@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 ...

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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 24.04.2011 - 07:23 ]

I am running it in a Fusion VM. Maybe this is what renders it unstable.
I think one situation I ran into was poseidon trying to use the USB devices through Fusion USB pass through.
I got cases where my 2 cores went up to 100% with running programs that took a fraction of my G3 and then G4 on morphOS (Scumvm) and continued to do so after closing it. Same thing when attempting a reset.
I do not think I ever had a hard reset. Maybe I am jumping to conclusions too quick but when you run into 3 problems in less then 5 minutes ...
I will give it another try. Maybe it was just bad luck.

Let me clarify my statement about AROS/Icaros overtaking MorphOS someday.

The only reason I say that is because AROS/Icaros is designed for hardware that will most likely still be in production in 5 years, but MorphOS is a big question mark as to what it will be running on by then, and if it will be running on anything that is being produced NEW 5 years from now. I am glad that AROS exists because of its potential future, but I would much rather have MorphOS in the future working on better hardware, than have AROS, unless AROS can truly "Catch Up" with where MorphOS is now and surpass it.

Unless the MorphOS development team grows larger and can somehow port to other platforms faster, they will always be developing for hardware that grows old before any port can be completed, unless it is a standardized platform where they develop for the standard and it works on later hardware designs that are released months or years later. Custom hardware will always have that drawback.

I know it may sound ugly and very "Amiga unlike" but would there be a decent way to run MorphOS in a VM ?
I know virtualization on PPC is no way reaching all the nice features supported on x86 Virtualization products but it would be a good way to abstract the hardware to avoid developping drivers every couple of years for another piece of hardware that will not be for sale anymore at release time ?
Are there any other alternatives to run hosted (Mac On Linux ?) or emulated on x86 (PearPC, QEmu) ?

Running MorphOS inside a virtual machine would not be compatible with the concept of requiring a keyfile that is locked to a particular hardware setup.

Good point. I guess that all the software company doing dongles must have had this problem and found a solution.
Bplan could manufacturate an usb dongle. That would bring some memories for the Scala users :)

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Well, nobody's forcing you to keep that concept

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Operating systems done by real men do take real control of real hardware. Virtualization is for sissies.

@Andre

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Amiga Forever manages it :)

The provided Kickstart ROMs are encrypted and are only unlocked by way of a key provided with the system.

There is no reason you couldn't create some firmware to load into QEMU if the work was worth the time and effort to get MorphOS in an emulated PPC environment on other boxes. That firmware binary could be locked and encrypted in the same way, as could the MorphOS ROM images, in which case you have two layers of security - only a licensed firmware runs with a key and only that licensed firmware can decrypt the locked version of MorphOS. You can tie it to whatever devices on the PC side you like - MAC address, hard disk IDs or whatever, the same way Microsoft does for Windows Genuine Advantage.

All this does in principle is move the licensing out to the host OS instead of "inside MorphOS".

By the way are you sure you wouldn't like to see MorphOS running on something like this?

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-343212.html