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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 26.04.2011 - 05:58 ]

@ Velcro_SP

Of course the entire universe gets not indexed by google, and there are things in RL that bary doesn't exist on the net. But don't you agree that if the LimePC would have really hit the market already ppl would leave some traces out there on the www? I mean we don't speak about fishing sets or such but about cheap computers with the main aim to *connect ppl to the internet*. And this the important issue here: The devices target the internet, but still you barely don't find them on the net. Doesn't that sound kind of fishy..? I highly doubt there were serious numbers sold.

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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 26.04.2011 - 05:59 ]

@hooligan:

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Umm.. I ran MorphOS on my A1200 in 128MB with a 200MHz 603e and a 8MB Permedia2 graphics board.

Tell me somehow that the Efika is underpowered compared to the PowerUP versions of MorphOS (especially with the added bonus of a 128MB graphics card, DDR RAM, 16-bit 48KHz audio, S/PDIF)?

If the Pegasos replaced your 256MB 233MHz 604e A4000-PUP monsters, the Efika took the place of your A1200 which could never get that far. We really got you covered for hardware, and brought out hardware for those people who said that the Pegasos (at 500 EUR) was too expensive.

@Velcro_SP

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You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs, I always say.

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Let's be clear here: the Mac Mini was a great strategic choice, however for a sustainable market it should have been ported and been working *at the release of the Mac Mini* and not still in progress 2 years after Apple have vowed never to touch Power Architecture ever again.

That point was about halfway through the Pegasos' lifespan.

Right now, it is not a SUSTAINABLE market. Great idea, 4 and a half years too late.

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And when you buy those 45? Will 45 more pop up to replace it? How long will that continue?

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Developers do not need the m68k emulation to do what they need to do. Users are the only people who should be concerned that it runs old apps. Developers would just recompile it for the new architecture.

It surprises me that you would go so far as to tout the Mac Mini as the future of MorphOS, but you didn't follow the Apple-Intel transition at all - developers got boxes first, they recompiled all their apps with one click using XCode, then it got released, and 6 months later half the updated apps in the world no longer worked on that OS release anyway (Mac developers are really not concerned about staying compatible with anything but the last release - if you don't have some kind of Leopard right now, you're screwed :)

As weird as this sounds, it is a sustainable market.

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No, we explained that We Have The Technology and they basically said that it was the most pointless technology ever. Freescale's entire development strategy with m68k->PPC was give people the ability to compile PowerPC code. Actually running it natively? Absolutely none of their customers have this desire, at all. It negates every benefit of the PowerPC architecture and new operating system technologies to demote apps to running in an emulator, even if it *IS* a fancy real-time native-performance caching JIT.

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That implies MorphOS gets ported in the first place.

Matt, it's just that we don't like the things you say, not that they aren't true.

I guess the big difference would be that the MorphOS team had ten times the resources it has. This way a release for a new computer would get done in a month. So, instead of discussing, we would be all too busy testing or favourite operating system in every computer known to man.

(Fantasy has always been a dangerous drug for amigans - the worst of it is that it's FREE)

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Doesn't really matter if you ran MorphOS on a 4 dollar pocketcalculator, it doesn't make Efika any more suitable for desktop-use.

If I would have wanted to compare it against something, I would have compared it against Pegasos1 or Pegasos2, and my point would still be valid , even against the lowspecced Peg1.

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Pegasos didnt actually replace anything in my case, I used to own a quite souped up A1200 which was getting dustlayers before I eventually sold it. I returned to scene by purchasing a Pegasos1, which I later upgraded to Pegasos2. I would never, NEVER go less than Peg1... even if I was given one for free. Doesnt really matter if Efika costs 99 or 9.99 if its not up to tasks needed these days, does it? I happen to know several people who thinks the same so I am not alone on this.

That said, there are probably several very happy Efika-owners. Or actually ... not, as you yourself said the MOS/Efika-sales were very low.

@Neko

Truth is without a proper buisness-plan (including lots of funding) an ARM-port makes just as much sense as a x86-port. And once such a port would be done you'd still be lacking any decent SW since some stupp isn't portable for various reasons.

Another point is, while you ditch the 68k-legacy-support, why not completly overhaul the APIs to modern standards ?

And if you do that anyway, why nor reuse existing (open-source) libraries ?
-> YALD ...

Or in other words, why would anybody (Genesi) use MorphOS, RiscOS or anyother ObscureOS on an ARM-netbook when "normal" OSes provide so much more. Unless you can present that in a convincing form to the MorphOS-team all talk about an ARM-port is futile.

