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Genesi Introduces Dedicated MorphOS PCs 188

Posted by timothy from the and-a-handy-defrost-setting dept.
Velcro_SP writes "When was the last time a company had the nerve to attempt a worldwide introduction of an all-new desktop computer with dedicated OS? Genesi has been demonstrating prototypes all around Europe, most recently in Poland, in the USA, and is even making noise about Moscow. Throwing all caution to the wind they are moving past beta stage, announcing the consumer release scheduled to occur at an Aachen, Germany convention on December 7th and 8th. The Pegasos is a PPC processor-based computer designed and manufactured in Europe. It runs MorphOS, a PPC OS based on the Quark microkernel."
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Genesi Introduces Dedicated MorphOS PCs More

Genesi Introduces Dedicated MorphOS PCs

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  • amiga? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JamesCronus ( 592398 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @04:43PM (#4739967)
    this looks aweful similar to the thing that amiga, are doing, seems like they are settgin themselves up for comepetition. i hope this wont go the same way the BeBox went

    • Re:amiga? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ColdGrits ( 204506 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @04:48PM (#4739993)
      It is compatible with all existing Amiga software.

      which isn't surprising as a fe years back when Gateway owned Amiga and wanted nothing to do with a new OS, the MorphOS crew started writing an Amiga-compatible next generation PPC-based OS.

      Later, then Gateway sold Amiga to AmigaInc, and enough users pestered them, they decided to do a new AmigaOS. there was a possibility of them adopting MorphOS, but sadly internal politics (AmigaInc were friendly with Hyperion who hate the MorphOS crew, so AInc listened to Hyperion and gave them the contract instead) screwed it up.

      Meanwhile, MorphOS has gone from strength to strength and advanced way beond a mere next-generation AmigaOS.

      Shoudl be good!

      • Re:amiga? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Captain Zion ( 33522 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @04:59PM (#4740031)
        It is compatible with all existing Amiga software.

        Note that certain applications such as demos or games actually execute on UAE. According to the MorphOS overview [morphos.net] page, they "believe that UAE is good enough to provide the functionality for applications that demand very true custom chip hardware emulation. Demos and Games are programs that are outdated very fast and they don't play such an important role to set the direction of future OS development", so no Protracker and Technological Death running in native mode. I wonder what happens with games/demos that require AGA?

      • Re:amiga? (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        It is compatible with all existing Amiga software.

        Wrong. It is compatible with all RETARGETABLE Amiga Software. Anything that uses the original Amiga chipset (what a work of art that thing was!) will not work. In summary, apps will likely work, classic games will likely not.

        Of course, you can always run UAE on this box, and I think you can be sure there'll be a LOT of attention paid to getting Amiga emulation going REALLY nicely on this new platform. This community, even moreso than the linux gang, are used to doing it themselves. More power to them!

      • Re:amiga? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Dark Lord Seth ( 584963 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @05:11PM (#4740072) Journal

        Yes, but is it also Amiga HARDWARE compatible? I read something quite a while ago that stated that it is physically impossible for normal FDDs to read Amiga(D)OS formatted disks... Would I be able to stick my old Amiga games into the bloody machine and play them? (This time while being able to read and understand english)

        • See this Slashdot story [slashdot.org] from 28 October.
        • No, that's untrue. When I used my amiga it took standard disks, except they were double density and not HD. They held 880k of data when formatted, unlike DOS (760k?).

          The only differences were in the software.

          Mac disk drives back then apparently used a completely different method - spinning the disk at different rates or something. Then they changed to HD like everyone else. But I could certainly read PC formatted disks on the Amiga using the CrossDOS drivers.

          • Sort of... (Score:1, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward
            The Amiga format actually ignores the physical sync hole in the disk, and writes in a sort of track-at-once mode. It *is* possible to read the disks with a standard PC floppy and controller, but only with low-level access to the controller (read: as a hackerly DOS util, perhaps portable to root-mode in *NIX).

            However, as all the 'smarts' of a PC floppy are really in the controller, you can replace the controller with something a bit more flexible, as noted- Individual Computers' Catweasel [jschoenfeld.com] being the leading example.

            What's interesting is that the characteristic Amiga "click" comes from the use of what were then cheaper, non-PC drive movements that didn't support a diskchange switch (not that any PC software actually takes advantage of it today!).
          • The only differences were in the software.

            No, no, no. If the only differences were in the software, PCs would be able to read amiga floppies with just some software, and they cannot. The floppy controller used in most PCs is not capable of reading/writing 880k and ~1700k amiga floppies (I forget how big the high density ones are.)

