Yes, you probably know why I did this. Just to get rid of the annoying 30 minute OS stopper. But let me explain my motives. I fully intend to purchase MorphOS. I've been playing with it for a week, and I am thoroughly pleased with it right now. Working with the OS timer at home when I'm sitting in front of it is not a problem. A quick reboot gets me right back in business. But as I seem to have more free time at work lately, I decided to setup VNC server on my MorphOS Mac Mini and test application compatibility while at work. The problem is the OS timer kills the VNC server. Soooo, I came up with this little workaround to give me a little more experimentation time before the big plunge, after all the price of this OS is in line with a modern OS having many more bells and whistles. I want to make sure I will use it and it's not just a passing fad.

So here is what I did:

Go to Aminet archives and search on reboot or URL this:

http://morphos.aminet.net/search?query=reboot

There is a small reboot.lha utility in the list that has Reboot your computer (with delay) in the description. Download it, extract it and call the reboot from S:network-startup with the following command:

run work:utiities/reboot/reboot 1500

This essentially forces a reboot of the OS after 25 minutes, just under the 30 minute timer. VNC automatically re-establishes the connection after the reboot and I'm back in business.

BTW, MorphOS is very impressive as compared with many modern OS's and quite frankly, no other OS is even close when comparing speed.


[ Edited by TheCodeMan 23.09.2013 - 22:10 ]

I'm in the very same boat, I cannot afford the licence until the middle of next month but I'm wanting to connect via VNC from work while I configure and learn the OS. Thank you for this, I will put it into action tonight.

Automatic reboot is quite dangerous! You do this on your own risk. You may end up with a broken filesystem, if reboot gets triggered during write cycle.

There is no need to install third party stuff. This can be done with MorphOS itself quite easy and in a more save way.

Just create a script and add

Wait 30 MINS
Lock dh0: ON ;set temoprary harddrive write protection
;add other drives here
Wait 10 SECS ;make sure all writes are finished.
Reboot

run this script at user-startup and it will reboot every 30 minutes. The Lock command will temporarily writeprotect your drives. This is however is no guarantee that a random reboot will not cause any damages. It also prevents from starting new write operations. The second wait gives the system some time to finish pending write operations before reboot.

Geit

[ Edited by geit 24.09.2013 - 12:04 ]

Silly question I'm sure, but is a script nothing more than a text file with code called from startup? Does it require any particular filetype or settings to make it a script? Do you call them using run or wbrun?

Sorry, been a long time since I've run in the Amiga world.

> is a script nothing more than a text file with code called from startup?

A script is nothing more than a text file with code called from any place.

> Does it require any particular filetype or settings to make it a script?

No, but setting the 's' protection bit may improve handling of the script file as the OS knows it's a script then.

> Do you call them using run or wbrun?

Use 'execute' to execute them.

If you set that 's' protection bit, you don't need to use 'execute' command anymore. Just run it by writing its name (and path if needed). But using execute is safe bet always..

You can also run any script from the wbstartup directory.
Just :
- move the script file to sys:wbstartup/myscript
- add a sys:wbstartup/myscript.info icon file
- set the icon to be of "project" type
- set "iconx" as the icon's default tool

Quote:

Interesting thread:

May I ask both mmace and TheCodeMan where you found out about MorphOS3.x, and are either of you former Amiga users?

From the way you have worded your messages here, it is my guess that the answer to the 2nd part of my above question is, No. This interests me because we get so few new users from outside of the current, or former Amiga user base.

Welcome to both of you.

Well I can tell you without hesitation that I am a long-time Amiga user (Eric's bouncing ball hooked me for good). In fact in the past two years I just sold most of my Amiga hardware, some software but still have much I will likely get rid of. I never really got into the programming aspect but I will give you a little history and may even throw in a surprise or two!

I started out in the Amiga world way back when with an Amiga 500. Loved the gaming aspect and the graphics just clearly blew everything else away at the time. I added something you may not have heard of, the infamous Bodega Bay (turns a 500 into a 2000) shortly afterward. From there I expanded to a massive 52mb hard disk drive and two floppy drives. True multitasking - unheard of at the time!

I cut my teeth on Wings, SOTB, and pretty much all Cinemaware titles. Infocom was a favorite as well.

I later expanded to an Amiga 1000 and an Amiga 2000. Never had the money for a 1200, 3000 or 4000 but I really wanted one, any of them.

The 2000 I had pretty much maxed out. 2mb chip ram, 32mb fast ram. I had a Cybervision card, a network card, scan-doubler, Amax II card, Jazz drive, optical, OS 3.9, and a 68030 with FPU upgrade, forget the name of it though. It was a great system and to be honest the only reason I sold it was for the value of the individual components. Realizing their age and how likely they were to not last, I felt like it was time to abandon my trusty Amiga hardware. Also, I took into consideration how far along Amiga emulation has come with AIAB, Cloanto AF, Etc.

I dabbled a little with Aros and stumbled across MorphOS but never had the hardware to test it. Just recently I came into a Mac Mini we were throwing away at work and figured I'd give it a go.

As for other Amiga systems, I've had a CD32 with a very rare SX-1 expansion that turned it into an Amiga 1200 wannabe. Went through multiple A500's.

