With all the legal problems the AmigaOS4 users are suffering through, which are apparently causing even further delays (dare I say stoppage) in development of AmigaOS4, such as drivers for the long awaited Tabor motherboards, wouldn't now be a good time to promote MorphOS more actively? I know that our great team of MorphOS Developers have never been great at self promotion and advertising MorphOS, and I'm not asking them to do so, as I prefer that they work on coding, instead of using valuable time on creating promotional materials and ideas. What I would like to propose, and assist in creating, is the formation of a group of MorphOS users, who create ideas and advertisements that can be submitted to the MorphOS Development Team members for their approval, and once approved, spread across all websites and user group meetings that we deem to be good candidates for such advertisement materials.

Such a group of users might go a step further and try to raise money for paid advertisement space on websites and in magazines. I plan to return to promoting MorphOS at this years AmiWest Show in October, but don't mind doing so with my own money spent to rent the display table space. I just hope I will have enough time to properly prepare demonstrations of the latest version of MorphOS prior to the show, since I am not currently staying at my home, and the only MorphOS registered system I have with me is my 17" PowerBook.

Anyone interested in participating in such a group effort, please let me know. I think we could possibly join our efforts with the "WarmUP" group, who appear to have the same goals as the group I am proposing, but have not described their group in the same way as I have outlined above. I think the WarmUP group is primarily composed of non-english speaking users, but I might be wrong.

[ Edited by amigadave 28.08.2019 - 00:56 ]

> legal problems [...] are apparently causing even further delays (dare I say stoppage) in
> development of AmigaOS4, such as drivers for the long awaited Tabor motherboards

The audio driver for Tabor (which is what's still missing AFAIK) is A-Eon's duty and is not hampered by any (known) legal problem.

The people forever waiting for the dead OS4 and dead boards like the Tabor have already actively rejected MorphOS.

As Ralph once said - pearls before swine.

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That is never known in Amigaland. As example, A1-x1000 net driver is nobodys duty, and so is DMA on SAM460 onboard IDE.

>> The audio driver for Tabor [...] is A-Eon's duty

> That is never known in Amigaland.

From last year's AmiWest:

"What's missing before the board can be released is the audio driver and a finalised AmigaOS 4 ISO containing said driver. Dickinson could not describe the audio driver's current status since an update from the developer working on it didn't reach him in time for the show."
http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2018-10-00014-EN.html

To me, this doesn't read like Hyperion is the developer, even if the developer commissioned by A-Eon may have (had) ties with Hyperion.

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You might be right, but Trevor's quote does not say for certain that the driver work is being done by an A-Eon paid developer, or as part of the AmigaOS4 port to the Tabor boards, so I think it could be that it is Hyperion's responsibility, unless you have another quote that clearly states that drivers are the responsibility of A-Eon. Obviously I don't know all of what it takes to port any OS to a new motherboard, but the drivers to support a new motherboard seem to me to be the biggest part of such a port, and I wonder if Hyperion is not doing the drivers, what are they doing to port AmigaOS4 to the Tabor?

In any event, Trevor's prediction that the Tabor would be shipping to customers during the first quarter of 2019 is almost 6 months late now, and who knows when they will actually begin shipping from distributors.

@KennyR, My posting this thread is not aimed only at AmigaOS4 users, but more at any former Amiga user, like the few we have witnessed recently returning, and choosing MorphOS this past week or so on these forums. If MorphOS is advertised more effectively, and more often, we are more likely to get more users to try it out. There are still many Mac users who like their old PPC hardware, but it is hardly usable to run Mac software, and struggles to respond quickly, as noted by one of the new MorphOS users who commented about how blazing fast MorphOS runs on an old MacMini G4. And when AmigaOS4 gets back to it's normal glacial pace of development and releases any new updates, they will generate some kind of news on forums and Amiga magazines, if MorphOS is being advertised as well, such advertising will be seen by the people interested in ALL Amiga related topics. Not doing any kind of advertising for MorphOS, when we need new users and new developers to create more native software, is just dumb, in my opinion. If you don't agree, then don't help, and stop reading this thread, as it is of no interest to you. If you want to help in some way, great! Advertising ideas and artwork are needed and can come from anyone interested in helping. Fund raising to help pay for advertising space will also be helpful, but first the ideas and artwork must be created.

