Hi all,

I use a Windows laptop for work, and this Windows machine tends to accompany home which has meant, almost accidently, I have become a Windows user for the vast majority of my computing. In an attempt to redress the balance, I am today starting a seven day MorphOS challenge, the rules of which are as follows:

1) I can only use MorphOS at home, between now and midnight on Thursday 25th August.
2) I can use my Android tablet for occasional critical web browsing, when OWB isn't up to the job.
3) If desperate, I can use my Windows laptop solely for Netflix. But nothing else.
4) I will try my best to report on my progress here each day.

That should do it.

A few bits of added info:

1) Athough I've previously dabbled with MorphOS, I haven't used it for around six months. I count myself pretty much a newbie.
2) I am running MorphOS 3.9 on a 1.42 GHZ MacMini
3) My MorphOS 3.9 is unregistered - which means I will have to contend with the 30 minute time-out issue.

Wish me luck! :)

Day 1

Things started positively enough. I thought I would see if MorphOS supports my new Wacom Intuos tablet, and a quick Google suggested it might. Plugging it in, I was impressed to see the Poseidon pop up a friendly message saying it had recognised my tablet. A quick prod on the tablet suggested otherwise, however. Some reading and settings-playing later, I had discovered and installed WacomFix.elf. This told me that it had recognised my tablet, but it still wasn't playing ball. I need to look again at the Poseidon settings and the various forum articles to see if I can crack this, as having a pressure sensitive tablet running would make MorphOS an (even more) interesting proposition.

Next up for this challenge: Email. Like lots of people, I'm a gmail user. I tried initially logging in with OWB, but got the same "enable cookies" error reported elsewhere on this site. Luckily. I've got it sort of working in SimpleMail. It's messy, but hopefully with some more energy I will feel more confident about this email solution.

I use Toodledo for some task organisation. This is a fairly simple web app, so I was feeling confident that OWB but would do the job. It may well have done, but I got an SSL error which prevented me logging in. I know that there's been a recent hardening of SSL certificate standards (Heart Bleed related?), which might be the cause of this if OWB hasn't yet caught up? Frustrating though, as that was two core uses where I was confident that all would be well on this challenge, but unfortunately not!

To end on a positive. I installed Duke Nukem 3D from MorphOSFiles (having never played it before), and it was rather brilliant. And very smooth on this old G4 machine. Good stuff!

[ Edited by Ginger1 18.08.2016 - 22:33 ]

"but I got an SSL error which prevented me logging in"..

Not saying that this is the cause, but double check if your date/time is set right. It can cause the same problem. Good luck with your challenge!

Good Luck Ginger1!

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Not really sure if you want to try this, but there's a "Ignore SSL errors" check in the prefs.

@ Ginger1

Thanks for sharing.

Day 2

All in all, a successful day (well, morning and evening) with MorphOS!

Things got off to a bit of a rocky start. I tend to take a bit of time in the morning to do some online career research over breakfast, so this morning instead of opening up the Windows laptop (unceremoniously left in the hall from the evening before - no longer needed thanks to this challenge), I started up the MacMini. I was impressed by how well OWB was handling the various websites I was throwing at it. Some were admittedly a little slow to load, but in a way this made me appreciate them all the more when did come up a few seconds later. Finally, the time came to head off to work. But, checking my phone, I realised it was actually about twenty minutes later than the MorphOS clock said! This meant I had missed my train, and ended up getting into work late! Thanks MorphOS! :) My fault for leaving the computer for 6 months and just assuming it was syncing with a time server somewhere.

@Koszer - Unfortunately, this discovery (and its rectification) hasn't solved the SSL issue.

My evening with MorphOS has been brilliant. A couple of rounds on Duke Nukem to start things off, and then I thought I'd have a go at the Basilisk II emulator. I'd previously used ShapeShifter on my old 1200 (probably about twenty years ago!) so was keen to see how things compared with the PPC processor. A couple of hours later I had System 7.5.3 installed and up and running. This seemed to work at a decent, usable speed and I think it will be a useful addition to my MorphOSing over the next week (and hopefully, much longer). Perhaps this is cheating slightly..but if by using Word 5.1 in Basilisk it solves the word processor issue, then I'm very happy to cheat. It gave me a buzz from computer that I haven't felt since the A1200 days...which I had feared would be forever elusive.

Looking forward to trying to get the famous Word 5.1 running tomorrow!

> I realised it was actually about twenty minutes later than the MorphOS clock said! [...]
> My fault for leaving the computer for 6 months and just assuming it was syncing with
> a time server somewhere.

http://library.morph.zone/Shell_Commands/SetClockNTP
http://library.morph.zone/Getting_Started#Synchronizing_the_Clock_with_an_Internet_Time_Server
http://library.morph.zone/Tips_and_Tricks#Sync_the_Clock_from_Internet_at_Boot

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Excellent! Thank you. Added to my user-startup and seems to be working fine.

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No! That probably won´t work every time. Network can be delayed depending on your setup and the command may fail with a timeout.

I hope you ment user-network-startup, but then the line is already there and you would not need any "adding". Just removing the colon.

>> http://library.morph.zone/Shell_Commands/SetClockNTP
>> http://library.morph.zone/Getting_Started#Synchronizing_the_Clock_with_an_Internet_Time_Server
>> http://library.morph.zone/Tips_and_Tricks#Sync_the_Clock_from_Internet_at_Boot

> Added to my user-startup and seems to be working fine.

As geit said, adding to user-startup is not what's proposed in those linked articles.

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Good point! Was rushing a bit I think. Now working properly :)

Day 3

My MorphOS machine has been busy today. This is probably the hardest I have worked it and I must say it has coped admirably, without any wobbles at all. This is despite me for example ripping a CD and encoding to MP3, using OWB and Basilisk II for Mac emulation at the same time! Impressive stuff!

