Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
New MorphOS
- Thread starter Dronecatcher
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Great! I'm downloading now. Still PowerPC supported I see 
I recall making a commitment to buy the next release, so I think I'll have to finally take the plunge.
I imagine my G4 mini 1.42 (with a 1.67 overclock - TBA) and 1GB of RAM will be the best option as it looks like the Sawtooth although supported, doesn't have audio I/O.
@Dronecatcher have you installed it yet? If so, which PowerPC are you running on?
I recall making a commitment to buy the next release, so I think I'll have to finally take the plunge.
I imagine my G4 mini 1.42 (with a 1.67 overclock - TBA) and 1GB of RAM will be the best option as it looks like the Sawtooth although supported, doesn't have audio I/O.
@Dronecatcher have you installed it yet? If so, which PowerPC are you running on?
I've only briefly run it from CD so far - I'll get deeper into later. I was expecting it to have the new GUI by default but it doesn't. OWB handles Youtube well on my 17" Powerbook DLSD - though not as good as a few years ago before HTML5 became the norm. It see more RAM than before too - 1750Mb on mine.
I'm still hesitant to buy a license though because of the one machine only restriction - at the end of the day, we're talking old hardware that can give up at any point and I don't fancy all the messing around re-registering etc.
They have a Q[&A] on their FAQ which says you can transfer in the event of hardware failure, but the failed machine will be centrally de-registered and can never be registered again.
I was thinking about using a PowerBook, but the mini seems like a better fit given the weird trackpad responsiveness I had when I tried the last version on my AlBooks. That's good about the RAM, but doesn't really help a mini!
I like the idea of the new Developer Flow Studio being integrated front and center. This might attract more software devs to the platform to expand it. I'd like to see more cross-platform OS X and morphOS projects. I read that there was a dev who successfully released an indie game across iOS, macOS and MorphOS with the same (or at least very similar) codebase.
I was thinking about using a PowerBook, but the mini seems like a better fit given the weird trackpad responsiveness I had when I tried the last version on my AlBooks. That's good about the RAM, but doesn't really help a mini!
I like the idea of the new Developer Flow Studio being integrated front and center. This might attract more software devs to the platform to expand it. I'd like to see more cross-platform OS X and morphOS projects. I read that there was a dev who successfully released an indie game across iOS, macOS and MorphOS with the same (or at least very similar) codebase.
Last edited:
Yes, unfortunately tracking on my DLSD is still wonky - throws the whole experience off. Can't seem to find a way to set the GUI to look like the promising screenshots from last year - still looks kinda clunky and retro - was looking forward to the new "flat" design.
Isn't clunky and retro kind of the "in thing" in this forum?
I know what you mean though, the angled promo shots make it look crisp, especially when viewing the web page on a HiDPI/retina display... But if you squint and look a little closer, the selected screen resolution in the 3 shots is 640x480 at 256 colours. Not exactly demonstrative of a modern OS!
Well, yes but...
MorphOS default GUI to me looks like those awful Window Blinds/Kaleidoscope themes from yesteryear - goofy embellishments that detract from a unified design.
Which is surprising as an Amiga type OS - the original Workbench was a great GUI, which I still prefer in WinUAE as opposed to any "enhanced" versions.
I want to support MorphOS...but I think I'll still be getting my Amiga kicks from WinUAE and AROS.
I think I’ll take the plunge as well. I just acquired a 1.5ghz 1gb ram ppc g4 mini & think this would be a great time to kick morphOS’s tires a bit.
And that's exactly why I have no interest in MorphOS, it's a niche OS with Microsoft-style DRM. I'm sorry, but if you're that niche, you just don't add that kind of DRM. I understand having some form of it, and charging money for it (the price I still disagree on though), but the DRM is laughably stupid.
It's one of those instances where anyone with marketing sense would tell them, "Listen, we're losing potential customers with this inflexibility."
The price is a bit steep but it's the lock down that hits most. Having said that, I was expecting 3.10 to be a whole new update and preparing to buy...but can't see it yet.
Another thing to add is when you go MorphOS you also lose a Mac - my attempts at dual booting didn't go well.
Will look forward to hearing the experience others have.
The impression I get from Amiga/ MorphOS land is kind of like "come to the dark side and don't look back" - in spite of any shortcomings. This reminds me of something... That's right, Mac evangelists (like ourselves) have been saying this since the 80s
I followed the guide here: https://dreamolers.binaryriot.org/dualboot.pdf
It was sometime last year, and I can't remember exactly, but I recall the checkboxes for the various volume options were different to the screenshots in the guide. I fumbled my way through it and got a working quad-boot setup on my mini - Leopard, Tiger, Panther and MorphOS 3.9.
