| [Rant] Where is MorphOS for CSPPC? | ANN.lu |
| Posted on 26-Jul-2004 11:33 GMT by Kolbjørn Barmen (Edited on 2004-07-26 13:40:05 GMT by Christian Kemp) | 78 comments
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Whatever happened to the promised support for PowerUp? While people are discussing the meaning of "promise" and "support" I want to ask what the final outcome of MorphOS for PowerUP machines is. web archive (20030602171643) of www.morphos.net/support.php3. Was it ever promised? Not? Versions? Support? When? The mention of CSPPC and BlizzPPC was there for more than 3 years before it vanished when morphos.de/morphos.net became ..uhm.. genesized. :)
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| Where is MorphOS for CSPPC? : Comment 38 of 78 | ANN.lu |
| Posted by Anonymous on 26-Jul-2004 21:02 GMT | In reply to Comment 12 (priest):
@ priest
> I think that is the core reason. MOS needs to sell the HW of the same
> company.
I hope that you are not suggesting that the Pegasos sales so far in the lower thousands has financed the development of MorphOS? Or that the few sales (2000 top?) of Pegasos motherboards that MorphOS itself has generated has done anyone fat and wealthy? Greed is not the reason to why you haven't seen MorphOS for Amiga yet, rather the opposite, a need of narrow prioritys due to limited resources. They can't do it all at once and they can't afford the luxery of spending time to port it to a platform that died ten years ago. They simply have to focus on the things that might advance the platform.
@ Amon_Re
> Actually, considering that MOS has a HAL, the only thing that would need
> being kept up to date would be that hal, the rest of the system should be
> identical to the Pegasos version.
And it will probably be a nightmare to make it support all thinkable hardware gizmos and various exotic hardware patches that Amiga users has added to their systems during the last 10-15 years. People will expect to be able to use their Amigas the way they always have, but with MorphOS. And not only that - people will also expect their old piles of hardly breathing hardware to run just as stable as a Pegasos when they are using MorphOS, and they probably expect everything to be just as fast. A nightmare! And for what? How many users are there left that uses their REAL Amigas at a serious level (not only for retro gaming and viewing old demos and such)? A hundred across the globe? More? I would say probably less! Of those people, how many would consider buying a copy of MorphOS? Not very many. Perhaps a few additional would consider trying it "for free" if you know what I mean. So would it really be worth it to postpone the development that will make the OS move forward, go through the nightmare of supporting the tangle of possible old Amiga configurations just to satisfy a few old nerds that refuses to take the step into the current century? -Hell NO!
;-)
@ Kolbjørn Barmen
> I have no intention in buying a computer just to *test* the OS
Then borrow one, go to a friend that has one, rent one, or visit a show that is showing one.
> I personally have no need for the horsepower of the G3 or G4 for running old
> amiga apps.
-You'll know, when youv'e been tangoed!
> I brought this up because it was something that was promised and supposed to
> happen for at least 3 years before it slowly and descrete was put on ice..
I can't tell whether the MorphOS team still have the ambitions of supporting old Amigas, if the idea has been dropped, or if it's only put on ice. What I DO know is that they are working hard to make the platform take a quantum leap, and I quote: "We work on a major OS release update and the name 1.5 is probably not appropriate enough to describe the differences". So "promised" or not, I think they are doing the right thing and I think that most of us would rather see a MorphOS [drum drum] 2.0(?) for our Pegasos boxes ASAP than some 1.4 for old Amigas. So no, I don't agree with your whining, and actually, I don't think that a lot of people do.
> I cant remember to have seen any official "announcement" from the MorphOS
> developers about it either.
I can't remember seeing many official announcements AT ALL from the "Official MorphOS Team" other than the ones some days ago (where the quote above was taken from). You may think whatever you want about the "Official MorphOS Team", but one thing can we all agree to - they do not announce a lot!
:-P
> As for dead ends, the current Pegasos are just as much a dead end as the old
> amigas, in terms of feaures and support.
Not at all, not BY FAR! I frankly fail to see how you could possibly come to such a conclusion?!?
> It isn't quite what I want from a "new and modern" system
But the old Amigas is?
> (obsolete slow USB,
USB1.1 is by far the most widely used USB standard in the world, and it will remain that way for many years to come. I dare to say that not many people (or hardware products) NEED USB2.0. Sure some of the faster and more expensive memory card readers is nicer to use over a 2.0 bus (although most card readers (even many of the 2.0 ones) are much to slow to take real advantage of it anyway). My Epson Stylus Photo R300 is NOT faster on a USB2.0 bus when printing photos compared to USB1.1, my scanner is NOT faster on a USB2.0 bus compared to USB1.1. The REAL bottlenecks are to be found elsewhere. And I tell you this - if I want USB 2.0 then I simply buy a USB2.0 card for a few euros. As simple as that! But I have yet to have any need for one, so I guess I will be buying some DVD-R discs instead ...
