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[News] QNX on iMac and PPC?ANN.lu
Posted on 27-Apr-2000 09:57 GMT by Christian Kemp19 comments
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In a comment posted in reply to an earlier news article here at ANN, Dan Dodge of QNX fame says that they are considering doing a port to the iMac, and that in fact they are running on it today minus USB support. They want to see what the demand for QNX on this machine is, but they would also love to partner with a hardware OEM to bundle QNX on their PPC machine.
QNX on iMac and PPC? : Comment 1 of 19ANN.lu
Posted by Ben Yoris on 26-Apr-2000 22:00 GMT
I emailed Dan Dodge, proposing to contact AntiGravity for the BoXeR, as an OEM partner.
Having QNX as an alternative choice to AmigaOS would be great on the BoXeR, no ?
QNX on iMac and PPC? : Comment 2 of 19ANN.lu
Posted by Paul on 26-Apr-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Ben Yoris):
Now that would be great.
QNX on iMac and PPC? : Comment 3 of 19ANN.lu
Posted by Martin Tilsted on 26-Apr-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Ben Yoris):
Yeps, someone just need to make that ppc expansion to the boxer first -)
Martin Tilsted
QNX on iMac and PPC? : Comment 4 of 19ANN.lu
Posted by Ben Yoris on 26-Apr-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 3 (Martin Tilsted):
Antigravity will do it and release it a few weeks after the availability of the mother board. The PPC extension is not a problem, the ultimate question is : WHEN ? :)
QNX on iMac and PPC? : Comment 5 of 19ANN.lu
Posted by Anthony Long on 26-Apr-2000 22:00 GMT
Isn't the keyboard and mouse on an IMac connected by USB? What use is
running QNX on one of these machines if the USB isn't supported?
(assuming I am right, that is). ;)
QNX on iMac and PPC? : Comment 6 of 19ANN.lu
Posted by greenboy on 26-Apr-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 5 (Anthony Long):
: Anthony Long :
:Isn't the keyboard and mouse on an IMac connected by USB? What use is running QNX on one of these machines if the USB isn't supported?
Halfways through the paragraph Dan said, "However, the mouse/keyboard requires USB so it is kinda hard to ship it :-)"  Then he said they were going to add USB support when they get time.
I would assume they are running the iMac via their fantastic pervasive networking.
QNX on iMac and PPC? : Comment 7 of 19ANN.lu
Posted by Tony Pascoal on 26-Apr-2000 22:00 GMT
Amiga Boxer with in standard AmigaOS & QNX, would be great for every people !
a great idea.
QNX on iMac and PPC? : Comment 8 of 19ANN.lu
Posted by greenboy on 26-Apr-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Ben Yoris):
: Ben Yoris :
:I emailed Dan Dodge, proposing to contact AntiGravity for the BoXeR, as an OEM partner.
Thanks, Ben, appreciated.
:Having QNX as an alternative choice to AmigaOS would be great on the BoXeR, no ?
Indubitably :  }  Like I said I the earlier thread, it's been tough to think about what the Amiga hardware people have been going through, wondering which effort(s) to support. I've always held that someone taking phase 5's place to do an OEM with QNX would be a good move. But I understand their reticence. They have a tougher row to hoe than most.
QNX on iMac and PPC? : Comment 9 of 19ANN.lu
Posted by Marco Ridoni on 26-Apr-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (greenboy):
The iMac has a "stub" to allow standard programs which read KB and mouse directly by ADB (the Apple interface for such devices) to continue to operate, so any device which calls the ADB Manager (the portion of the Toolbox/MacOS) to read the keyboard or mouse can continue working. The problem is that this device is implemented in the early-startup ROM (or in the ROM image file which resides in the iMac System Folder when MacOS is installed) so I'm not sure if it can be exploited by other OS's.
All the best
QNX on iMac and PPC? : Comment 10 of 19ANN.lu
Posted by Chris Roccati on 26-Apr-2000 22:00 GMT
All the modern macs do have a "legacy keyboard and mouse" support thru
openfirmware: you don't need an USB stack, if you want you can use
that... (Free UNIX like os did that in the beginning)
QNX on iMac and PPC? : Comment 11 of 19ANN.lu
Posted by Rodolfo Don on 26-Apr-2000 22:00 GMT
Hello,
I was an AMIGA user for several years until Commodore went bankrupt. I still own several AMIGA hardware systems, among them an A2000 and an A4000.