I'll put some time into installing 3.10 shortly to see what those particulars were.
Hi Dronecatcher,
Great news.
I know hardware may fail but right now one can find 15" 1.67ghz powerbooks
on the cheap to replace the failed one, or even G5s as long as you can get them with ATI cards.
Maybe one can replace the SN hackintosh style this way there would be no need to
ask for a change to the morphos registration.
@AphoticD
Thanx for the link to the dual boot guide.
Best regards,
voidRunnner
Great news.
I know hardware may fail but right now one can find 15" 1.67ghz powerbooks
on the cheap to replace the failed one, or even G5s as long as you can get them with ATI cards.
Maybe one can replace the SN hackintosh style this way there would be no need to
ask for a change to the morphos registration.
@AphoticD
Thanx for the link to the dual boot guide.
Best regards,
voidRunnner
Yeah, I know it goes with the territory...but it's not my bag really. I'm not an IT person but get by with what I need to know and there's so much in the way before you can get Amiga hardware up to a modern footing - much, much more so than with vintage Macs. Since I sold my Amiga stuff, Amiga emulation running at a decent pace is such a better experience and far easier to tinker with...not to mention not seizure inducing prices to contend with....
Same with Linux - I don't see any virtue in making it so difficult to get to grips with, I don't have any problems personally but I've seen so many posts here from newcomers who hope to breath life into an old Mac with Ubuntu/Lubuntu ad are immediately frustrated by graphics/sound/wireless etc issues.
[doublepost=1522153429][/doublepost]
I agree...if I thought MorphOS was worth investing in to start with...I'm not ready just yet.
For fun i just installed on a spare macmini g4. Haven't had a whole lot of time to mess with it, but i was able to slighlty change the theme (not window borders though). Now it resembles winxp in color and background at least. Will play with it a bit more, but so far it isn't too bad. Web browsing is quite good. That alone might be worth the price to some people.
Cheers.
Cheers.
Same here. I keep meaning to check it out, but I just keep putting off installing he demo. It looks to be a cool OS.
First time I read about Morph OS some time back I was very tempted to purchase. Then realised it was a single license per machine restriction. That put me off, and it still has!
They must surely have lost a large amount of revenue with that licence restriction, as I'm sure there are others like myself who'd want to use it across several of their powerpc's.
They must surely have lost a large amount of revenue with that licence restriction, as I'm sure there are others like myself who'd want to use it across several of their powerpc's.
IMO the exact opposite is equally plausible. The software is locked "per machine serial number" so that if you have to swap your machine's logic board you're to get a new activation key from the developers. That's possibly the most simple and reliable activation mechanism to implement, considering they're nowhere near the mainstream market. Meanwhile, Windows 10 Home ed. for 1 machine is more expensive but there's plenty of cracks on the internet, thus less complaints.
I have a license, but admittedly, I rarely boot into morphos since I've acquired a dual cpu card for my quicksilver..
Last edited:
What’s stopping you (aside from ethics
) from paying & installing on one machine and then duplicating the image across all of your ppc boxes hdds?
What’s stopping you (aside from ethics
I think it locks itself to the hardware ID. Most likely the Ethernet MAC address(?). So it won’t be activated on a machine with a different ID.
How did you find regular use of MorphOS? Is it viable as a daily driver?
Booting morphos 3.9 was a nice experience. It feels responsive and speedy. It boots and shutdown almost instantly when instructed to when installed on an HDD. Graphics support (ati chips only, obviously) for powermacs is probably the best you can have right now. The system itself has no virtual memory or smp support. As long as I didn't try old 68k amiga programs the system itself felt really stable, though I froze at times when I did. The webkit browser (odyssey) is snappy too, but has some drawbacks: it lacks some recent web features and sometimes stalls for a couple seconds when loading webpages(I don't know if the latter is still the case for version 1.25 which ships with 3.11). The system is really customizable in functionality and UI; you can easily create a launcher/dock with the default interface toolkit. The port of mplayer easily plays 720p with an 1.6ghz 7447 without any options (odyssey can almost play 720p youtub videos with constant frame rate).
It has notable disadvantages: it scales less well than mac os x when running many things at once (that's even more serious for a dual cpu config), will see max 1.7gb RAM and not use the rest (before version 3.10 it was 1.5gb) and is kinda VRAM hungry (they recommend at least 128mb); If you do it on purpose you're probably able to run out of vram and crash.
Although I liked it a lot, a dual cpu config on mac os x is preferable to me.
And yeah, it does lock itself to the hardware id. Each generated key only works on one computer mainboard.
Yeah I would like to know this too. Looks a great OS to me, but I have no idea how it is with things like webbrowsing and Office.