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Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Tue Mar 20, 2018 9:55 am

Hi All,

For a while now I have been really wanting to get into the new generation of Amiga related tech. I have looked at the X5000, MorphOS, Icaros, etc. I see a few people here are running these and I am really interested in hearing your experiences.

I really don't know if I could justify forking out $2000 for a new X5000 but I am hoping the new X1200 or whatever they are calling the one that is supposed to be inexpensive, turns out to be a good thing.

What are your thoughts on the latest Amiga tech? Is a MorphOS system really a good alternative? Same with Icaros? I have a Mac Mini and a PowerMac G5 1.8 DP collecting dust as I don't use them as much as I used to. How well does MorphOS run on a mini? That mini came with OS X 10.4 which, IMHO, is a slug on that system. Is it worth the price of admission?

Are these new generation of systems actually able to be used as a daily computer for browsing, etc.? You would think a PPC G4 DP 1.8 would still be relevant somewhat today but given how media rich today's websites are you almost need at least an i5 dual core to not get lag on some of these "rich" pages. A shame really as even a modest Pentium 100mhz system, back in the day was plenty fast for that eras standard web pages. Todays dynamic, framework heavy sites are just beasts in comparison.

So please share your thoughts and experience on this latest Amiga tech.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Mar 20, 2018 10:40 am

I have limited knowledge in this realm, but I was under the impression that some of these Oses were not necessarily dead, but semi-dead due to hardware restrictions.

For example I think MorphOS only works on old PPC machines (like your mini) but other than getting it up to speed on that specific machine or a similar G4, there's no real future for it. More a gee-whiz "oh that's interesting" kind of situation and probably just a fun project that will live for a few weeks until you've run out of things to try (or gotten frustrated with hardware issues).

As for the x5000 - yeah, it's pricey. And icbrkr's experience - an IT tech pro at the top of his game having real issues - seems like a really bad step for something at the same price range as a Macbook Pro. (It's not a 1:1 comparison, but money is money.)

I'm actually not familiar with Icaros. Will go read about that here in a bit.

I mean, at that stage, what are all of the variations out there?

MorphOS - PPC based
Amiga OS 4.1 - also PPC based?
Icaros
AROS
Others?

User avatar
LambdaCalculus
New Jersey, USA

Posted Tue Mar 20, 2018 11:25 am

Hey Zippy Zapp,

I've been running MorphOS on both a Mac Mini G4 (1.25 GHz, 1GB RAM, 32MB VRAM, and 120GB SSD) and an iBook G4 (12", 1.33 GHz, 1.25GB RAM, 40GB HDD) for a few months now, and I've got to say that the experience on both has been very satisfactory! On my Mac Mini, MorphOS is significantly faster than Mac OS X ever was; hell, it even trounces Linux in terms of speed! Programs load very quickly, the system is quite stable (except for badly behaving apps that can cause issues), and ever since I've replaced the old hard drive in it with an SSD, it's even faster. Boot times on the Mini take about 2 seconds or so from logo to Ambient desktop! MorphOS really does bring out the power of Apple's hardware!
MorphOS.jpg
As for the requirements of MorphOS, any Mac with a decent G4 CPU and a Radeon video card should work. Keep in mind that Nvidia graphics chips are not supported, so any models that have one built in are off the list. MorphOS has a very wide selection of native apps available, and can also run system-friendly Amiga m68k apps (i.e. nothing that bangs on the custom hardware). The main drawback is that it's still commercial software, and until it's registered, you can only run it for half an hour at any given time before performance slows to a crawl. However, resetting your system will give you another half hour.

I'm pretty happy overall with MorphOS and will certainly register both machines with it. The upcoming release of MorphOS 3.10 will also be supporting the new Amiga X machines, as well as the Tabor board, meaning that anyone who wants to either dual-boot AmigaOS 4.1 and MorphOS together, or run one or the other, will have a chance to do so!
intric8 wrote:
I mean, at that stage, what are all of the variations out there?

MorphOS - PPC based
Amiga OS 4.1 - also PPC based?
Icaros
AROS
Others?
My knowledge of AmigaOS 4.1 is limited, as I don't run it, but I do want to get a copy and try it out in FS-UAE in the near future.