Is it true that there is a movement to port an AMIGA OS to the iMac? That would be great, since there is a wide installed base of iMac systems already running Mac OS.
The last thing I knew about the AMIGA was a few years ago when a company in Germany was trying to revive it. What has happened since then?
Thank you for your information.
Rodolfo Don
QNX on iMac and PPC? : Comment 12 of 19ANN.lu
Posted by MAS on 27-Apr-2000 22:00 GMT
I went into a local Comp USA the other day and they had one of those Netpliance
iOpeners set up. It was running in demo mode (not hooked to the internet) and it
was selling for $99.00. I bring this up, because I seem to remember reading that
it used the QNX kernal. The one real flaw I saw in the design was the tiny flat
panel display. I think it might have been a larger version of the kind of display
one finds on a color Gameboy. It seems to me that the sort of folks who would be
buying it would be myopic older computerphobes who would have trouble reading the
smallish flat pannel display.
On the other hand, I'd love to see QNX run on any Mac as I happen to use a G3
upgraded Mac clone myself.
QNX on iMac and PPC? : Comment 13 of 19ANN.lu
Posted by Plain English on 27-Apr-2000 22:00 GMT
How could anyone hope to run an OS on the IMac better than the Mac OS?
I'm not saying that the Mac OS is brilliant but the IMac is a closed book making it hard for anyone else to make an OS at all for it. Please tell me if that is not the case but I think it is, why would Apple make a machine that was not going to profit for them at a later date?
QNX on iMac and PPC? : Comment 14 of 19ANN.lu
Posted by greenboy on 27-Apr-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 13 (Plain English):
:How could anyone hope to run an OS on the IMac better than the Mac OS?
Nothing so special about MacOS. Ecept for the fact that it hit a brick wall a number of years back and now it is going to be replaced with a totally different kernel/OS that doesn't have the limitations current MacOS has.
:I'm not saying that the Mac OS is brilliant but the IMac is a closed book making it hard for anyone else to make an OS at all for it.
Nobody must have passed that on to QNX. Because they went and did it at least 6 months ago just to see where it would lead.
:why would Apple make a machine that was not going to profit for them at a later date?
Huh? Sold hardware is sold hardware.
QNX on iMac and PPC? : Comment 15 of 19ANN.lu
Posted by Elwood on 27-Apr-2000 22:00 GMT
Incredible, Qnx already runs on iMac ?
And Jean-Louis Gassée (BeInc) said (http://www-classic.be.com/aboutbe/benewsletter/volume_III/Issue35.html#Gassee):
"I can see the logic in Apple's decision not to help us with access to chipset technical data for a G3/G4 BeOS port.
Some have suggested that we look into the Linux sources for such data. Perhaps, but I see little reason to open ourselves to possible accusations of reverse-engineering. We're welcome on x-86 hardware, we're not welcome on Apple G3/G4."
So how Qnx managed to port NTO to an iMac ?
QNX on iMac and PPC? : Comment 16 of 19ANN.lu
Posted by John Millington on 27-Apr-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 15 (Elwood):
I'm glad ANN doesn't have scoring, because what I'm about to say is
a totally unconstructive flame.
Jean-Louis Gassée's explanation for not porting BeOS to late-model Macs is...
...a load of crap. There's much speculation about what Gassée's real reason
is, but my favorite one is that it has something to do with the millions of
dollars that he's accepted from Intel. Just a hunch. ;-)
QNX on iMac and PPC? : Comment 17 of 19ANN.lu
Posted by Mekanix on 28-Apr-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Ben Yoris):
AntiGravity.... aren't it those people who are against people having choices?
Bjarne
QNX on iMac and PPC? : Comment 18 of 19ANN.lu
Posted by Michael Jantzen on 28-Apr-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 12 (MAS):
I thought the display looked okay. Its actually a nifty little computer - I would have bought one, except they want you to sign up with their ISP (and I have DSL already...)
PS - I the Iopener has a 180 MHz Winchip 2 inside (x86 3dnow).
Michael Jantzen ^_^
QNX on iMac and PPC? : Comment 19 of 19ANN.lu
Posted by MAS on 29-Apr-2000 22:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 18 (Michael Jantzen):
I was thinking of recomending it to a realative, but I know she would have
trouble reading the screen. Don't get me wrong, the quality was not bad, but
I know older people would apreciate a bigger screen. That would drive the cost
up, but I think it will be an issue with the type of buyer that might otherwise
go for the concept.
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