@thread

I think we're repeating a discussion here.

It was already stated quite clearly by Costel Mincea that the audio driver was not a Hyperion responsibility.

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and as regards other work on Tabor:

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Source October, 2018

As to what is Hyperion doing in regard to Tabor...it was already stated that the Friedens (albeit contracters) were working on "trampoline".

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Source - Amiga present and future: interview with Trevor Dickinson

Edit: added quotes and link

#6

> Trevor's quote does not say for certain that the driver work is being done
> by an A-Eon paid developer

I've been referring to the audio driver specifically as to my knowledge all other critical drivers are done (no matter by whom) and the missing audio driver is what's holding back the Tabor/A1222 release.
Edit: https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=11&topic_id=12184&start=194

> I think it could be that it is Hyperion's responsibility, unless you have
> another quote that clearly states that drivers are the responsibility of A-Eon.

Hyperion director Costel "Cyborg" Mincea from 1 and 2 days after Trevor's AmiWest statements (manually enhanced Google translation):

"The audio driver was _never_ subject of the contract between Hyperion and A-EON. Why not? Because A-EON wanted it that way, and usually anyway, the hardware manufacturers themselves provide all the drivers that go beyond the bare essentials of the OS. The only exception was the network driver [...]. ALL other drivers, especially onboard SATA and audio, are not part of the porting contract and therefore not Hyperion's responsibility. [...] the missing audio driver [...] was commissioned directly by A-EON to another developer [...]. Thus also not Hyperion's responsibility. [...] However, we are also working to possibly provide a slightly faster solution for the software side, so that we can finally finish this project - from our side. It has already taken long enough."
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=http://www.os4welt.de/viewtopic.php?p=34568%23p34568

"The fact that the audio driver is still not finished is just as surprising and annoying to us, because for (almost) all of our work on Tabor we will only see money through the sale of licenses. But [...] Hyperion's contracted work is fulfilled and if necessary, we will also take care of the audio driver ourselves"
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=http://www.os4welt.de/viewtopic.php?p=34586%23p34586

So far I've seen no indication that Hyperion has taken over the Tabor audio driver development from A-Eon.

> if Hyperion is not doing the drivers, what are they doing to port AmigaOS4 to the Tabor?

They had to adapt the lowest-level portions of OS4 to the P1022's e500v2 core (even though its supervisor instructions and peculiarities shouldn't be too far from those of previously supported e5500). Hyperion's hardest work for the Tabor port was certainly the FPU emulation to account for the e500v2's GPR-based SPE FPU. But according to Hyperion (see above), their work is long done (barring further optimizations and fixing of possible bugs that will stand out after release, of course).


Edit: number6 beat me to it.
Edit2: added link to contrary info to first paragraph

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 26.09.2019 - 23:28 ]

@Andreas_Wolf & number6,

Thanks for the explanation, I was not aware of those comments. I have no interest in the Tabor, other than how it affects the community as a whole, if it can sell in quantities large enough to help encourage more software development (which sadly I doubt). Yet, at this point in time, any news, or new hardware for such a tiny market, is a plus I guess.

With that clarification out of the way, I hope this thread can expand into a discussion about promoting MorphOS in a way that results in more users, and hopefully a small percentage of those new users will also be programmers who can create new MorphOS native software for all of us to use.

In my daily life, I’m an entrepreneur. I’ve had a TV show on PBS in the U.S. and owned a tech news co I sold to a PR firm in San Francisco. I’ve worked a lot in data + analytics, specifically in advertising and marketing.

A long way of saying, while I’m brand new here (Don’t have a machine yet, but soon) I could be useful helping on the marketing/advertising end. If MorphOS was like the orgs I work with/for (and had a budget to spend) MorphOS could run customer acquisition targeting online successfully.

I’m only aware of MorphOS because I missed my Amiga so bad.

That said, recently I was chatting with a young entrepreneur in her 20s and started talking about MorphOS, saw the look on her face and said, “Have you heard of Amiga computers?”

I was rewarded with a blank stare. Lol.

I see Andreas’s point. I assume most people find MorphOS because of their Amiga past. (Am I incorrect?)

How do people find it now?

I don’t know anything about anything yet, but I’m following this conversation.

