Hey all,

Just wanted to see what people's opinions were on what you consider the "Best Overall" Apple machine, and also most attainable, for loading and using MorphOS. I'd like to see how good that OS is. Thanks.

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It's hard to say, because it depends much of what you want, or can stand for :)

But I'd suggest these options, it's up to you which sounds the best option.

1) If you want a small, low energy, compatible with legacy Warp3D stuff (not that it'd be that important, but if you're hc demoscene fan for example), etc kind of machine, then Mac mini G4/1.5GHz is a good choice, although might need a bit of hunting to find one. Drawbacks are aging CPU and 1GB memory limit, but generally it's ok all-arounder. I wouldn't go for other Mac mini models (below 1.5GHz), because their graphics memory is too limited and that makes too many compromises.

2) If you want a portable machine, I'd suggest any of the four versions of Powerbook G4/1.67GHz laptops. These are a bit faster and accept more memory than Mac minis, but some people just like desktop computers more, although you can attach external kb, mouse, and monitor on these too. Should be quite easy to find still.

3) If you want mooore speeed and can stand heavy box and bigger electricity bill, then go for pretty much any of the supported PowerMac G5 machines. While you're at it, I'd go for some 2.xGHz machine instead of the popular low end 1.8GHz models, it shouldn't be too hard to find the speedier ones either. If I'd have to guess 7,3 versions could be better than 7,2 versions, at least they're newer :) It's also possible to run MorphOS on the very latest G5 machines (11,2 models and one iMac G5 model), but it may need some tinkering and hunting a working graphics/network card... if you are willing to do that, those would be the fastest setups for MorphOS use, but the easy way is to go with the officially supported models. PowerMac G5 are widely available still.

4) You have an X5000, why not get a supported gfx card and try on it?

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- The wiki based MorphOS Library - Your starting point for MorphOS
- Software made by jPV^RNO

@edponpon

If I would like to buy any dedicated machine for MorphOS, it would be a PowerBook G4.

@edponpon

Good question you ask.
I myself started 4 years ago with a powerbook 17 "and 1.67 Mhz.
Nice computer. Good grafic card from 128 mb.
And as said, you can connect a lot of things on it.
Since 2 months now I also have a PowerMac G5 the 2.3 dp. The fastest non-water cooled PowerMac G5 supported by Morph as standard. (the 7.3).
This is a huge difference compared to the powerbook. Much faster on all counts. And so more fun to use.
Do you need the speed? At first I thought not. Such a small and fast operating system is always smooth. But the PowerMac is simply much better and, above all, nicer to use. Youtube works smoothly eg.
If you don't need a laptop ... a G5 (the 2X2.0 is easy to find for little money.

Succes with your Morph computer.

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@jPV

Quote:

You have an X5000, why not get a supported gfx card and try on i

Maybe it’s because he has a Southern Islands or Polaris based card like a good 95 percent other X5000 owners. Given the latest welcome update to Odyssey this week and the plethora of 3D gaming which has appeared on AmigaOS 4 over the past 6 months( a lot of which is not even available under MorphOS on the X5000), are we even suggesting that MorphOS should be a realistic viable option at this present time for a X5000 owner?

Based on the best case option of a Radeon X1650 card with 512MB graphics RAM and VGA output, even things like Return to Castle Wolfenstein won’t run because the MorphOS version requires AltiVec and forget running anything like Wipeout 2097 or anything that required legacy Warp3D. It will render also his AmigaOS 4 and Linux installations pretty useless in terms of functionality.

Much needed support on MorphOS forums will be non existent too, so many of the questions he will need to ask will go unanswered, you will however have plenty of people quite keen to make sarcastic comments and indulge in petty trolling.

That being said the only three pieces of MorphOS software which are pretty useful or unique to the ecosystem are your very own RNO Radio, ACE Amstrad CPC emulator and Iris Email (although again with the update to Odyssey this week, the access to many email webpages has improved).

So in order to respond to Edponpon’s query I would suggest he goes with your suggested option 1 and stick some extra RAM in it. It’s the cheapest option possible by far and will give him probably the fullest selection or titles to run.

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@edponpon

I got a 17" Powerbook for MorphOS, because it is more portable than a desktop machine and you can use it while sitting at the couch as well. Have in mind that some of them do not have the specific compatible wifi module (A1027), but the A1026 which doesn't work under MorphOS. But it is easy to change it, if you find one to buy, although you will need to tear apart almost the whole laptop. If you are not familiar with this kind of things, you better ask someone else to do it for you.

But never compare your X5000 with this machine, because it has a lot of limitations, for example the slow and low on memory graphics card. It is an old computer and you should treat it that way.

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@outrun1978

Quote:

Much needed support on MorphOS forums will be non existent too, so many of the questions he will need to ask will go unanswered,

That is simply not true.

Quote:

you will however have plenty of people quite keen to make sarcastic comments and indulge in petty trolling.

Look in the mirror.

@jacadcaps

Where X5000 users are concerned I think it is very much the case they will be lacking in support on your forums. Therefore I very much stand by my comments.

It’s also very clear a lot of the MorphOS development team are not very welcome of criticism of their platform. Sorry but that’s your issue not mine.

As a paying customer (FYI two licences paid) I feel I am entitled to deliver that assessment of your product. If you don’t like the assessment then you need to improve it and act upon it. Simple as.

It’s up to an individual whether they feel they should spend their hard earned cash on your product, I would merely advise that as an average X5000 user they should steer away from MorphOS until lots of things are improved for the end user. At this present time should the feel the need to spend the cash on a licence for their X5000 machine a large bulk of them will come back disappointed. Only you and your team can remedy that problem I’m afraid.