            Macs used a multi-speed drive to get 800k; I think it's got three different speeds. The drives were provided by sony. This is, BTW, the original "Superdrive" and the primary reason I'm annoyed with apple today - You don't bring out a product at one time which reads PC and Mac floppy disks, which is called a SuperDrive, and then later bring out a DVD-RW and also call it a superdrive. Call it a SuperMegaDrive, or stick it up your ass and whistle, but don't call it a SuperDrive.

            (End of rant)

            • You don't bring out a product at one time which reads PC and Mac floppy disks, which is called a SuperDrive, and then later bring out a DVD-RW and also call it a superdrive. Call it a SuperMegaDrive, or stick it up your ass and whistle, but don't call it a SuperDrive.
              I agree; that annoyed me like the dickens myself. But you gotta give 'em credit for having called the drive chip for the *original* high density floppy drive the "Super Woz Interface Module" i.e. SWIM. In all those years of the wintel folks giving chips names like TI-78 Foo Interface Driver System , it was always comforting to read specs from Apple.
              Of course, now the rest of the world has chips with names like Dragonball Z and Apple just makes iWhatever.
              *sigh*.
              Rustin
            • Ok, I've got to reply on this. Go to the disk2fdi homepage [oldskool.org], download the package and see for yourself.

              Disk2fdi can read Amiga floppies (among others) on a PC with two floppy drives.

              And by the way, the if you buy a Catweasel mk3, you can read even those pesky variable speed 800k Apple disks on a single speed drive. Disk2fdi doesn't require anything else but a plain dos prompt and two floppy drives.

              Why does every Amiga thread on Slashdot have to be full of misinformation? Oh well, I guess that goes for all Slashdot threads.. :-)
        • I'm afraid the Pegasos computer + MorphOS operating system aren't chipset compatible. This means the same limitations as the AmigaOne + OS4.

          So no, you won't be playing old trackloader-games without a Classic Amiga emulator, this is only for workbench applications that don't hit the hardware.

          Then again, like I said previously, most modern Classic Amigas won't boot those good old games either without a lot of hacking and patching.

          It's just one tradeoff that has had to be made in order to get newer and faster machines out..

          The Amiga is a difficult machine to expand on because of the integrated nature of the architechture. Luckily people have devised ways of retargetting video and audio, so modern Amiga software isn't really dependant on the actual Amiga chipsets (OCS, ECS, AGA)
        • What the hell is an FDD?
          -a mac user
      • @Mr. Troll (ColdGrits)

        First MorphOS is not compatible with all existing Amiga software!

        MorphOS on Pegasos will not run any software that depends on the Amiga chipset ... just like AmigaOS 4.0 on the AmigaOne.

        And there is no proof that all the software that does not depend on the chipset wil run on MorphOS/AmigaOS4.0.

        By the way MorphOS is only intended emulate/simulate AmigaOS 3.1 --> there is also software that only runs on x>3.1

        The reason that "the MorphOS team" didn't make AmigaOS, was that they didn't follow the rules!

        Hyperion is doing a great job, and I look forward to get AmigaOS 4.0
    • this looks aweful similar to the thing that amiga

      This look awful similar to a microwave, that's it. Have you seen photo #2?
      • i was wonderign about that, but figured that maybe they were coming up with a whole new concept, you've seen case mods with coffee machines, well maybe this just takes it one step further?

        or then again maybe not
        • maybe they were coming up with a whole new concept

          Yeah, maybe.

          Just like the concept "Is is never pathetic enough" that made someone think about those cases that looks like cats and dogs (respectivelly labeled "Kitty" and "Doggy").

          But, what the hell, The Sims [ea.com] sold more than 6,3 million copies. There IS market for things like that.

          I particularly prefer black cases.

      • Re:amiga? (Score:4, Funny)

        by Captain Zion ( 33522 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @05:15PM (#4740089)
        This look awful similar to a microwave, that's it.

        Indeed. It will probably look great with a chicken cooking screensaver.

      • Wow, I agree. That's the first thing I thought when I saw that picture. It's a microwave! How funny. It must all be a joke or something, huh?
        • The VideoMicrowave is not a joke, although it is obviously something of a novelty case. This is one of the planned Pegasos configurations. I think it is supposed to be the media processing workstation (music, sound, pictures, video).
  • Linux? :) And of course: "Imagine a Beowolf cluster of these?" Disclaimer: Not a troll, just a joke...

  • Next week on Slashdot (Score:3, Funny)

    by Istealmymusic ( 573079 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @04:43PM (#4739972) Homepage Journal
    Gnutella Introduces Dedicated MorpheUS PCs! Let the swapping begin!