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The MacMini was what the A500 was 15 years before and those can still be had from EBay without problems. So no, there will never (atleast not in the next 20 years) a shortage of used Macs it's just wether it will be considered good value for money and if MorphOS-users might want to run tasks to heavy for a G4.

Genesi and their products no longer have anything to do with MorphOS, so it makes me wonder why Neko posts messages here any longer?

Other than the obvious reason to advertise new Genesi products and try to stir up support from users to persuade the MorphOS Development Team to port MorphOS to what ever Genesi happens to be selling at the moment.

His comments that attempt to discourage and put down the decision of the MorphOS Development Team to port to the MacMini seem to me to be lame and very biased, though he does throw in enough actual facts to make them seem more believable to any that can't see through the intentions behind the comments.

Having MorphOS ported to ANY new hardware will be a plus to the community and the team selling the licenses. But just because the G4 MacMini is long discontinued does not automatically mean it is the death knell of MorphOS, or that it was a mistake to spend the time to do it. It is just a step forward in performance that was MOST LIKELY the easiest and most logical step to make, at the time the decision was made about which port should be done next.

Who knows which hardware platform the team will choose to work on next? Maybe it will be a Mac laptop that has the most similarities to the current port to the MacMini, and as such the easiest to complete quickly, or perhaps it will be something completely different, such as an ARM architecture.

What ever it is, many will disagree and second guess the team for the direction they choose and I don't doubt that if it is not a Genesi product, Neko will have more discouraging rhetoric to share with us about the mistake the team is making and how it will kill off any chance for MorphOS to survive.

Perhaps MorphOS is not "Sustainable" no matter what hardware it is ported to in the long run. Nobody really knows, but only the few remaining of us really care anymore.

Edit: @Kronos, although I like your spirit, I think Neko and many others could shoot dozens of holes in your A500 : MacMini comparison. For one, I doubt that Mac users will be so fond of their G4 MacMini's that they will be trying to keep them alive 20 years after they were first released. Also, in today's society, too many computers, including Macs, are going into the trash when they are no longer useful, and the G4 MacMini will very soon no longer be useful "AS A MAC", though it will do nicely as a MorphOS machine. The problem arises in that 99% of all G4 MacMini owners will never EVER hear about saving their little outdated computers to use MorphOS on, unless we get the word out and make it known that they are worth SOMETHING to our small (tiny) community. Then, instead of having 99% of the old G4 MacMini owners throw theirs in the trash in a few years, only 95% will throw them in the trash. I think I should start some free ads accepting donations of all G4 Macs for recycling to try and save a few from the landfill.

[ Edited by amigadave on 2009/9/2 20:40 ]

@Neko

You arent good like public relations, you need to recruiting users for this new efika not opposed to morphos with your ARM era.

@amigadave

To use more than 128MB RAM you need to change the way the RAM is routed to the SoC; the board is prepped to take 128MB in 2 chips.

Adding 4 chips and increasing the RAM size means changing some of the lane such that instead of 16-bit per chip, the RAM is routed 8-bit per chip, to make a 32-bit DDR bus.

You'd need a new PCB with the correct layers. The solder pads on the underside are just 'for show' - they don't work unless the other layers match (just that etching the top layer is done exactly the same for any PCB that was made).

Add to that, the firmware needs modifying to set up the RAM with the new PCB and whatever new RAM chips appeared. The reason it was stuck at 128MB was a design decision to keep cost low; at the time the original was designed, ~512MB of DDR RAM was prohibitive and most of the chips in the configuration that was most efficient would have tripled the BOM cost of the board.

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Interesting........ then that should not in itself prevent a memory upgrade where the two 64mb chips giving a total of 128mb of existing RAM were removed and replaced with two 128mb chips for a total of 256mb of RAM placed in the exact location as the previous original RAM chips had been installed, correct? That would not change the "lane", or require any pcb change with regards to the 32-bit DDR bus.

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Very odd way to produce a motherboard, that it would need to be redesigned and have different etching or pathways on interior layers to accommodate different RAM amounts, but you would have access to that information, where the public does not, so I will concede that adding memory to the pads on the underside of the Efika is NOT possible.

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Hmmmm....... switching from 128mb of RAM to 512mb of RAM would have tripled the cost of the materials of the Efika board at the time it was released? That is another surprise that it would be that much more, but if the actual material cost was approximately $20 to $25 (I can't see it being too much more since the end cost of the Efika board from Directron is only $99), then the tripled cost would be $60 to $75. The price to manufacture the Efika pcb's would have been the same, so that would not have increased the end price of the Efika, the profit margin would have increased, but not tripled, the shipping would have been the same, taxes would have slightly increased, so all said and done the final price of an Efika board might have gone from $99 up to perhaps $160-$199 for the 512mb version. I can see why the decision to stay with the lower spec'd version was made, as the sales of the more expensive model would have been limited to perhaps only half, or a bit more of what the sales of the Efika for MorphOS use were at the $99 price point. Much too low to make it economically feasible.