And not to mention my age here, but I started out on the humble Timex Sinclair, worked my through the Vic 20, 64, you name it, I've pretty much been there, done that.

Let's just say MorphOS has rekindled my old flame I once knew as the Amiga.

From the tone of the comments on this board and the support I have already received on such a minor OS, I think I'll be around for awhile.

[ Edited by TheCodeMan 24.09.2013 - 21:26 ]

Quote:

I tried this script and it didn't quite work for me. When the system booted, it would display the MorphOS 3.3 loading screen for two minutes (the time I set to reboot for testing) and then the cli would appear, lock the drives and the system would reboot. It's like the Wait command takes over the system on boot and will not allow the desktop to appear.

@TheCodeMan

What speed is your Mac Mini? Just curious as there are versions with 32MB video ram or 64MB video ram. I currently run a Mac Mini 64MB Vram version overclocked from 1.5ghz to 1.75hz. Put in a 32GB SSD in it and it runs great.

Quote:

Doffo, I am running the 1.42Ghz version with the Radeon 9200 32mb video and the standard 80gb drive. is there a significant difference in performance between 32mb and 64mb video?

Does the overclock mod provide a significant performance increase? The Obligement(sp?) guide looks a little intimidating.

It seems plenty fast enough to me as is but I haven't started emulating with it yet, AGA, etc. I suspect this is where the upgrades might make for a significant performance increase.

The SSD option did come to mind but you have to practically part the entire Mac Mini to swap the drives out.

[ Edited by TheCodeMan 24.09.2013 - 22:19 ]

@TheCodeMan

It is just nice to have more graphics ram once you start to open up more screens etc... But turning off Enhanced Display does free up some video ram and still holds up. There was some speed increase from the extra 250mhz, but honestly might be better to keep yours at 1.42ghz for the time being especially if soldering is an issue. I reapplied the thermal grease with some arctic silver just to have peace of mind that its been replaced. I figured squeeze out some extra HP out of the CPU and see how long it holds up. :)

>> been a long time since I've run in the Amiga world.

> are either of you former Amiga users? From the way you have worded your messages
> here, it is my guess that the answer [...] is, No.

;-)

> Eric's bouncing ball hooked me for good

Do you mean RJ's bouncing ball?

> It seems plenty fast enough to me as is but I haven't started emulating with it yet, AGA, etc.
> I suspect this is where the upgrades might make for a significant performance increase.

The only significant improvement of the 1.5 GHz silent upgrade Mac mini over the older 1.42 GHz version is the larger VRAM, which doesn't help with emulation. The 80 MHz faster CPU isn't really noticable with any application, but 250 MHz overclocking as done by Doffo might surely be helpful for emulation.

amigadave,
Quote:
I was an A500+ then an A1200 user (PPC, Eyetech EZ Tower, CV64/3D etc), I left the Amiga in 2000 when I sold all my stuff to someone in the US after 9 years.
I also went and bought a CD32 on launch day, loved that console!

I moved to Wintel and bought Amiga Forever. I stayed with the Amiga for as long as I could, but with little or no updates to any of the DTP software along with lack of video editors I moved on.

I recently got back into emulation with HyperSpin on my i7 and playing the old Amiga games got me feeling all nostalgic, I went on a few forums, did a month or 2 of research and decided to go with MorphOS over AmigaOS4.x, AROS or buying a classic Amiga (due to price & support). I never wanted to leave the Amiga scene, but money and lack of software forced my hand. Now I'm older with 2 young kids, I want them to experience something they could feel nostalgic about too since there's nothing out there like this these days.
I also loved how quick the OS is when watching Youtube videos.
I still do a fair bit of video editing these days which will require me to use my i7 for Premiere Pro and After Effects, but for simple edits and every day general PC use I'll be using MorphOS (Blender for editing, currently taking a course in it).

I bought a Mac Mini 1.5Ghz (64Mb VRAM) for my MorphOS system.

I've been buying Amiga Future for a couple of months, I think one of my colleagues may be setting up MorphOS too after reading the last edition which featured a review of it (he has a few[!] old Macs lying around at home)

[ Edited by mmace 25.09.2013 - 10:19 ]

> Now I'm older with 2 young kids, I want them to experience something they could
> feel nostalgic about too since there's nothing out there like this these days.

I'm afraid the concept of nostalgic feeling doesn't work that way as it is firmly connected to a person's recollection and retrospection, which your kids surely lack with regard to the Amiga's heyday. Note that I'm not saying they couldn't ever like or even be fascinated by the Amiga or MorphOS but if they'll do it won't have anything to do with nostalgia.

I've 'forced' my kids playing all kinds of old games, i had a modded xbox with mame and few 1000 games under the TV, i let this be just available to them, seeing modern popular games back then where GTA 2 and 3 and more violent, Metal Slug series where popular for my eldest son, he's 15 now and he played these games 10 years ago and he remembers fondly 'the games he played when he was little' just as i remember playing Wizard Of Wor, IK+, Commando, OutRun, etc on C64 when i was little...

I would say this fits the term nostalgia perfect :)

double post

[ Edited by catohagen 25.09.2013 - 13:43 ]

Quote:

Yes, my bad, lol! But I really enjoyed all of the Schwartz animations too.