  • Yeah, actually... (Score:4, Informative)

    by evil_one ( 142582 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @04:44PM (#4739976) Homepage
    When was the last time a company had the nerve to attempt a worldwide introduction of an all-new desktop computer with dedicated OS?

    Ever heard of Be, Inc. or the Be Box?

    • Re:Yeah, actually... (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Ever heard of Be, Inc. or the Be Box?

      Heard of them lately? No? Well, there you go.
    • >> When was the last time a company had the nerve to attempt a worldwide introduction of an all-new desktop computer with dedicated OS?

      > Ever heard of Be, Inc. or the Be Box?

      Exactly. This hasn't happened since Be.

    • Re:Yeah, actually... (Score:3, Informative)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )
      The BeBox was not an all-new computer; it was an existing reference board with an added IO board for all the ports. The BeOS was not a dedicated OS; It ran on various PPC macs from the beginning and ported to x86 shortly thereafter. The only thing all-new about the BeBox was the case, which I admit was pretty damned cool. I hope I can pick up another BeBox someday (I used to have a 66MHz) so I can put a PC in it.
      • No, BeOS did not ran on Macs from the beginning -- that was years after the introduction of the BeBox. I remember this because I subscribed to the Be Newsletter and watched the development from early on.
      • Well, the new Amiga boards are really modified PPC pop boards too..

        Please don't butcher the BeBox to fit a PC inside unless it's broken. It always disheartens me to see WORKING retro hardware changed into boring old PCs. If it works, sell it to a collector for profit.

  • Can you imagine... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...a Mosix cluster of these?

  • Winamp? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RomikQ ( 575227 ) <romikq@mail.ru> on Saturday November 23, 2002 @04:46PM (#4739980) Homepage
    You can clearly see winamp or xmms in this picture [tc3net.com]. Does that mean their kernel supports windows/elf binaries?

  • More details on the OS..... (Score:5, Informative)

    by mickwd ( 196449 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @04:46PM (#4739983)
    are here. [blachford.info]

  • What is this thing. (Score:4, Funny)

    by jericho4.0 ( 565125 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @04:47PM (#4739992)
    So I click on the first link and get a screenshot of an OS running on a microwave. Hmmmm.

    I click the second link, and after some digging, figure out that this is a legacy free port of the old Amiga OS.

    My question is, what is this? An OS for microwaves? Graphics/Multimedia a la BeOS? Something to hack with? Or is it all about Amiga nostalgia?

  • Last Dedicated OS/Computer Combo (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MacGod ( 320762 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @04:51PM (#4740005)
    "When was the last time a company had the nerve to attempt a worldwide introduction of an all-new desktop computer with dedicated OS?"

    Umm, the BeBox/BeOS and NeXTCube with NextStep come to mind.

    So, how long till *these* guys get a buyout off from Apple?

  • What the? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ToadSprocket ( 628571 )
    When was the last time a company had the nerve to attempt a worldwide introduction of an all-new desktop computer with dedicated OS?
    Well, SGI had a neat little thing going there for a couple of years. Look where they are now. "But their machines are still used for rendering blah blah blah" Yeah and Hasselhoff is big in Germany, your point?
    It runs MorphOS, a PPC OS based on the Quark microkernel.
    Don't know too mych about Morph, isn't it designed to play ROMS for amiga games or something fairly niche like that?
    I don't really think this is big news. What is the target market for this thing? How far could it even go? Linux can't even make a dent in the windows marketplace, and look at all the muscle they have behind them. (take it easy now folks, Linux is great and I pray to the penguin every night, just demonstrating how far this thing will or will not go) Down boy!
    • SGI went under (and for those disputing that fact check their market share) because of management failure upon failure.

      The 02 was a pos when it came out, more warranty failures than you can count (I know, I own one), then they drop their own pretty good line and start making PC's running NT, not the best market to get your users to switch to if you have been bashing that same platform for years and care about your bottom line.

      Add to that the little cherry of buying out an ailing supercomputer manufacturer (cray) and the picture is complete.

      Too bad, I have owned a couple of indy's and IRIX is still one of the best os's I have ever worked with (QNX excepted)

      • Re:What the? (Score:3, Informative)

        by the gnat ( 153162 )
        SGI wasn't ever a "desktop" company anyway, contrary to what the parent poster said. They were always a workstation company, and Indys and O2s were intended for power users (though I've heard of them being used as office machines). They filled the same niche as the Sparcstations- the Indy and the Sparcstation 4 were introduced at about the same time.