Still, if possible in ANY way (such as replacing the existing RAM with double the amount of RAM in the same location as the existing) increasing the amount of RAM on the existing Efika boards would be a welcome modification and I would be willing to work on any firmware modifications that would be necessary to make it possible, just because it would be a good thing to do. This is assuming that the correct RAM chip replacements could be found at a decent price.

Thanks for the clarification regarding the Efika mainboard layers which are different, depending on what RAM design is chosen at the time of manufacture of the pcb.

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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 24.04.2011 - 07:24 ]

Hmmmm, I personally don't think lack of viable hardware is the only problem facing MorphOs at the moment.

For instance, I own two Efika's and a Pegasos II... and will not use MorphOS. As far as I am concerned, after paying a small fortune for the hardware and then waiting years for a semi-complete version... I will not pay DOUBLE of what a mainstream Os with twice as many features costs.

Sorry, I won't do it - I'm not THAT stupid. Sad truth is, I know quite a few others in the same boat who either use 1.5, work around the 30 minute limit of 2.x demo version, or have moved on to a Linux distro.

I am NOT saying MorphOs should be free, like Aros. What I am saying is that 150 Euro is just stupid, plain stupid. Yes, I know a lot of work went into it, and yes, I know with such a small market the MorphOs team settled on that price to try and recoup some of their time. But at the end of the day, you cannot charge $80,000.00 for a second hand Volkswagon Beetle just because you put it together piece by piece in your spare time over a 10 year period.

As a 'business' they should have looked at the market/potential market and the ACCEPTED price for comparitive products and then desided if there was scope to make money.

Instead, it seems like they were all Amiga fans and thought it would be fun to write/produce an Amiga compatible Os (which is very good I admit).... and then try to recoup their time! Sorry, at 150 euro's I firmly believe only a fraction of Efika and Pegasos users have bothered to upgrade. Nearly every forum where MorphOs 2.x is mentioned a proportion of users state they have not/will not register. Recently Ralph Schmidt told me (via email) that he believed 90% of MorphOs users had registered. 'Da Nile is a river....

Aros is free, runs on modern, cheap easy to find hardware, is updated often, has a great distro (Icaros Desktop) which comes with games, software, utils etc all installed and actually 'feels' more like an Amiga than MorphOs. Whilst Aros is not quite as polished as MOS 2.3 atm, it is so close now that I can see Aros overtaking MOS within the next 12-18 months.

Don't get me wrong, I love MorphOs, but not enough to pay 450 euro's for 3 licenses, with no guarantee of future releases/upgrades, no hardware future and worst of all - licenses tied to hardware!!!!

RIP MorphOs. We will remember you fondly.

@abraXXious,

MorphOS isn't for everyone and it, and the Amiga before it, have not made any sense from a cost to own point of view since the days of the A500 & A2000, but still there are a few thousand people World wide that choose to spend money on such systems.

For some it is a religion, for others just a hobby, and then there are many levels in between.

If you sold just one of your MorphOS capable systems you could afford the license for one of the others. Why keep all three if you are no longer interested in supporting the development of MorphOS?

I figure I haven't quit having fun with AmigaOS3.x yet, so I will keep on supporting MorphOS a while longer and see where it leads to before it dies out.

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Isn't MorphOS being developed for the fun ? Why talking about "business" ? Where's business in fun ? Who's "funding" MacMini port then ?

Just wondering :)

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Would be a good idea :)

It's funny how despite being fun, and developed entirely in spare time, anything seems to require money, bounty, etc...

I would understand that an ARM isn't being considered because it would take too much resources, hardware isn't really interesting (slow/unsuitable,...), would break compatibility,... But... because of lack of funding ?

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You could sell the Peg II for a profit, and possibly the Efikas too..

But I can't disagree on the pricing on MorphOS, I bought a family Box Pack of Leopard for less than 1 copy of MorphOS. Adminitdy I did have to shop around a bit, but... and that's the version with iLife and iWork 09. Snow leopard costs $30/?25, even the boxed home editions of Windows 7 are cheaper for flips sake...

Whilst Aros is not quite as polished as MOS 2.3 atm, it is so close now that I can see Aros overtaking MOS within the next 12-18 months.

Joke of the month.

@Leo,

I don't know about MorphOS only being developed for "Fun", but I agree that it is only being done in the spare time of the developers working on it.