[ Edited by Edicus_Rex 26.08.2019 - 14:40 ]

> I see Andreas’s point. I assume most people find MorphOS
> because of their Amiga past.

Actually, this was Dave's point ;-)

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Yes, most of our users are former Amiga users, but not 100% of them. There are a few users who have never owned an Amiga, but somehow stumbled upon MorphOS, and liked what they saw. I am hopeful that with proper advertising materials and methods, we can lure in a few more non-Amiga users, as well as many more former Amiga users. Most of all, I believe we need more programmers to write software. This is "IMHO" our biggest challenge for survival. No platform is going to survive if it doesn't have software to run. It is obvious that there are precious few programmers in our community, and those that remain aren't getting any younger (like us all). If we can't find new programmers, MorphOS will eventually cease to get any new software to run on this beautifully designed OS.

So, with that in mind, I invite any and all of you reading this to contribute in any way possible, toward finding more users and programmers for MorphOS. I've started a similar thread on the WArMUP forum site.

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An educated guess is that most MorphOS users are longtime or ex Amiga users, but there are also a few w/o Amiga history (there's no statistic AFAIK). On some not Amiga related sites sometimes MorphOS gets mentioned (osnews, some vintage Mac sites and some more tech sites). Mouth to mouth propaganda on meetings.

It's difficult to get users w/o former Amiga experience, because MorphOS roots very deep in the Amiga heritage. And most ppl with Amiga heritage either just want to play old games or are stuck to the name (a bit overdrawn and simplified, but as rule of thumb probably okay).

The requirement of hardware that usually got thrown to the bin already is only helping the real interested. I mean: I am happy, that hardware for MorphOS does cost only a little pocket money, but for the ppl who just want to try it out the hurdle to get some old "obscure" Mac is probably too high. That said I don't want to know how many ppl have a MorphOS capable hardware on their attics or so and just don't know that this hardware could get a 2nd life! Riding the green wave (actual computer recycling) was my last idea to promote MorphOS for a general audience, but somehow noone outside our community is listening...

[ Editiert durch Zylesea 27.08.2019 - 01:05 ]

my bad.walking while reading and typing is always bad. Lol

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Right on, Dave- after talking to my young friend (I'm 47) I thought, "oh man, Amiga needs young blood!" :)

You know what could be a lot of fun is to hold a hackathon with a cash prize- teams compete to write software for MorphOS after being given a theme. "Create software to check public transit times in Barcelona" "Write a word processor competitor to google docs called MorphOS docs"

Winning team takes home the purse.

Or even find a way to get HS kids interested somehow.

My wheels are spinning

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Don't get too worked up yet. You haven't been around here, or probably the rest of the Amiga and MorphOS communities lately, and might need a dose of reality to curb your enthusiasm, but I'm glad you are interested in my suggestions.

It is hard to promote an OS that has the limitations that MorphOS inherited from AmigaOS when they (correctly) chose to make it compatible, and able to run a lot of Amiga software through MorphOS translation layer. It is also hard to promote anything on PPC hardware, that is only available used, or embedded based motherboards that are very expensive, but I think we still can attract "some" new users. Then there is the fact that learning how to program for MorphOS (and AmigaOS3 and 4) is not easy, and programming tools are limited. For me, even if we only bring in a few dozen to a few hundred new users, and if only 1 to 10 of those new users are programmers willing to write native MorphOS software occasionally, then my efforts are well rewarded.

Raising money and/or donations of hardware won't be as easy as you might think. Specially large sums of money, or expensive hardware, but I'll keep an open mind, and hope for the best. First, lets see who else is interested in working on promoting MorphOS to new users.

Edit: I'm not sure where you live, but High School kids in the USA would laugh at anyone trying to promote the use of any Amiga or MorphOS system to them. There might be one or two who would be interested in running an Amiga emulator on their existing computer, or a Raspberry Pi, just to see what the games looked like 30 years ago.

What I think we need first is ideas, artwork and advertising bullet points, or slogans. Then we can work on figuring out where and how we are going to present the advertising materials, and how much money is needed to buy advertising space. Lastly we figure out how we are going to raise that advertising money.

[ Edited by amigadave 27.08.2019 - 08:19 ]

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This would be logical and big market, but even there M$ as example, does some generic drivers.