        I haven't had much trouble with the O2, but I've never been very impressed either. SGI's customer base was people who needed something twice as powerful as the best PC and were willing to pay through the nose for it. The Indigo2 cost as much as a luxury car but was worth every pennny. Now with PCs (and Linux) not sucking quite so much, and with NVidia et al. churning out cheap, fast graphics chipsets, SGI has to focus on a higher-end (and lower-volume) market. They still make great "superworkstations" and visualization systems, but they'll never be able to make another Indy.

        The Cray-style systems are the one area where SGI is still going strong. We just bought an Origin 300, and even though the processors are slower for most tasks the overall architecture is far superior to anything in the PC world, and will probably remain so for years.

        What continues to impress me about their machines is how well they age; I still use an Indigo2 and I'd never call it "fast" but it runs "smoother" than any other computer/OS I've ever used. And that's with a recent Irix revision- not bad for a 9-year-old computer.

    • The real advantage of Quark... (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ...is that, eventually, it should be possible to build a much lither VMWare-like solution on it. This means multiple concurrent copies of a yet-to-be-developed qkLinux running on one box, perhaps with MOS as a frontend if you want, or not.

      That's where the team seems to be trying to take things, anyway, and it'll be a few years before we see it realized... but no, it's still a bit more than a game emulator... more of a total system emulation, not entirely unlike the Linux-based 'Amithlon' product for x86.

      Of course, OS4 will provide stiff competition on the Amiga-compatibility front... and the MOS team's public image steers like a cow, so it'll take them a while to make their destination clear.

  • MorphOS Details (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 23, 2002 @04:59PM (#4740034)
    From the MorphOS site [blachford.info]. Posted Anon because I know it is whoring.

    This document was written to describe MorphOS, how it came about, its workings, its current status and future plans. Special thanks go to bplan and the MorphOS developers for the great deal of assistance given.

    Introduction

    MorphOS is a new Operating System for PowerPC RISC microprocessors which runs on the Pegasos computer and PowerUP (CyberstormPPC, BlizzardPPC) expansion cards for the Amiga. It has also been tested on the Mai Logic Teron CX and Teron PX evaluation boards. In the future MorphOS will also run on other Open Firmware based PowerPC machines and possibly some PowerPC based Apple Macintosh computers as well.

    It currently runs on 603e, 604e, 750 and 7400 (Original G4) PowerPC processors.

    MorphOS is a well named combination of the old and the new. It originally started in 1995 with a plan to migrate Amiga to PowerPC but eventually 'morphed' into an entire Operating System in it's own right which includes compatibility with Amiga applications. In the future it will change again becoming a truly modern, highly advanced operating system yet retaining compatibility with existing applications through it's system of OS boxes.

    In the Beginning - The History of MorphOS

    To add some perspective and for completeness, before going into detail, this section describes how the MorphOS project started and it's subsequent history.

    The Amiga started on its long arduous path to the PowerPC processor in 1995. While there have been and still are other projects to do this, with MorphOS 1.0 the original project is finally being completed.

    In September 1995 there was an agreement between Amiga Technologies and the German company phase5 to develop a migration path for the Amiga to move to the PowerPC from the Motorola 680x0 (68K) series processors which were coming to the end of their life, this was the genesis of the MorphOS project.

    Unfortunately this agreement was short-lived as Amiga Technologies' parent company Escom went bankrupt. However the project did not die as phase5 decided to go ahead and continue with the migration process. This lead to phase5 launching in 1997 a series of PowerUP add-on cards for the Amiga providing RISC based acceleration for the first time. Programs ran on both the 68K and some functions were accelerated through the use of the PowerPC processor and a PPC native library.

    There were many plans made and agreements between phase5 and other companies but as the numerous twists and turns in the Amiga story occurred companies went out of business and none of these plans came to fruition, eventually with the decline in the Amiga market phase5 themselves went bankrupt. Later a new company, bplan was formed and the project was picked up again but this time it was to be completed as an Operating System in it's own right without any components from the original. In 2000 as it moved towards completion, MorphOS was released as a public beta for PowerUP card owners.

    The 2002 public MorphOS 1.0 release on the PowerPC based Pegasos represents the final chapter in the 7 year long transition to PowerPC from the original 68K based propriety hardware. MorphOS does not require the original hardware or include any of the original system software but it does very much include the same spirit and feeling - a computer which is fast and fun to use!