I would like to see more developers added to the team, but obviously they are hard to find these days, I mean the ones that are still interested in anything related to the Amiga or MorphOS and willing to work for free (or almost free). Also, I don't know the developers working on MorphOS, but I get the impression that they are a close knit group that would not accept the help of others, without knowing them, or having the other developers prove their worth to the team by doing some other programming of applications or utilities for MorphOS or AmigaOS in the past or currently working on something.

What I would like to see is that MorphOS would go Open Source with the current MorphOS Development Team retaining control of what gets added to their work, sort of like the way Linus Torvald controls what happens to the Linux Kernal. Instead of selling licenses for MorphOS, perhaps the team could accept donations and collect money in other ways that may even exceed the amount they now receive from their sales of licenses.

Just a few thoughts, that may, or may not make any sense. You must realize that I am still a newbie in these MorphOS parts and know only a fraction of the history of MorphOS and the Development Team.

All I do know is that if there could be more developers working on MorphOS, we could all get updates faster. I am determined to learn to program better and contribute by coding, or helping with code that will run on MorphOS. A game, a utility, or some other application that I can use and will hopefully be useful to other MorphOS users. I won't make it as one of the elite programmers that work on MorphOS itself, but at least I will feel good about contributing something. I suggest that every MorphOS users do the same and learn to program for MorphOS, if they are not already doing so. (but then I am probably being way to optimistic and naive about this whole topic)

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Although I really like MorphOS and I don't agree that Aros is as close as some might think to catching up, I can see that Aros (and Icaros) appear to be gaining steam and could/should overtake MorphOS and AmigaOS4.1 combined EVENTUALLY, if they continue to gain additional developers in the future, which they may or may not be able to do, depending on the hardware capabilities and availabilities of MOS and/or AOS4.x in the future.

I hope that MorphOS continues to be developed to the point that it has me seriously considering giving up on all other OSes, but how likely is that to really happen? Unless it gets ported to some more modern and available hardware over the next year or two, it will probably die out, as there is only so much time that the old Pegasos' and MacMini computers will last. (They may not last as long as our beloved Classic Amiga computers have, and even if they could, would you really want to be using a Pegasos or a G4 MacMini 15 t o20 years from now? I don't think so.)

[ Edited by amigadave on 2009/9/12 11:21 ]

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Well... Last time I tested AROS (a few days ago), it was by far behind the very first version of MorphOS I tested (was 1.2, and that was 6 (!) years ago).

Since 1.2, MorphOS has matured a lot, gained a lot of software, had lots of bugfixes/optimisations, to reach current version 2.x. And that's without talking about the excellent graphics work done on skins, icons, user gadgets, backdrops,...

While I have to admit AROS has progressed quite a lot in the last few months, it's still far behind, and really need a focus: what's AROS ? What's the goal ? It seems it's the fans that are driving it...

Sure, it's a lot more accessible (despite compatibility problems, it's a lot easier to find a PC running AROS, than a rare PPC machine running MorphOS), could potentialy attract a lot more users/developers, but for that it should go somewhere...

- I like ARM, let's create a bounty, and port it to ARM. Most of the core libs aren't still complete, but who cares ? I love ARM !
- I'd love to see UAE integrated, ok, let's create a bounty for that.
- etc...

But fact is that MUI clone still isn't complete, there still isn't drag'n'drop,... Everything is uncomplete, the recent Poseidon port showed a lot of bugs that have been known and there for a long time...

I think AROS needs someone to drive it correctly, and resources should be spent to reach this goal, rather than going into multiple directions at the same time, without knowing where.

You may agree or not to the direction followed by MorphOS (I personnaly don't), but at least it's getting somewhere, and development is focused on that direction.

That was my two cents :)

[ Edited by Leo on 2009/9/12 20:08 ]

Did you try the new Icaros Desktop on top of AROS? Not having a I86 PC around anymore can't try it. But your experiences of AROS being a little, err... unfinished is the same as mine.

Despite what I've just said I'm no CPU snob, having an Amiga type OS on Intel looks like the way to go, but AROS just aint doing anything for me.

Also http://anubis-os.org/home/ progress? anyone?

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Same experience here for Aros / Icaros (latest release).
With being out of the Amiga / Morphos / Aros scene for a couple of years I tried Icaros because I can run it during my train commute to work.
I was excited for a few minutes but the problem is that despite the great improvements in the last year or so it is neither stable nor have a fraction of the software natively I could run on MorphOS back in 2002 !
Icaros is a great thing since it puts together the best pieces you can get on Aros. Unfortunately once you want more there is not much you can do since there are very few Aros binaries.

If only I could run MorphOS in a VM ...