Hello all,

i heard to speak about a MorphOS 4.

Is exist a specifications list of this new OS ? What about the hardware ?

MorphOS Team maybe ?

Thanks for the info

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Papi,
If the past is any indication, they won't tell us until they have a pretty functional beta.

Personally, if you want to influence the direction, help me raise some cash for a donation.
A Ryzen 3000 cpu and motherboard, donated to Mark would probbly help things along.

Steve Jones is fielding questions for face to interviews with Hyperion and MorphOS team members. Email him any questions you have at steve@imica.net

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I already sent him one I've asked Mark (but even Bigfoot is unsure of), will we get a upgrade to MiniGL in either the PPC or X64 version of MorphOS?

Mark mentioned needing Keiro for anything like that (and Frank and other key developers could also be a factor).

But we are already falling behind OS4 in graphics support on PPC, MorphOS NG can't just be a straight port, or it would probably be done already (and in fact, a straight forward port MAY have already been completed, who knows?).

BTW - Any idea who Jones is interviewing? I've watched Steve's AROS videos, and he seems pretty knowledgable and unbiased.

[ Edited by Jim 20.05.2019 - 13:20 ]

> we are already falling behind OS4 in graphics support

Didn't that happen like 7 years ago? :-)

> MorphOS NG can't just be a straight port

Indeed, the MorphOS team has always said it wouldn't.

>Didn't that happen like 7 years ago?

Not on AGP systems, which were all we had back then.
If I'm not mistaken, they still don't have 3D for the R300 cards.

So we had parity up until the R200s. Maybe better, especially once our R200 drivers were fully optimized.

We dropped W3D support from the R300 up.
R400 drivers came pretty soon after the R300, since the R400 is pretty much just a doubled up R300.

R500 drivers took awhile longer (and by then we had support for one PCIe system, soon two).
And Mark, going beyond what he had to, created his part on his AGP G5 utilizing ATI's built in AtomBIOS, freeing us from the need to use cards equipped with Apple roms.

Since then, Mark has created basic 2D drivers for all ATI/AMD gpus up to the GGCN series . ALL Terascale gpus except the 69XX series (which would be kind of pointless, my benchmarks show them to e only marginally better than the 68XXs).

Frankly, while we could do better, I think we've done damned good. Well, mostly Mark has done damned good.

I know Mark reasonably well (for someone I've never met in person), and I have the utmost respect for him. I'm sure he's working on updating the latest 2D limited cards to 3D (after all, all the later 2D drivers were created using 3D commands - as AMD dropped 2D commands after the R500 series).

So Mark is no doubt is pretty familiar with later Terascale 3D commands.

And as I've said before, he has GCN cards.

I wish we could draw Han de Ruiter into this, he's good, but he is also deeply involved in OS4 development.

If we want an upgrade, in my opinion we ought to pay for it, if Frank Mariak, Mark Olsen, and Michal Wozniak are willing to accept a bounty.

>>> we are already falling behind OS4 in graphics support

>> Didn't that happen like 7 years ago? :-)

> Not on AGP systems, which were all we had back then.

How is MorphOS "already falling behind OS4 in graphics support" "on AGP systems"? And why should the comparison of the present situation be restricted to AGP systems when OS4 has run on PCIe systems for as long as 8½ years including 2D acceleration?

> If I'm not mistaken, they still don't have 3D for the R300 cards.

Correct, and OS4 surely won't get it, and best of all, it doesn't matter one bit because OS4 has been supporting PCIe systems for such a long time.

> Mark has created basic 2D drivers for all ATI/AMD gpus up to the GGCN series .
> ALL Terascale gpus except the 69XX series

Or in other words: MorphOS has basic 2D drivers for all ATI/AMD GPUs up to and including TeraScale 2 :-)

> I'm sure he's working on updating the latest 2D limited cards to 3D [...].
> And as I've said before, he has GCN cards.

