@Zylesea

I agree. But since power is not much of an issue for MOS (remeber, it works rather nice with the Efika) I would welcome this addition for no other reason really than it's cheap enough for me to consider it.

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I'd be tempted to get one myself if it could run MOS. They are quite reasonably priced all things considered.

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+1 i got a Sam440 that i hardly turn on because OS4 is unusable and boring, i'd love to turn it to a morphOS box.

I'm sorry to spoil the party but MorphOS support for Sam440 is very unlikely to happen. Our original plans to support 460 got massively delayed already and even there is quite some low level work still ahead.
With all the additional issues showing up in public and the rather sparse feedback we received from customers regarding our plans to support ACube's hardware, it's not even sure if that will ever see the light of day anytime soon ...

>>> MorphOS will officially support Sam460 at some point.

>> Also Sam440?
>> "MorphOS will run on SAM 440 and SAM 460"
>> http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=38014&forum=14&start=60#715081

> MorphOS support for Sam440 is very unlikely to happen.

Thanks for clarification.

> With all the additional issues showing up in public

Is this referring to the memory socket issue Yasu reported on or the missing AC'97 clock source selection resistor? If neither, what issues do you mean?

> and the rather sparse feedback we received from customers regarding our plans
> to support ACube's hardware, it's not even sure if that will ever see the light of day
> anytime soon

Too bad.

Well in my opinion those are some bad news. Why? Well, Sam 440 is nowadays the cheapest NEW hardware around which is able to boot AmigaOS 4.1 and there are people who would like to spend an affordable amount of money to have a machine that would be able to boot BOTH AmigaOS 4.1 AND MorphOS, so Sam 440EP was a good case. It can also boot PPC Linux. It would be cool to have a cheap piece of hardware OUTSIDE the used market to boot all those PPC OSes.

@pega-1

Thats a shame, but only a litte. AOS 4.1 users have very little choice when it comes to hardware, but not us MOS users so it's not a major problem. Besides, my G5 2,7 GHz with a screen cost me less than just a SAM 440 motherboard would. Having MOS on a SAM board (440 or 460) would be a welcomed addition, but if porting is a major hassle I don't think we need to bother at this stage. I don't think 4.1 users would switch to MOS anyway (maybe a dual boot at best), and I doubt that MOS users would go out and buy a lot as well (not mentioning non-AOS4 and non-MOS users). I would, but that's because my love for MOS (and AROS) is rather irrational

I would rather see the effort going into making this brilliant OS more brilliant. Maybe that would change the minds of some AOS users

Does anyone know which SAM is the hardware wise most stable and well rounded? I got the impression that it's one of the 440's, but I would like to get that confirmed.

> Does anyone know which SAM is the hardware wise most stable and well rounded?
> I got the impression that it's one of the 440's, but I would like to get that confirmed.

I remember having read about stability issues with the 800 MHz version of the Sam440ep-flex when running CPU-intense tasks for long, which I think was ascribed to the 20% overclocking of the CPU (CPU manufacturer rates it at 667 MHz max). For the 733 MHz (10% overclocked) version I don't remember reading about such issues.

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That's a shame but no great loss considering the already wide range of supported hardware available to us.

If this means that more resources will now be transferred to improving MorphOS on existing hardware then it's actually great news. :)

> If this means that more resources will now be transferred to improving
> MorphOS on existing hardware then it's actually great news. :)

Wouldn't this mean that the announced Sam460 support has been bad news all along as it has drawn resources away from "improving MorphOS on existing hardware"? :-)

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Your memory serves you well.
Additionally, the 440 has overlay available to it, the 460 still has no h/w acceleration currently, so your intended usage should play a part in selecting models.

Source

#6

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When you put it like that yeah.

> the 440 has overlay available to it, the 460 still has no h/w acceleration currently

In case the single onboard-SATA port suffices, you can put a Radeon 9000 or 92x0 into the PCI slot and have overlay as well as 2D and 3D hardware acceleration when running OS4. Besides, I think that the Radeon HD drivers for OS4 do support 2D hardware acceleration.
But the driver situation on OS4 is not so much relevant for running MorphOS on the Sam460 anyway. MorphOS currently supports more and faster Radeon 9xxx cards in 2D and 3D than OS4 but lacks support for anything above.

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That's one excellent point. And for most folks I don't think a single onboard-SATA port does suffice.
Regarding video h/w acceleration overall,
I think this thread says it better than I can:
radeonHD video hw acceleration

Unless I read this wrong, the last (fairly recent) posting indicates things are not moving as quickly as hoped.

#6

For MorphOS usage single sata port is probably enough.

> video h/w acceleration

Using the GPU to decode video streams is yet another, distinct kind of hardware acceleration adding to the ones we mentioned before in this thread.

> the last (fairly recent) posting indicates things are not moving as quickly as hoped.

Yes, video acceleration isn't easy to implement even with 2D acceleration already in place.

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I guess most people will find the maximum resolution of the 460's SM502 to be too limited for desktops today, and the lack of 3D acceleration makes it even more unusable (even for Ambient, not only for games). However, it does support overlay though, which I suppose qualifies as some kind of "H/W acceleration"...

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The only down side I see to this news is that having a second system which can dual boot AmigaOS4.x and MorphOS3.x, specially a system that is still available for sale as new hardware, could only be advantageous to the acceptance of MorphOS3.x by more existing AmigaOS4.x users, no matter how small that number may be.