Following Yasu's blog post on ripping CDs to MP3s, I started archiving my own CD collection. Flacapella worked very well indeed, and I had an enjoyable day working through my CDs whilst doing a bit of IRCing and light-weight browsing.

It's been good getting to know some of the friendly folks at #MorphOS on Freenode at IRC too today.

Back to CD ripping...!

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I took a look at that blog entry, but those settings it gives aren't good enough in my opinion. I wouldn't recommend to use them, because they don't add any ID3 tags to MP3 files (!), don't save any cover images, and will encode in pretty low quality.

Here are the settings I use for LAME:
http://library.morph.zone/Tips_and_Tricks#Flacapella_Settings_for_MP3_Encoding

The encoding command given there makes these things:
- encodes in the highest VBR quality
- adds ID3 tags for title, artist, album, and track number
- embeds the cover image in the MP3 file if found

I also would untick the UTF-8 metadata option, because it won't show up correctly on most Amiga/MorphOS players, and even LAME itself won't support it when encoding to mp3.

[ Edited by jPV 21.08.2016 - 11:33 ]

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I for sure had big problems to let my pen&touch wacom tablet being recognized and I failed. Yomgui who was the developer who made Wacomfix.elf moved to Canada and he is almost not developing anymore for MorphOS.

[ Edited by Raf_MegaByte 22.08.2016 - 03:44 ]

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heh...it'll crap out eventually. I found Basilisk II horrible. I'm sure its a decent emulator but its corrupted my hardfile a few times, enough to where its just not trustworthy enough to use on a regular basis.

Day 4
Ahhh....Sunday! Another pleasant day pottering about with MorphOS. I re-ripped some of my CDs according to jPV's recommendations and the increased bitrate didn't have a noticable impact on encoding speed, so pleased to have superior audio quality for the same timecost. I have a huge backlog of CDs to work through, and the 30 minute time it's taking my machine to complete an album means this is going to be a looong project. I think I will need to employ a PC to help with this task..just to get things moving.

I installed Word 5.0 on my Basilisk install. It's very snappy, and is providing my best 'Morph OS' word processing experience to date. I tried multiple times to install 5.1, but this hangs during the installation process when it reaches the equation editor fonts. Gpod to have a solid and (somewhat) compatible word processor on hand..especially one with such an esteemed reputation!

Finally, re-discovered diskmags but more on that later!

Day 4
Ahhh....Sunday! Another pleasant day pottering about with MorphOS. I re-ripped some of my CDs according to jPV's recommendations and the increased bitrate didn't have a noticable impact on encoding speed, so pleased to have superior audio quality for the same timecost. I have a huge backlog of CDs to work through, and the 30 minute time it's taking my machine to complete an album means this is going to be a looong project. I think I will need to employ a PC to help with this task..just to get things moving.

I installed Word 5.0 on my Basilisk install. It's very snappy, and is providing my best 'Morph OS' word processing experience to date. I tried multiple times to install 5.1, but this hangs during the installation process when it reaches the equation editor fonts. Gpod to have a solid and (somewhat) compatible word processor on hand..especially one with such an esteemed reputation!

Finally, re-discovered diskmags but more on that later!

Day 4
Ahhh....Sunday! Another pleasant day pottering about with MorphOS. I re-ripped some of my CDs according to jPV's recommendations and the increased bitrate didn't have a noticable impact on encoding speed, so pleased to have superior audio quality for the same timecost. I have a huge backlog of CDs to work through, and the 30 minute time it's taking my machine to complete an album means this is going to be a looong project. I think I will need to employ a PC to help with this task..just to get things moving.

I installed Word 5.0 on my Basilisk install. It's very snappy, and is providing my best 'Morph OS' word processing experience to date. I tried multiple times to install 5.1, but this hangs during the installation process when it reaches the equation editor fonts. Gpod to have a solid and (somewhat) compatible word processor on hand..especially one with such an esteemed reputation!

Finally, re-discovered diskmags but more on that later!

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Neat idea!
I have used MorphOS as a primary OS for short periods myself.
I primarily use web browsers and Google programs so its worked for me.
I will have to try Basilisk, I have never had a prior use for Mac emulation.

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There are die hard Word 5.1 fans who still maintain it's the best Word version yet. It certainly seems capable, stable and intuitive.

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There are die hard Word 5.1 fans who still maintain it's the best Word version yet. It certainly seems capable, stable and intuitive.

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I just have to say that this is just excellent reading. Really good idea and nice to read your experiences in the end and whether you'll continue the active MorphOS usage after the week is over :)

Hello!

Good trip!

I personnaly use MorphOS mainly on a MorphBook 1,67 hight resolution 17', Pegasos (not anough) an Efika (quite only for gaming... ...but I play rarely)...
Beside, I use a Linux laptop...

About ripping CD's, I'm impressed when you told about 30mn to rip a CD!!! Maybe you may try Ripper: already when I was using it on my A4060/604, it spends a somewhat 6 minutes to rip a CD in 192 mp3 quality, and eventualy editing meanwhile the IDTag over Internet...
And as on the '4000 I had two cd readers, I was using two Ripper sessions so when no web, I edited the IDTags on one when ripping on the second... So I ripped my CD collection (around 200) in a quite short time..!

MorphOSian salutations.

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I looked through Yomgui's posts and there were some tantalising links to pics with the settings he used. Unfortuntately, the website where the screenshots were hosted is now defunt. Shame if his efforts and successes end up being lost. Or then again, perhaps those settings wouldn't have worked either :)