Maybe introducing basic 2D drivers for GCN cards first would be better with respect to users of OS4 on Sam460 or X5000 who would like to try out MorphOS.

>Maybe introducing basic 2D drivers for GCN cards first would be better with respect to users of OS4 on Sam460 or X5000 who would like to try out MorphOS.

Agreed. I sent him one (GCN card) before these new drivers were introduced. Actually two. Specifically a GCN1 dual bios 7850 that could be switched to 7870 mode, and and Gen2 R7 260X. I can't remember if I thought to include a 7750 or 7770, probably not.

Right now, a 2D GCN1 driver for cards like the 7750 would be perfect.
Although I'm sure Mark has had to adjust from the Terascale architecture to GCN, since the development of Terascale was quite linear.

Again, we need to pay our graphics team. Hans isn't working for free.

So, we are waiting for a GCN1 driver.
GCN2 and GCN3 were skipped by OS4 in favor of Polaris (GCN4).
While GCN5, Vega, is already available and what may be the last generation, GCN6, Navi will be out this year.

Is this a correct summary?

Considering that GCN architecture is completely unrelated to Terascale architecture...

I am again conflicted.
I would be easier for Mark to complete 3D support for the remaining Terascale cards, than to struggle to learn a new family of cards that will soon have 6 generations of development.

And my benchmarks of the HD6870 vs the HD7850 did nothing to convince me that there was a lot of improvement between these two architectures. After all, we don't utilize GPGPU computation, which is where GCN shines.

Still on the basis of availability, and the pricing of lower end GCN4 cards, maybe the jump makes sense.

RX560 cards are little more than $100, and RX570 cards like the one Mark purchased for his PC start at about $130.

Alternately, used Radeon HD6870 cards can be had on eBay for as little as $22.

I have no firm opinion on any of this.

I'd like a GCN1 driver, a GCN4 driver, but would probably get just as much performance out of a cheap HD6870.

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Nope. I've yet to see benchmarks in actual programs beat my X1950 in my G5.

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Its getting really hard to find the XT version of that card (the AGP X1950) these days though, the cards out there are mainly X1950Pro cards.

And if you want to see firmware prompts or access firmware, you have to move down to an Apple X800XT.

A Radeon HD4670 or HD3850 AGP card would probably outperform it if there were 3D drivers.

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I also have a X800XT (technically X850XT IIRC) and Mac flashed FireGL. The X800XT and FireGL are relatively close to each other in benchmarks. X1950 blows them out of the water. Unfortunately it seems X1950 AGP are known to be kind of flaky, mine is no exception. It acts up time to time. I only paid $20 at a flea market, but still...

[ Edited by redrumloa 21.05.2019 - 15:23 ]

> we are waiting for a GCN1 driver.

Some X5000 or Sam460 owners are, yes.

> GCN2 and GCN3 were skipped by OS4 in favor of Polaris (GCN4). While
> GCN5, Vega, is already available and what may be the last generation,
> GCN6, Navi will be out this year. Is this a correct summary?

I think so, yes.

> Still on the basis of availability, and the pricing of lower end
> GCN4 cards, maybe the jump makes sense.

I think the main incentive for the MorphOS team to jump to GCN1 or even GCN4 should be the prospect of gaining a foothold with the owners of boards/systems MorphOS was ported to latest.

>>> we are already falling behind OS4 in graphics support

>> Didn't that happen like 7 years ago? :-)

> Nope. I've yet to see benchmarks in actual programs beat my X1950 in my G5.

Graphics benchmark results for Warp3D Nova, OpenGL ES 2 and GL4ES on GCN1 or GCN4 cards are being posted to sites like amigans.net all the time. You just need to take them on with your G5/X1950 combo (and take care to not inadvertently make this a CPU performance comparison instead). It's because you haven't been looking that you've yet to see them.
In general, "better graphics support" can mean several things, among them:
1. drivers for more modern graphics cards: that's what I was referring to
2. a more modern 3D API using modern GPU features: that's where OS4 got ahead of MorphOS with Warp3D Nova and OpenGL ES 2
3. better performance: that's what you are referring to (true or not)

> if you want to see firmware prompts or access firmware,
> you have to move down to an Apple X800XT.

