 weeks. ;)

Regards.
Tcheko

amigadave,
Quote:

I burned the iso using Linux before the mini arrived. Was keen to get started ASAP lol.

The OS X discs that came with it are original. I'll try resetting PRAM and VRAM to see if I can get it to boot from the hard drive again. If that works, I'll try the Open Firmware option. Fingers crossed. Hopefully the next time I post here it will be from MorphOS.

Pete.

Well, resetting PRAM and VRAM worked, it's now booting again from the HDD. However, it completely refuses to boot from the MorphOS CD. It just spits it out when I boot with C pressed.

I've burned another disc and it's the same.

Might try the USB method if I can rely on Google Translate

Pete.

This is frustrating. Nothing I've tried will get this damned thing to boot. I've checked the md5 sum and it is correct, the disc mounts in both OS X and Linux. Is there an issue with the 2.7 iso?

I've tried booting with C pressed. I've tried with Open Firmware. I've tried booting with ALT pressed, the MorphOS cd shows but won't boot.

I really want to try MorphOS.

If anyone can help, I'd be very grateful.

Thanks,

Pete.

Can you boot from the MacOSX install DVD now? If that does not work, it is highly unlikely that you will be able to boot from the MorphOS2.7 install CDROM.

If you can boot from the MacOSX Install DVD, then try burning another MorphOS2.7 CD-R from MacOSX if you have your G4 MacMini booting from the hard drive into MacOSX now. But, as I warned earlier, make sure you burn it correctly and do not just burn the contents of the ISO to a CD-R, which does not result in a bootable CD. You may also want to try a different brand of CD-R discs if your next attempt to burn the MorphOS2.7 install CD is not successful.

Good luck and don't give up. It is worth the effort to have MorphOS2.7 running on your G4 MacMini. You may want to look into installing Papiosaur's Pack Ultimate as well. It is a nice group of applications, games, emulators, backdrops and icons, with the dock setup for you.

There is no issue with the MorphOS2.7 ISO image and booting on the G4 MacMini, or it would have been fixed a long time ago.

[ Edited by amigadave 04.11.2011 - 04:50 ]

> make sure you burn it correctly and do not just burn the contents
> of the ISO to a CD-R

What else should he burn if not just the contents of the ISO image?

I know what he means, I am burning the iso as an image to make a bootable disc instead of mounting the iso and burning what's inside. This would result in the files being burned but the disc not being correctly formatted for booting.

I've now done 3 discs, 1 in Linux, 1 in OS X and 1 in Windows. All the same result.

Pete.

> instead of mounting the iso and burning what's inside.

Ah, now I know what he meant. Thanks. The 'mounting' bit is what was missing from my understanding of what was written.

I'm pretty sure the fault lies with the firmware. I can't even boot using the original OS X install disc. It just gets spat out too.

Booted with ALT held down (Option on a Mac) to get the graphical boot menu. I insert either the OS X disc or the MorphOS disc and after 10 - 20 seconds, or a refresh (hitting SPACE) the icons show up. However, I am unable to change the selection from the HDD. The cursor keys do nothing and I am unable to select anything with the mouse.

I need to see if this can be flashed to a later version. I've never had dealings with Mac firmware before so will need to do some digging around.

On the plus side, I have 3 discs with MorphOS install on them

Pete.

> I am unable to change the selection from the HDD. The cursor keys do
> nothing and I am unable to select anything with the mouse.

Try the tab key (and then hitting enter/return key for the selected partition to boot up). Does that work?

Andreas_Wolf,
Quote:

Nope, there's no response from the keyboard other than the space bar which seems to do a "refresh"

It seem your super/combo-drive is somewhat knackered (nothing unusual) and not fully working with your brand of CD-R.

a) burn the ISO to a different brand/color of CD-R
b) use the suplied way of booting by USB
c) replace drive

[ Edited by Kronos 04.11.2011 - 16:05 ]

Would that also prevent me being able to select different volumes in the boot menu?

I have the very same issue regarding bootmenu - not being able to select any bootmenu entry, nor with mouse, nor with keyboard. These are - low cost - usb mouse + usb keyboard, occupying the only 2 onbord usb ports at my MDD's back. At the bootmenu i can only move the pointer up and down with the mouse but if i press a mouse button (cant remember if its lef or right or just any) the pointer will slowly starts to move at the right direction - only, no left - as well (duh i have to move the mouse like mad:) But, even if i can reach an icon with the pointer theres nothing happens when i press any mousebutton with pointer above it. I can only proceed with "Enter" key which results to boot the 1st entry (MorphOS, the default) as no response to any other keyboard press at this stage other than "Enter" (while i can reach the firmware console, or get the bootmenu or boot from cd by pressing "C", so it seems the keyboard is not working properly only at the bootmenu). Therefore i couldnt boot into OSX since i've installed MorphOS, which is painful as i get the awfully loud and annoying bootjingle after every reset.... However at least it boots into MorphOS, even from CD (with a bit luck:).

Using boot menu can be really slow when Mac is trying to find netboot devices. Could that be your problem? Wait long enough until it stops trying it and then menu should work fast with kb and mouse.

And if you're not going to boot from network in near future, type "setenv skip-netboot? true" on OF prompt to get things quick on bootmenu always.