Also in this current climate where companies and individuals are having to make difficult decisions on staying healthy and make sure they have money coming into pay the bills, it’s never a good idea to alienate a potential revenue stream however small they are.

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Amiga CD32

@outrun1978

Quote:

outrun1978 wrote: are we even suggesting that MorphOS should be a realistic viable option at this present time for a X5000 owner?

Depends much what you're after, so maybe, maybe not, I wouldn't count any options out.


Quote:

Based on the best case option of a Radeon X1650 card with 512MB graphics RAM and VGA output, even things like Return to Castle Wolfenstein won’t run because the MorphOS version requires AltiVec and forget running anything like Wipeout 2097 or anything that required legacy Warp3D. It will render also his AmigaOS 4 and Linux installations pretty useless in terms of functionality.

I forgot the missing AltiVec, which isn't nice of course. Maybe you're right, that in most cases it's probably more fun to have dedicated machines for each operating system and for the intented use. But if he just wants to take a look at system before going to buy a dedicated machine, maybe he could try it on the machine he already owns.


Quote:

Much needed support on MorphOS forums will be non existent too, so many of the questions he will need to ask will go unanswered, you will however have plenty of people quite keen to make sarcastic comments and indulge in petty trolling.

I don't think it's intentional, it's just that there aren't many people who have X5000 and thus there aren't people who know answers. It shouldn't be intepreted as trolling or such.


Quote:

That being said the only three pieces of MorphOS software which are pretty useful or unique to the ecosystem are your very own RNO Radio, ACE Amstrad CPC emulator and Iris Email (although again with the update to Odyssey this week, the access to many email webpages has improved).

I don't agree with this, there's other software that's important to me on MorphOS and which isn't available on OS4. Iris is the only one I'm using of those three ;)


Quote:

So in order to respond to Edponpon’s query I would suggest he goes with your suggested option 1 and stick some extra RAM in it. It’s the cheapest option possible by far and will give him probably the fullest selection or titles to run.

If legacy W3D support is important (for many it doesn't matter at all), you can also stick an older R200 card (Radeon 9000-9250, for example) in a G5 machine to have both raw CPU speed and classic compatibility on 3D graphics. One of my friends did this kind of solution.

Last edited by jPV on 10-Apr-2020 at 08:47 PM.
Last edited by jPV on 03-Apr-2020 at 03:49 PM.
Last edited by jPV on 03-Apr-2020 at 03:49 PM.

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- The wiki based MorphOS Library - Your starting point for MorphOS
- Software made by jPV^RNO

@edponpon

Powerbook is of course one of the obvious choices - and of course a good one (if I was able to keep only one machine: I'd go for the powerbook).

As alternative I suggest the iMac G5 iSight 20". Rather fast, small and has a comparatively low energy uptake, the display has very good quality. The cooler is rather low noise, the gfx card powerful enough for most things. A bit harder to find one though.

The big box G5s are - well - big. And they are energy hogs. If you have teh spare room and a solar panel on the roof the big box G5sas the most powerful machines are an option.

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@Zylesea

Braeburn for sure a great snack with any flavour if Amiga-like OS

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@BigD

What is Braeburn?

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@edponpon

It depends on what you want to do with it.
I have a macmini 1.5ghz, which runs the usual stuff on MorphOS very well.
And as the name suggests, takes up very little space.

If you want to do something a bit more intensive, you may want to look at the other models.

Cheers

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@DiscreetFX

Quote:

DiscreetFX wrote: @BigD What is Braeburn?

It's a variety of the fruit called "apple".

@edponpon

Do not waste your money on a machine for morphos, the price/performance is terrible and it sucks.
What you really need is a vampire.

You'll get great performance and very high compability with almost all software ever created for the amiga

http://www.apollo-core.com/index.htm

@monstercoder

Quote:

monstercoder wrote: @edponpon Do not waste your money on a machine for morphos, the price/performance is terrible and it sucks. What you really need is a vampire.

Excuse me, but how can you draw this kind of conclusion? Vampire is more expensive, much slower, and you'll be stuck with an ancient OS. If you want more modern and faster amigaish experience, MorphOS is the way to go.

And edponpon already knows what he's getting, because he already has an OS4 machine, so I don't think he's needing or looking for a Vampire card.

Last edited by jPV on 04-Apr-2020 at 06:40 PM.

_________________
- The wiki based MorphOS Library - Your starting point for MorphOS
- Software made by jPV^RNO

@jPV

It's easy to see how much morphos sucks, just launch it?
And then after that launch uae since it does not work with the good old software.

@jPV

and about the price... does it really matter how much a vampire costs?
You are comparing paying money for a pot of shit and a pot of gold.

@monstercoder

Quote:

monstercoder wrote: @jPV It's easy to see how much morphos sucks, just launch it? And then after that launch uae since it does not work with the good old software.

I know very well how MorphOS works, because I'm using it as my daily system. All good old software I need works blazingly fast on it without UAE. I practically moved my system and programs from my A1200/060/Mediator setup to MorphOS and got much faster and reliable Amiga experience with it.

It would surely suck big time if I'd have to go back to OS3.x for my daily computing, it just wouldn't be possible and enjoyable anymore. Classics are good for gaming and I have them for that, and I don't need Vampires for that, but it would be too painful to try to browse web, process photos, watch movies, etc on them even when vampirized. And as said, the genral usability of the OS would take way too big step backwards on them.

_________________
- The wiki based MorphOS Library - Your starting point for MorphOS
- Software made by jPV^RNO

@monstercoder

Ok, I don't bite on your trolling anymore.

_________________
- The wiki based MorphOS Library - Your starting point for MorphOS
- Software made by jPV^RNO