...or an Apple X850XT :-)

Duplicate

[ Edited by Jim 23.05.2019 - 09:22 ]

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For me, a Ryzen support for Morphos4 can be a great deal, strong power, good gpu all in one chip.

Morphos will not be a port but a completly new operating system, i d'ont know if it will be called Morphos4.. it depend of the team.

Even Morphos X64 seems to exist we don't know his state, the rodmap seems to be allready done. (for start), i wish Mark and the team has choosed a way to bypass hardware drivers issues, if it's possible.
Rewritting a whole Os each time is not a joke.

I'm sure the way is the Isa change, i'm happy with Morphos now, but we need to dream a bit, as all amiga Fans we are dreamers.

Some news from the team (only real facts) can be a good thing.


Morphos Rules





[ Edited by acepeg 22.05.2019 - 22:36 ]

I don't care what ISA we pursue. X64 might be cheaper, Power9 (continuing with PPC) leave us with really only one affordable system, and Blackbird isn't available yet.

But, as you pointed out, the call was made awhile ago.

I don't think the ISA change is what is holding up the developers. As I said, I think it that they want to enhance the OS.

> Blackbird isn't available yet.

Around the same time:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=11815&forum=11&start=245

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Well, as I'd prefer to easily retain 68K JIT and compatibility with existing PPC code, that would make Blackbird preferable.
Mark said he'd accept one, if we could obtain it.
But Raptor doesn't give away hardware, and I'm in an economic sink hole right now.

I've discussed fund raising with Papi, but we never got that arranged.

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I wait a confirmation from bigfoot before launch a fund raising.

[ Edité par Papiosaur 23.05.2019 - 16:14 ]

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I'm not sure why he hasn't responded to you, but I can send him an email.
Again, none of this would guarantee a port.
Mark got paid for the G5 port, but it would give him something to explore.

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Just checked to see what the price of the Blackbird mobo is now, and I saw that they are not currently available. I wonder if that is because they have been successful in selling many of the boards, or just because they only had very few manufactured? It's still an expensive computer, when compared to what is available in x64 land, but I'm sure many MorphOS users and team members can't help but wonder what it would be like to run MorphOS on such a powerful CPU. If there were ever any plan to develop real SMP for the PPC version of MorphOS, even if it means breaking backward compatibility with old Amiga software, the Blackbird would be a great high end choice for such version of MorphOS. Even without any guarantee of getting a port of MorphOS, I would participate in a crowd funding attempt to purchase 2 to 5 Blackbird motherboards to be given to Bigfoot and any other MotphOS Dev. Team members who showed an interest in at least working on a proof of concept port to the Blackbird.

I wouldn't mind running Linux on a Blackbird as my daily computer, while waiting for a possible port of MorphOS, but probably I would wait until the port was finished, or an official announcement was made confirming that a port was coming, before I would spend that much money on any PPC system.

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Sorry but i don`t get it why we should raise money to buy a Blackbird Board and give it to the Devs.
This will only slow down the development of MorphOS on AMD64. And why would one want that?
The Blackbird is more expansive then a full Ryzen Desktop System. And it`s slower has less USB Ports and so on. And it would be a dead end.
I say let`s concentrate on the future with CPU and GPU.
We need that ISA switch. And i am happy that the Devs are working on MorphOS on AMD64.
I own a G5 2,7Ghz with a Radeon9800Pro. And what i would like to see is not more drivers for every GCN Generation. Instead IMHO the MorphOS Team should concentrate the whole forte in AMD64 Port and Polaris or Navi GPU drivers