> obsolete PS/2 inteface,
Obsolete?! My god, how could you possibly think that PS/2 is evil? PS/2 works everywhere, even where USB doesn't work. If you don't like it, then don't use it, but what harm does it do just by being there? How could this be a reason not to buy a computer?
> soon obsolete IDE controller,
The Pegasos IDE controller will not be obsolete any day soon (probably never). You will hardly notice any difference at all between ATA100, ATA133 and SATA150 in real life usage, this is especially true with those cheaper HDD's with limited cache. The HDD's are the real bottlenecks, not the controller, and if anything here is obsolete by now it's the entire system with Hard Disc Drives. What good is a faster disc controller if the disc mechanism itself can't feed it with data even at ATA100 speed? And the sad part is that HDD's has come to the end of the road when it comes to performance. There are HDD's (most often SCSI and not IDE anyway) available at 10.000 or 15.000 RPM's, but they are both hard and expensive to make, and at the bottom line even those HDD's are really slow, and at that rotating speed they get so hot (and loud) that they are not usable in a regular desktop machine (not to mention the price). So trust me, for any other areas than "marketing by numbers", the ATA100 controller is EXCELLENT. I miss a striped RAID however (but that goes for me personally, this is nothing requested by most common users, and there are good RAID cards available) and I also miss the thin cables of SATA (the thin cables are probably the best part of that standard, the main point of it all), but the round regular IDE cables are almost just as good.
> mediocre sound,
So you are a musician, huh? Yeah I know, the Pegasos on board sound can not compete with the REAL sound hardware (but the Pegasos can't compete with the Wintel on the musician market anyway, much because of the software situation).
Or do you want to use it as a "Media Station" in your living room? Then simply connect an optical fiber from your Pegasos S/PDIF optical digital audio connector to your Home Theatre, and off you go!
The Pegasos on board sound is (like on board sound most often are) absolutely fine for what it's intended to -- "regular PC use" with "PC speakers" and such, which makes the user able to take part of audio in games, on the Internet, in programs etc. This is very suitable for most COMMON users, and for that purpose it works JUST FINE and it's not worse off than any other sound chips of similar ambitions (the chip in the Pegasos is in fact a quite common chip for such areas of usage). However, that doesn't stop many of us from connecting the Pegasos to the stereo (some has posted that they can spot some metallic character of the sound at full volume level (I can't), but that is said to go away if you lower the volume just slightly in the software Pegasos mixer and rise it on the stereo instead) and listening to streaming sound with ANR! :-) But then again, those mp3 streams are often kind of bottle necks in themself, and to the serious HIFI fanatic, they will limit how good music sounds even on a HIFI card. BTW, any sound card can of course be connected, and then it's just a matter of drivers for your particular OS of choice. There are good cards that works fine with both Linux and MorphOS!
> unsupported firewire,
This is not a hardware thing; the Firewire is there and it's working just fine, thank you! MorphOS support for this is most certainly on its way, and it will be here quicker if the MorphOS developers attention is not diverted to porting the OS to Amiga!
:-P
> unsopported floppy controller,
Similar as above - this is not a hardware thing. No Amiga port of the OS = at least chances of MorphOS getting support for this faster! But floppies are "deader than dead" anyway, and I can only see a point for retro usage when you want to transfer data from your old Amiga disks (a one time occasion most likely) and for that the Pegasos floppy controller is no good anyway (since it's a standard PC controller).
> and not enough PCI slots to compensate for all the mentioned flaws)
Whoaa, FLAWS? Flaw is a much too strong word here, it's clearly more a case of your own personal needs, taste and preferences. As for the number of slots, let's see:
1) You won't get any noticable better HDD performance with a different controller, in any case it will only be worth buying an extra card if you want to use more HDD's than four (or if you want to use real SCSI). So no need for a controller card for General Joe User, the on board one is just fine.
2) OK, so you simply CAN'T LIVE without USB2.0? Well, then buy a card! One slot taken.
3) And you want better sound than the on board sound - buy a card! Two slots taken.
Then you still have a slot left! :-O In that one you could perhaps put a Catweasel to transfer your old Amiga floppies. You could always unplug it when the disks are transfered, to have a free slot again (if an abundance of slots makes you feel better).
The number of PCI slots brings me to another point: One of the key features of the Pegasos motherboard is it's small form factor. In fact, it's almost as small as a MiniITX board (it has the same width) but it's only slightly larger (in it's height) to compensate for the "flaws" of the MiniITX - expandability and ability of customisation through AGP and PCI slots! The board ends right after the last PCI slot, not a millimeter is wasted!
:-) |
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