Hi,

So after a few weeks of investigation I finally got hold of a Mac Mini with decent specs and bought MorphOS. It's been close to 15 years since I last used an Amiga-like system properly so it's a fun learning experience. But on to some questions:

1. Where's the speed? Everyone says how fast the system is and how well the GUI works but so far I'm not seeing it. The compositing is slow, so is opening apps or any kind of harddrive access. It boots up really fast though. :)

2. Are there any "Amiga/MorphOS for dummies"-guides available? Been using WinNT and Unix so long that I'm struggling to remember the basics. Preferably documentation explaining basic terminology, filesystem-layout, quirks and things like that.

Thanks

Speed is relevant to what you're comparing it to, surprising you don't see it though. Can't say you installed it right, someone else will determine that. If you used sfs formatting, it should be evident. Harddive access is the fastest I've seem especially on usb.
Can't answer for the guide. This site has some threads in regards to guides.

Welcome over, and keep asking question, and have fun!!

hi and welcome!

1. i guess your mini has 32 mb videomem. try disabling 3d screens (system prefs/screens/uncheck enhanced layers). what resolution do you use? it shouldnt be slow, morphos on mini is blazing fast or it should be.

2. look at the library section here at morphzone. also try to get the pegasos book (outdated but still has valuable informations about morphos)

Yeah, I'm using SFS so that shouldn't be the cause. But having read up on the specs of the mini I see that the harddrive it ships with runs at 4200 rpm which has to be a huge bottleneck. :)

Welcome
I am a few weeks ahead of you. It's great not being a user. I have dual boot but I use the Mac OS less and less. Owb (browser) is fast and a joy. It has updates version1.6 with Flash. the threshold is daunting but an Amigian will be very happy here

There are guides to upgrading the Mini hard drive

[ Edited by osco on 2009/12/15 10:05 ]

Yeah, the threshold is what brought me here. After "mastering" winnt, unix, linux and beos/haiku I needed a new fix. I've been looking at getting an amiga or something to run morphos on but the efikas etc were way too pricey and slow for my taste. Adding support for Apple's G4's was a brilliant move making it easy to get hold of decent hardware for a decent price.

One thing that really sticks out is how much this feels like AmigaOS for the 21st century, Like an old car with a new paintjob, engine and drivetrain. :)

To speed up your Mac mini, you can change the hard drive (7200 rpm), put 1GB of memory, disable totally 3D compositing, and add a command in the open firmware to speed up the boot time :

setenv skip-netboot? true

There is an article (french) about speeding up a Mac mini :
http://obligement.free.fr/articles/ameliorer_macmini.php

Quote:

Guess what? I don't think so: You've seen already just how fast MorphOS boots... And that's perhaps the most stressing moment for the hard drive. As MorphOS doesn't rely on virtual memory, in normal use disk activity is exactly where it should be at: None.

I'll look into the compositing idea, running at 1920x1200 could be a little much to ask of this chip even if it's got 64MB vram and handles compositing just fine in OS X. That could account for the occasional slowdowns when opening apps and windows.

Thanks

Edit: Switched to 1920x1200x16bit and now everything feels "teh snappy", much better. :)

[ Edited by ddewbofh on 2009/12/15 17:04 ]

Ok, I'll have to eat my words on this one. After sorting out the screen issue the system feels insanely quick. Even feels faster than my Core i7 machine on some tasks like browsing the filesystem or searching for stuff. A very pleasant surprise considering this whole setup set me back less than 400?. :)

Welcome to Morph OS and Morphzone!

The library section is great so be sure to check that out as well as the download section of this site as well as Aminet.

Welcome onbord! MorphOS is great!

welcome to da freakzzz :)

if you got problems with 24bit/1900x1200 and have 64mb vram mac mini, check the graphic utility from your morphos installation. are there also 64mb of ram, not only 32mb recognized? there's a bug in morphos2.4 with the detection of radeon9200 memory size, wich also slows down 64mb minis in high screenresolutions. normally 64mb are enough for the 3d layers mode with your screen resolution. read the forum for temporarly fixes...

enjoy your trip :)

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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 26.06.2011 - 17:06 ]

@Velcro_SP

No, your issue is entirely different. And you know it, since it also happens when it's disabled (remember these dragged icons? :)).

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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 26.06.2011 - 17:03 ]

@ddewbofh

Hi and welcome here.

Ad. 1. I disagree. I mean having my configuration (which is said to be a nice one), I can say it's much faster than my Windows7 (1.8GHz Intel, 1 GB RAM, 256MB SoC gfx shared with RAM), slightly faster than Kubuntu9 (on same spec PC), and "runs circles" around my MacOS Tiger (same Mini )

If you still complain, please read all (biased? so what?) MorphOS vs. AmigaOS comparisons. I guess you might be more dissapointed while getting OS4 instead of MOS, probably. Hell, I'll get AmigaOS anyway, when I got cash.

Also, Please use such dock solution as PolyNet NG, to be downloaded from this very site. Any system without the launcher is much much slower. This software has some issue with saving prefs regarding onscreen bar location, I managed to save it properly just yesterday.

Why blaming the speed whilst you can enjoy the new refurbished Amiga Land?? Take your time while here.

Hehe, I'm not saying my system is slow or anything just that after reading about it and seeing some videos it looked a lot faster. But I've managed to get the OS working like it should now and so far my only "complaint" is my slow networking.

As for the choice between this and AmigaOS the decision was easy. It's almost impossible to get hold of an Amiga nowadays and I'm not very impressed with the later incarnations of the OS, I get the impression that it's pretty outdated.

Thanks for the tip about PolyNet, atm I'm using the built-in panels for launching apps and it's pretty basic.

But so far I'm loving the experience, despite any bumps. It's something completely different much like the BeOS so I'm bound to enjoy the ride. Now I just need to wrap my head around the "screens" concept and figure out how to change wallpaper and I'm all set. :)

Quote:

MorphOS is Amiga *done right*!

Quote:

Yeah, that's kind of what I was aiming for, didn't want to step on any toes.

Quote:
right mose button -> settings -> ambient -> backdrops
Very stright forward.
Screens:
rmb ->settings-> system -> screens
There you can setup your screens. Chose a name for a screen, select its resolution and desired skin, decide whether it should use enhanced gfx mode or not..
Once you set up a screen you can use it for your appa. Either determine in the prefs of the program to get launched on a particular screen or just dump a running program to a particular screen by its MUI menu (LMB on the MUI gadget in the right window corner, select "jump to screen"), selcet the screen you want from th econtext menu.

Wow, now I feel really thick. I must've looked through every prefs app imaginable and still missed it. :)

The jump to screen thing can be very useful, thanks.