Icaros is a distribution of AROS. I've used Icaros in both virtual machines via VirtualBox, as well as on bare metal hardware. While AROS is fast, stable, and solid, I've not had too much luck with getting some hardware to work 100% the way I want it to. My testbed system for Icaros is an old IBM ThinkPad T40, which Icaros seems to be very happy with for the most part, but I've had some pretty lousy luck getting accelerated graphics working on it. However, VESA graphics are still pretty fast in Icaros, but I would like to get to use the built-in Radeon chip's acceleration for some games!

Additionally, there is also a distribution of AROS called AROS-Vision, which is available for m68k Amigas and Amiga emulators. It's meant to be a full drop-in replacement for AmigaOS, even including its own Kickstart ROMs. However, I've had nothing but bad luck with AROS-Vision: everything I try to do seems to break the system some way. Rexx didn't work for me, and even changing icons on files using DOpus5 causes it to go haywire and crash. Maybe I'm just not doing something right? AmigaOS 3.9 has been solid as hell for me.

User avatar
Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Wed Mar 21, 2018 7:53 am

Thanks both of you for your comments.
As for the x5000 - yeah, it's pricey. And icbrkr's experience - an IT tech pro at the top of his game having real issues - seems like a really bad step for something at the same price range as a Macbook Pro. (It's not a 1:1 comparison, but money is money.)
I agree. At that price point this thing should be rock solid. I have recently watched other vids where people were having stability issues with older versions of the X series. I mean stability was not always rock solid back when the Amiga was new, but it was usually some kind of misbehaving program that caused most of the crashes. It seems that a lot of the stability issues are because the software is developed by one company, hyperion, and the hardware developed by others. When Commodore existed that was not an issue since, like Apple, they developed the OS and the hardware.

I have run AROS in the past in a VM just out of curiosity. The VM AROS morphed into ICAROS desktop. I have not run this one in quite a few years.
I've been running MorphOS on both a Mac Mini G4 (1.25 GHz, 1GB RAM, 32MB VRAM, and 120GB SSD) and an iBook G4 (12", 1.33 GHz, 1.25GB RAM, 40GB HDD) for a few months now, and I've got to say that the experience on both has been very satisfactory! On my Mac Mini, MorphOS is significantly faster than Mac OS X ever was; hell, it even trounces Linux in terms of speed! Programs load very quickly, the system is quite stable (except for badly behaving apps that can cause issues), and ever since I've replaced the old hard drive in it with an SSD, it's even faster. Boot times on the Mini take about 2 seconds or so from logo to Ambient desktop! MorphOS really does bring out the power of Apple's hardware!
Heh, this tells you how bad my memory is from last year, that a few years ago I installed MorphOS on my mini and completely forgot about it. I will have to upgrade it to the latest version and see what it is like. As intric8 said, for me it is more curiosity at this point as I don't even remember using it beyond installing it. My mini has the max RAM and i think there is a 250GB drive in there. I will probably swap it out with a SD to IDE adapter with a 32 or 64GB card. I had good success with this adapter on the Amiga 1200.

So if someone wanted to use the new generation Amiga as a daily driver sort of computer it does not sound like that is going to happen, beyond the rare case here and there. It is a shame as something to give Windows or macOS a run would be welcome in my book. Apple has turned macOS, like they have in the past, to a platform to get you to upgrade every year. my barely 3 year old MacBook Pro is sluggish on the latest macOS. I shutter what the next one will be like. I am not a fan of Linux and don't see it as a true competitor to the main OSss, which is why I didn't list it as an alternative to Windows or macOS.

User avatar
LambdaCalculus
New Jersey, USA

Posted Thu Mar 22, 2018 3:47 am

Zippy Zapp wrote:My mini has the max RAM and i think there is a 250GB drive in there. I will probably swap it out with a SD to IDE adapter with a 32 or 64GB card.
What I did with my Mac Mini was get an mSATA SSD I had laying around unused and pop it into this mSATA to IDE adapter. It's working great so far!

User avatar
Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Thu Mar 22, 2018 12:39 pm

Nice! I never seen that adapter before, I think I will have to purchase one, looks cool.

Thanks!





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