Catch22 is: how is HW developer (Mai logic, AEON, Apple ...) going to develop drivers for such a niche market that has interest to use the HW, not other way around?

Where can one hire OS4 developers outside Hyperion and friends? Even if HW company would accept it.

And from user perspective who is to blame? Is AEON responsibile for lack of 3D with my default RadeonHD on x1000, no onboard ethernet, no dual core and above 2GB use? Or Hyperion?

As X1000 case shows, its in practice, outsourced job with dubious results and copyright in the end. And painstake in OS4 development.

Tabor is now just another showcase. But dont forget e.g. Warp3D drivers for Radeons 4000-6870
(default SAM and X1000 gfx cards) or SAM460 onboard SATA DMA driver, that never came to be.

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MorphOS could benefit from MacPPC usability, and such effort would be nice.

More so, once x86 version comes out.

[ Edited by vox 27.08.2019 - 12:24 ]

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The MorphOS Dev. Team has already stated that the port to x64 hardware would NOT be to new Mac hardware, but that they would choose 1 or 2 hardware choices that would hopefully be available for purchase new for a while, at a good price/performance ratio. That's not a direct quote, but the way I interpreted what was stated by one or more of the team members. I can't remember where I saw this, so I can't go find it to quote it, or find a link.

I do agree that we might find a very small number of new MorphOS users from the camp of Mac users who still own and use their PPC Mac systems, and that retro Mac forum sites would be a good place to advertise MorphOS, in a non-threatening, or non-confrontational way, so that the Mac users aren't riled up by our advertising methods.

> Andreas_Wolf wrote:
> A-EON wanted it that way [...]

No, I didn't write this. Google translated this from something written by Costel "Cyborg" Mincea. I'd appreciate if you at least didn't delete in your re-quote the quotation marks I put there for a reason. You may do without the italics for all I care.

> HW developer (Mai logic, AEON [...])

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7001&start=872 ;-)

> Where can one hire OS4 developers outside Hyperion and friends?

At A-Eon and friends, of course ;-)

> we might find a very small number of new MorphOS users from the
> camp of Mac users who still own and use their PPC Mac systems,
> and that retro Mac forum sites would be a good place to advertise
> MorphOS, in a non-threatening, or non-confrontational way, so
> that the Mac users aren't riled up by our advertising methods.

Oh yeah, that old attempt didn't go too well ;-)

Is there a way to create a hybrid ISO with the MorphOS v3.11, or later system, on it but with some of the added benefits of the Chrysalis pack or other addition(s) added into it so it is directly bootable?

I say that as I feel the basic OS does look a little 'vanilla' for a new user who might like to tinker - for free - with something that looks a little more embellished, and nice to look at, with a 'juicier' looking start-up skin than white folders and more representative icons than some of those that you get when you just boot the MorphOS system ISO disc. Something to get them 'hooked' right from the start/boot-up process.

I really like MorphOS, but if/when you install a basic system it does look a bit bland and uninspiring at first glance and if that is all a 'trial' gets by any new user then they will probably just 'walk away', instead of seeing it for what it really is, and continue to evolve into even more of an improved alternative OS. This is the best OS I have ever used, there are a few niggles/missing features I consider it should improve on, but comparing it to MacOSX and Windows feature to feature then 'they don't shine half as brightly' - for me IMHO.

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But is that surprising? The Amiga was released in 1985, 34 years ago. It peaked (arguably) in 1991, 28 years ago.

Work that backwards. Supposing you were back in 1991, and someone mentioned to you a computer system that was big in 1963, and hence most of its fans were in their 40s and 50s. You ask what software there is for it, and you're told that most of it is comes with the OS, is ported from a modern OS, or is from the 1960s.

What would have been your response?


Plus, (and @thread in general, not to you Edicus_Rex), AmigaOS was an non-scalable design. The way it works has many fans, but the problem is that it can never do many of the things that modern operating systems take for granted, like killing tasks or virtual memory or multi cores. And therefore nothing with backward compatibility with it can either.

And more controversially, the way the community got through the harder years was to become very thick-headed and resistant to outside change: stuff like deriding x86 and Windows, almost like it was a religion to do so. It kept them going, but it also meant they were far more prone to turning on their own. When MorphOS came out, it was immediately attacked as being a threat. This was all too easy to harness as a weapon.

