After lurking for years, I have today bought my first machine destined to run MorphOS. It's a Mac Mini G4 1.42 ghz. 512 gig RAM, 80 gig HD, ATI Radeon 9200 32 gig, wifi, DVD. All in excellent working order according to the advert. Not bad for £26!

I bought my first Amiga (1200) back in around 1992. Ran a BBS on it. Got it on the internet. All the way up until the early 2000s. And now I am an Amigan once again :)

Welcome and enjoy

Your going to be amazed at MorphOS! Welcome!!!!

Welcome and enjoy!

Well done!

Welcome!

MorphOS is great and the community is too, I'm sure you'll enjoy yourself. :)

Shameless self promotion: http://morphosuser.wordpress.com

Thank you all for the warm welcomes. Can't wait for it to arrive (Tuesday, I think).

Until then, I'll be doing as much reading as I can. I'm already inspired enough to try and make it my main home computer.

Yasu: Already very familiar with your blog :) Thank you - it's a great resource. Which reminds me, where did you get that fantastic black keyboard pictured in a shot with your new Mac Mini?

Quote:

Welcome to MorphZone.org, and to the community of MorphOS users!

Congratulations on your decision to become a MorphOS user, which I believe is the best choice of any of the so called "NG" Amiga inspired platforms. I hope you don't mind if I ask you what helped you make the decision to buy and use MorphOS, instead of any of the other "NG" Amiga inspired choices (AROS, AmigaOS4.x)? Knowing your answer(s) might help the MorphOS Dev. Team, when they are making decisions on how to promote MorphOS to other potential new users.

The G4 MacMini is a great little system to run MorphOS on, but just be aware of your VRAM limitation of 32gb, and which software might use up lots (or all) of your VRAM in some circumstances, such as the Odyssey web browser, if you have too many tabs opened at the same time, or you are using certain websites which trigger the known memory leak in the WebKit code that Odyssey is based on. Other than the relatively low amount of VRAM, the G4 MacMini is a really great system for running MorphOS3.9, and I am sure you will enjoy it very much.

Again, Welcome to our party, and if you have any coding experience, I hope you will consider creating some new software for MorphOS to run in the future, or port other existing software to MorphOS, because I believe that more software to run is the most important thing for the MorphOS community at this point in time (since we now have so many different available hardware choices to run MorphOS on, and the MorphOS Dev. Team has done such a wonderful job of providing us with new features and bug fixes). More and better software is all I think we are lacking (or the most important thing we need, IMO, at this time).

[ Edited by amigadave 11.09.2015 - 09:02 ]

Quote:

Opending more _tabs_ in odyssey has no influence in regard to the VRAM. But the 32 _MB_ VRAM is the weakness of all Mac minis expept the 1.5GHz version which is on eof teh most recomended machines for MorphOS.

Hint to Ginger 1:

Don't register MorphOS on that machine too quick as registrations are hardware bound and you may consider a machine with more VRAM after a while (the said 1.5Ghz mini or some certain powerbook)
Of course teh need for more VRAM depends on your monitor's resolution: with 1280*1024 is pretty okay with 32 MB VRAM for 1920*1080 rather not.

Quote:

I closely considered AROS. A number of years ago I gave it a try and was impressed by how Amiga-like it felt. However I wasn't able to quickly find information on running it on VMWare..and didn't want the restrictions of a Live CD.

To me, the MorphOS community has always appeared to be more optimistic, friendly but also professional (good website, frequent updates, usable demo version). I think OS 4 is slightly tainted by all the Amiga Inc wranglings. Also, the hardware entry costs are prohibitvely expensive, for a system which might turn out to have only limited use. That being said, I think Trevor Dickinson is doing great things and I'm very pleased to see more new software being launched together for all 3 NG flavours.

I work in IT (and software development) but more on the project management/architecture side. One of the additional reasons I've come to MorphOS is to practise coding in a system I care about. I've also heard good things about MUI from the dev perspective.

@Ginger1

I bought it custom made from Loriono Pagni some years ago. He is actually doing a Kickstarter now to make more keyboards:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/505470364/amiga-inspired-key-caps-for-mechanical-keyboards?ref=discovery

But for some reason the keyboard I got doesn't work out of the box in MorphOS (it does in AmigaOS 4). I found a solution that works for me, but it's not pretty so you should read about it before deciding to buy one or not (or hope the Team will solve the problem):

https://morphosuser.wordpress.com/2014/08/02/changing-some-keys/

@Yasu It looks so cool it's almost worth the pain of getting it working. Might watch this space for a bit though to see if a cleaner solution arrives.

Quote:

Quote:

I also think the Silent Upgrade Mac Mini is the best MorphOS system. Mostly because it's small and fully supported (as in: having Warp3D support). And also because I'm no big fan of laptops (except micro laptops). But the best Powerbook is faster and have more VRAM (plus can use an external DVI monitor) which might be a selling point there.

I see the SU models almost every day on E-bay, but they usually cost more and most of them are from the States, adding to shipping costs. And not all of them are really SU models, but the 1.42 GHz models for some reason.

The 1.42 GHz is not a bad deal though if you use a monitor with lower resolutions, like 1280x1024. Then 32 MB VRAM is enough.

Quote:

Some sellers don't know what they're selling (the box and the sticker says it's 1,42 - that's why it was called "silent upgrade"), sometimes it's worth to check by the serial number. If it's 1,42 and without the built-in fax/modem - take a closer look.

Good tip regarding checking the serial numbers. I think if I feel that MorphOS is going to become my main home machine (or at least joint-main) then I'll seek out a 1.5 ghz version before registering.

Have had a busy weekend clearing the decks in readiness for her arrival...

Upgrade RAM to 1GigaByte... You will enjoy more RAM available on the system.

Hello! I'm back and this time from my new MorphOS machine :) Probably about 30 minutes in..online and OWB working nicely (although have to play with the fonts a bit).

Impressed by the boot time. And the Mac Mini seems to be wokring fine (although a very whirry hard drive. Every time I open a new drawer, it does a little squeak. That could become annoying! Might have to research CF drives).

Right...let's see what this can do!

I have a spare Mac Mini which I built from spare parts. It's the 1.5ghz model with the 64MB vram. I believe its overclocked to 1.6ish ghz since I ruined the solderpad for any high clockings. Did have a Pata to miniPcie adapter which had a 32GB SSD drive. Ran pretty damn great. Now the drive is in my G4.

Quote:

I would like to replace the PATA hdd in both my G4 MacMini, and my G4 PowerBook, with SSD (or Hybrid SSD) drives of any kind to get faster performance, less heat, and silent operation. Can any of you recommend what drives and adapters to buy to accomplish this task on both of my systems? Cheapest price is always a consideration, but I want a quality solution that will be trouble free for a long time, as it is a PITA to open the MacMini, and the PowerBook is only slightly less of a PITA to remove all those screws and replace them when putting it back together, without losing any of the tiny buggers.

Edit: The size of the SSD, or Hybrid drive for the MacMini only needs to be 32gb to 64gb, as it will run MorphOS only, but I probably want to keep the PowerBook a dual boot system, so need 128gb or larger for it.

[ Edited by amigadave 18.09.2015 - 22:29 ]

A PITA to open the Mini ?

Or did you mean it is as easy to open as a Pita ?? ;)

Space is allway a concern both in the Mini and the PB so anything that is full-size 3,5" HD needs to be PATA.
Such SSDs can be bought, but AFAIK not any hybrid-HD (mind you a spinning disk isn't the best idea in a laptop anyways).

Best way pricewise is a mSATA-modul + adaptor, easiest way is an PATA-SSD.