Since MorphOS is so easy to try for free, I think that most SAM460 owners would at least try it for a while to see what it is like. Many of those owners would like what they were seeing, and if they noticed any performance increase and extra features while running MorphOS3.x, compared to AmigaOS4.x, there is a chance that they would begin using MorphOS3.x more often (possibly even convert to using it as their preferred choice).

Personally, I was very surprised that any work toward supporting the 460 was started, but I understand the feeling that some people have about wanting new hardware, instead of used systems, even though I do not share that feeling and am quite happy with all of my used MorphOS capable computers, but I am not discouraged by this news, as I don't think support of the 460 will make much difference, and not supporting it will not make much difference in the resources available for working on improving MorphOS3.3.

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The threshold of trying out MorphOS isn't very high at all, not for anyone. As long as your scope of interest in your Amiga hobby is ever so slightly wider than "teh reel!!1!", then you can easily try out both MorphOS and AROS as well.

As seen on web forums like this and others, several "old timer OS4 users" has over the last few years become either dual or MorphOS only users. It's not difficult to get a hold of a piece of MorphOS HW for less than the cost of an OS4 license alone, and for testing purposes you will get very far with the 30 minute demo.

Problem is "the rather sparse feedback we received from customers regarding our plans to support ACube's hardware"; I suppose that many of those who paid EUR 1,000 for a 460 system or USD 3,000+ for a X1000 in order to run OS4 simply lacks that "wider scope" in their Amiga hobby; I think many of them want OS4 or nothing. They invested in OS4, the HW was only a means to an end. Anyone who really is curious about MorphOS can easily try it as it is, no need for a Sam port for that.

I'm not against MorphOS supporting Sam per se, but I completely fail to see the point? MorphOS users certainly has no need for a Sam, and probably (or "obviously", given "the rather sparse feedback"?) most Sam owners who bought it to run OS4 lacks interest in MorphOS. Those interested in MorphOS or ever so slightly curious has probably already tried it by now. Or they can easily do it anytime they want, regardless of a Sam port.

IMHO, a Sam port is nothing but a detour, a diversion of development focus that will bring nothing positive at all to the MorphOS platform in the end. Frankly, I was very surprised to see it announced in the first place. But not quite as surprised to see that it may be put on ice at this time.

Had it been new HW from Acube ("new" meaning at least semi-modern, performance wise by 2013 standards, or at least a lot better than MorphOS has right now with the Mac PPC HW, instead of the sub-Peg2 Sam), then it would perhaps have been a different matter. However, in the end, being tied to PPC means a zero-sum game of users within an ever shrinking Amiga community. The only way of attracting fresh interest is to migrate to some HW within "normal people's" reach...

+1

..and I remember my first post here. Some people thought I was just kidding...

MacMini@1.5Ghz 1GB/DualBoot Morphos3.1/DebianPPC - Efika MX sb
PowerBook 5,9

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You missed the point of my entire message. If they decide to go forward with the port to the 460 (and I don't care if they do or don't), a few owners of SAM 460 systems that won't bother to buy or borrow a used Mac PPC system, might download and try MorphOS on their SAM 460, just because they have one and it won't cost them anything to try MorphOS3.x at that point in time.

The number of SAM 460 owners is quite small, and the number of those owners who would be interested in trying MorphOS is even smaller, so "YES", the return on the investment of time to do the port will be very poor, at least in my opinion and apparently in yours as well.

The other point is that there are some users who are interested in running both AmigaOS4.x and MorphOS3.x on one system as their preferred choice, but they also prefer new hardware instead of buying used gear, and some people just hate Apple hardware and the company.

But as I already stated, the number of new potential users is so small, it is not the usual wise choice of the MorphOS Dev. Team to support such hardware. It will however take away the one complaint that some people have of there not being any NEW hardware currently available for purchase to run MorphOS3.x on (not counting NOS Efika systems, or motherboards).

[ Edited by amigadave 17.08.2013 - 03:38 ]

> there are some users who are interested in running both AmigaOS4.x and MorphOS3.x
> on one system as their preferred choice, but they also prefer new hardware instead
> of buying used gear

Yes, and even if they don't mind buying used gear they would have to come across an offering of a Pegasos II, which is not an ordinary incident to say the least.

> It will however take away the one complaint that some people have of there not being
> any NEW hardware currently available for purchase to run MorphOS3.x on

Exactly. And this has even been communicated by the MorphOS Team as the major inducement to undertake this port.

In general, what I am trying to say is that it would be cool to have access to new, affordable hardware that would be able to boot both MorphOS and AmigaOS.

Ok I just noticed from Acube's site that the Sam 440EP is out of production. However is not that OLD -it has been out during the last five years so it still got life to live and it is still supported officially by Acube. It would be a good alternative to Pegasos 2 with the big plus of the still active support of it by mother company.

Have seen some -used- Sam 440EPs to sold out for reasonable prices around. Actually it is the cheapest hardware option for someone to run AmigaOS 4.1. Why not MorphOS as well?

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Because a used PowerMac is cheaper than a used Sam 440 and much faster too?

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Because it's a weak and relative expensive alternative to buying used macs? And because it's still much easier to find someone to repair a 10 year old used mac than a 5 year old used SAM?

The only point of buying these boards would be that they are produced now and comes with a warranty. Without that, I really don't see the point of all that work porting to it myself.