Three years ago, it was mentioned in a public presentation about MorphOS's future at "Alchimie 111111", that MorphOS would undergo quite drastic evolution in the long term perspective. 64-bit, ISA change, etc.

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=59765

This was indeed a few years ago at this point, and nothing has been said about it since. So I'm a bit curious about the status of things concerning this. Could somebody from "the MorphOS Team" please shed some light upon this? Is it sill on the agenda? Is it happening?

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I'd say we will know nothing until it just appears just like with Airport drivers ;)

Hopefully.

Whatever the plan is, they don't seem to want to tell us at this stage. My bet is that they will keep quiet until it's close before being released. We have to respect that.

The MorphOS Team has promised us an ISA shift. How often have they broken their promises?

Morphos team has considered a switch, some people have already worked for this but from that i know nobody has clearly chosen the way to go.
The main problems are:
In order
1 Preparing the operating system for a switch, so many components should be rewritten to easly work on the new system.
2 Find a new machine whith a descent production price and avaibility. The aim is to survive....
3 Creating the new operating system on the new hardware while the old branch is always alive and progressing.

If we consider this way we could say that some work was done, some experiments were made.
But the question we can consider is : How many members really want to kill the Abox which is the main reason
of Morphos's creation.




[ Edited by acepeg 06.11.2014 - 23:28 ]

Don't switch ISA too quickly. I have not yet registered ibook g4!

Also I am dreading the possibility of MorphOS secretly being ported to X86 device. A device I have no use for. The device must be durable and as somebody else said in another topic: it has to last more than three years. With my experience X86 laptop especially gets hot and dies much too quickly. (Unless I put a high velocity metal fan next to it.)

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That was the case... years ago. If you ran MorphOS on a x86 laptop, it'd stay very cool most of the time.

> If you ran MorphOS on a x86 laptop, it'd stay very cool most of the time.

You mean MorphOS would support the power saving features of its components better than those of PPC laptop components? :-)

@ In_Correct

Indeed only very old machines turn hot and loud in x86 world, same as our Mac mini from that ancient time. Modern laptops from the last 3, 4, 5 years are soo cool and not noisy that you should try them. Don't use cheap plastic laptops, though.

The switch will come but don't expect it too soon. Some weeks ago I read that they did not even start with it. So my guess is that the target architecture is not decided yet and a concept does not exist so far. So don't expect it within the next 3-5 years I would say. I would not expect it before a MOS 5 or 6 compared to the releases so far. I just hope that they will not care about 32bit any longer and go full 64 bit for memory and addresses. Until then we will see more small updates like we have MOS 2.1 to 3.7 so far. So still years of time to register your iBook

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That's kind of true I guess, but IMHO the main point with MorphOS was never about "Retro", but about "Evolution" and long term creating a new alternative OS from what once was Amiga. In the original ideas about how MorphOS would do this, the "A-box" was merely a stepping stone, a means to an end, not the goal itself. I know that things changed during the years, for various reasons, but anyway...

Amiga "68k" has been retro for almost two decades, PPC for desktop kind of died when Apple pulled out almost one decade ago, and "Amiga PPC" (including Abox) has *also* been falling deeper and deeper into "Retro Land" for every year that has passed since then.

Personally, I'm not that much into Retro computing really, and the the nostalgic part of my heart that actually beats for Amiga retro stuff, beats more for real 68k Amiga HW (and SW), and less for "Abox". 68k retro is more interesting than PPC retro IMHO. What I want and has always hoped for with MorphOS, is an alternative OS that is not Windows, MacOS and neither Linux (for a change), but that could still run on real, modern HW.


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The statement I linked to above is three years old, and it was preceded by at least as long time of discussions on this subject, even with some sporadic comments from MorphOS Team members about it.

Is things really moving too fast?


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What's the source of that info if I may ask? An official source?


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That's pretty much what was said three years ago, and back then I got the impression that some initial work had already been done!

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Am I a fool if I read in some hope of x86 into the fact that you even made that post?

Please, I'm not asking for ETA's or feature lists or explanations about how things would be achieved and what they would be, etc. All I want to know is if "MorphOS NG" is still on the agenda at all! A simple yes/no would suffice!