There's too much water under the bridge. We can't make MorphOS appeal to people who never knew the Amiga, and we can't make it appeal to people who worshipped the Amiga brand name unconditionally. We also can't go in a radical new direction because we lose the Amiga connection that makes it appeal to its current userbase.

Is there a solution to that? I'm pretty sure there isn't. But I'd love to hear one nonetheless.

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Albeit I see the Chrysalis pack a bit with mixed feelings (great stuff & very handy, but a bit overloaded with many dependencies/settings) I like that idea. I think André could be the right person to ask about the possibilites of creating a LiveCD with bells and whistles.



[ Editiert durch Zylesea 27.08.2019 - 23:34 ]

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I also feel that some of the Chrysalis pack is overloaded with stuff - but you do at least get to choose what you don't like and either consign it to being deleted or isolate it, or like it and get to use it. Possibly just an agreed selection of 'goodies' from the Chrysalis Pack that look good, and work well, could be added to the base MorphOS ISO to make it look more inspiring?

It's that initial choice that often will make the impact.

The silvery/blue 'hot-air' balloon is fantastic from a graphic perspective, but maybe the Amiga shades - the ones from the 'checkmark'/tick could be incorporated in some way, maybe even a graphic rainbow effect spiral, into the hot-air balloon panels to signify it's roots, and that it's still based on the Amiga system to newcomers, for those that realise the significance, and it also honours the base of where MorphOS comes from as well, but that is instantly recognisable that it's MorphOS (butterfly logo).

We really do need an all-in-one office package that works with any mainstream OS with wordprocessor, spreadsheet, database, that harmonises data and allows importation of text or data from one application into the other where appropriate. I doubt that a presentation package could also initially be incorporated into such an office package, but if it were considered possible then that would be a great addition as well.

I know André Siegel did an excellent Beta of Folio, and then subsequently had a data failure which compromised all that work on Folio, but it is something like that program that utilises the web-browser as the engine to manipulate other software built to use it, that may save development time for other gifted programmers, ideally working as a team, probably, hopefully.

Anyway, these are just suggestions, and hopefully some may be implementable.

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I like, but am a bit unsure how the Dev. Team would think of such an modified ISO being advertised as MorphOS? It would need to be clearly labeled MorphOS3.11 (or 12, if 3.12 is released before our efforts are finished) plus Chrysalis Pack, or 3.11 plus Extras, if not all of the elements of the Chrysalis Pack are used. A group of MorphZone users could pick and choose which items from the Chrysalis Pack are to be included, and work on creating a new bootable ISO that combines the OS and such items together. I think it would need to be a bootable ISO of a snapshot of someone's freshly installed and modified system, and how would that work on several different hardware choices? This is not an easy task to add extra installation items to the stock MorphOS install ISO, and the Dev. Team might not approve of such "presentation" of their work. I also don't want to burden any of the Dev. Team members with extra work on their part, to help with creation of a modified MorphOS install ISO.

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Again, changes to someone else's work would need to be approved by the person who created the graphics in the first place, unless we were to create original artwork from scratch, but I like your thinking about the changes.

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This is something that has been discussed in detail in the past, but I don't hear about anyone actually working on porting an office suite to MorphOS, only the mentions about one of the Frieden brothers work on Libre Office for AmigaOS4. If we could find a few experienced MorphOS programmers who would be willing to work together to complete the porting of any office suite to MorphOS, prior to Libre Office being ported to AmigaOS4, it would be a great bit of advertising info in favor of MorphOS and the software available for it.

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Thanks for your suggestions, even though I was looking for advertising suggestions and people willing to create artwork and slogan ideas for MorphOS, more than programming ideas for software we don't currently have. I agree that the bone stock MorphOS3.11 install isn't flashy and eye catching to some, but it does have a certain elegance, and is a great leap forward from AmigaOS3.1, or even 3.9. Perhaps a YouTube video could be made showing how to install MorphOS3.11, plus the Chrysalis Pack, or just certain parts of the Chrysalis Pack, so that the combined installation is shorter, with a step-by-step walk through of how to modify the desktop and folder icons, plus a walk through of how to use some of the key features of the OS, and some of the more useful third party software. Then we could include a link to such YT video, plus a link to the official MorphOS download page, in our new advertising work. What do you think about my suggestions?