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I remember you presenting the plan at A.org back in those days, and I was quite amazed of viable future and plan (unlike with AmigaOS 4).

Looking at it today, it seems MorphOS is progressing on planned path, step by step, which are currently improving PowerPC version.


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[ Edited by vox 07.11.2014 - 23:56 ]

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Well, I was merely summarizing what had been said at the presentation and presented it in some sort of a time line fashion with some conclusions.

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So was I! And I was very pleased that they communicated their plans in public!

And it all (mostly) came true, and then more on top of that!

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A Lannister always pays his debts, and The MorphOS Team Delivers, it's as simple as that!

Well, like someone said a while ago:

"There is still stuff to be done with PPC"

I'm in no hurry. I look forward to how MorphOS will evolve within the current ISA and when the day come when they announce what the ISA shift will look like, I will buy a new desktop and a new laptop for that purpuse.

I enjoy MorphOS today, and I will tomorrow as well.

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Not treally in a hurry, too, but the RAM limit is sometimes annoying as well as more raw cpu speed is a thing I would quite appreciate. MorphOS as it is now is pretty matured, stable and a pleasure to use, hence I think there is rather low pressure to even enhance this version, but better go for the switch now (more or less "now" of course).

@Zylesea

You got a point. I wouldn't mind an experimental "half-switch" by going multicore, 64 bit, SMP and stuff on a G5, having a dual "Abox" + "64box" boot.

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If (when?) the "MorphOS NG" happens, I think there will be a "fork" between current PPC systems and new ones that will remain in parallel for quite some time.

@takemehomegrandma

I hope you are right

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I doubt they go that route, but I never progressed beyond Basic, some C64 assembly and hello world in GCC so what I know

We've been told repeatedly that SMP, 1.5GB RAM (1GB on G5) and MP is pretty much impossible without breaking compatibility. If we're going to break compatibility, I'd rather see them tackle the ISA change head on. MorphOS on PPC based Macs are indeed near perfect, within the limitations as presented.

No matter what way they go in the near to mid term, I'll support them. What the MorphOS team has pulled off is pretty incredible. I feel that I've gotten every bit of value for the licenses that I've purchased, and then some. They've actually exceeded my expectations.

If there is one thing I'd copy from the OS4 team, is the announced upcoming support for more system ram. If I understand properly it will only be available as RAM disk or to programs aware of it.

I know nothing about the implications of implementing such a feature, but to a pure end user the thought of a newer OWB version being able to use a full 8GB on my G5 is pretty drool-worthy. 1GB is small

> We've been told repeatedly that [...] 1.5GB RAM (1GB on G5) [...] is pretty much
> impossible without breaking compatibility.

;-)

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You know something I don't? Spill the beans AW!

>>> We've been told repeatedly that [...] 1.5GB RAM (1GB on G5) [...] is pretty much
>>> impossible without breaking compatibility.

>> ;-)

> You know something I don't?

I know that support for 1.5 GiB RAM is pretty much possible without breaking compatibility and has been from the get-go. What's pretty much impossible without breaking compatibility is supporting more than that :-)

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wonk wonk wonk wonk

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It sounds far better then it really is.

As far as we could get from big announcements of announcements, and Hyperion blog on "extended memory model"
http://blog.hyperion-entertainment.biz/?p=1131

I get these points:
a) It requires updating or rewriting apps to be able to use it so its not instantly avail to all, even it is system feature. In time apps might be able to use it, but it might be nice excuse to move requirement to OS 4.1 Final - newer Radeon HD driver and thus kind of charge again for what people paid once.
b) Its more virtual memory then breaking a 2GB barrier
c) RAM disk will be kind of parallel replacement to use it as storage space without taking lower system RAM, but not full 3 or 4 (or plus) GBs avail

So its more stop gap solution, that only X1000 and beyond will be able to use (old A1, SAM440 has 1GB and SAM460 has 2 GB limit) and is not a real solution.

And as usual, you need that big apps or projects to be that memory hungry, even it sounds good to be feature wize and modern. Even with Linux and Windows that change didn`t come overnight and took a lot of work and complete migration to x64/PPC64/ARM64