    The Structure of MorphOS

    The MorphOS System is based around the minimalist Quark microkernel. On top of the kernel are currently two "Boxes" the first, currently in the final stages of development is the A-Box, the second box currently in development is the significantly more advanced Q-Box.

    At the time of writing (November 2002) most development has focused on the A-Box but considerable design work has been done on the Q-Box.

    The A-Box can run Amiga RTG (Re-Targetable Graphics) applications as it includes a complete PowerPC native clean-room reimplementation of version 3.1 of the Amigas' Operating System (herein AOS) and a JIT (Just In Time compiler) based 68K emulator.

    The Q-Box on the other hand shall be new and will require it's own applications, but by including compatibility with Amiga applications through the A-Box, MorphOS is able to start with an existing, mature application base while the Q-Box is in development.

    It is also possible that in the future other boxes may be added allowing compatibility with applications from other operating systems. Possibilities here are to add Unix / Linux and BeOS application compatibility. It should however be noted that these are only possibilities at this point and various issues have to be considered before adding compatibility for these systems.

    The A-Box

    The original purpose of MorphOS was to keep the Amiga alive by providing an upgrade path to modern hardware.

    Users can already use emulators to run original applications on other platforms but these work by emulating the 68K processor and the custom chips. While this emulation is complete and accurate, a great deal of potential performance is lost in doing all the emulation.

    While MorphOS has moved on from what it was originally built for it still retains compatibility with AOS 3.1. However it uses a different technique which allows software to take full advantage of modern hardware. The A-Box includes a clean-room implementation of the AOS 3.1 API created using publicly available documentation. This has been written and compiled on the PowerPC so it is nearly 100% native. There is also a 68K emulator for existing applications, the performance of which is boosted significantly by a JIT (Just In Time compiler) which converts 68K code into native PowerPC code then caches it largely removing the overhead emulation usually incurs. In addition to being native, the A-Box is faster than the original at running applications due to different techniques and being used withinthe system. This provides a further boost in system performance.

    For maximum performance however it is a simple process to compile code natively to the PPC. This allows Amiga applications to take full advantage of the PowerPC CPUs' performance.

    One important point to make however is that there is no emulation of the Amiga custom chips. Consequently MorphOS cannot itself run applications which require them. This is not as much of a problem as one might imagine since applications from AOS 2.0 onwards have been able to use API calls which are not hardware dependant. If a user wants to run applications which require the custom chips (e.g. many games), they can use UAE (Ubiquitous Amiga Emulator), this provides emulation of the full Amiga hardware and runs on various platforms including MorphOS.

    AOS originally ran on what are now obsolete systems with only a fraction of the computing power available in today's modern microprocessors. Amiga speeds were quoted in MIPS (millions of instructions per second), the MIPS rating for a 1Ghz IBM G3 is over 2,000 times higher than the original 68000 based Amiga. Despite this the original Amigas responsiveness was - and still is - very high. Consequently, given that the A-Box provides a more efficient PPC native implementation, it's responsiveness will appear surprisingly fast to any PC owner especially given the relatively low clock speed (600MHz) of the initial systems.

    File Systems Support
    MorphOS supports a number of File Systems and others can be supported via plug-ins:
    OFS (Original File System)
    FFS (Fast File System)
    FFS 2 (Fast File System 2)
    PFS 3 (Professional File System 3)
    SFS (Smart File System)

    Chill Out - The Ambient Desktop The MorphOS desktop replacement for Workbench is called Ambient and being part of the A-Box feels like the environment it emulates. It is able however to take advantage of the changes and advancements in the graphics system so unlike the Amigas' Workbench it supports 24bit displays and blending. Displaying the contents of a window while it's moving is another feature provided by the graphics system used by Ambient. MUI (Magic User Interface) is also incorporated making Ambient highly customizable.

    Other Graphical Enhancements
    Unlike the original, the graphics system is now fully abstracted away from the hardware, it has also been significantly enhanced with many new features such as transparency and overlays. Accelerated 3D graphics are implemented using the Rave3D API and a wrapper for the Warp3D API is in development, OpenGL compatibility is also in the pipeline.

    The Audio system has also been improved with the addition of AHI, this is a retarget table API for Audio so Applications can take advantage of systems with audio hardware better than the original (these days, all of them).

    When launched AOS was a highly advanced operating system, it included pre-emptive multitasking in 1985 - a feature not added to other desktop Operating Systems (i.e. to Windows or MacOS) until much later. Compared to modern Operating Systems however, the Amiga has it's fair share of limitations, i.e. there is no memory protection or virtual memory present as standard.

    Because it includes a faithful re-implementation of the AOS 3.1 API specification the A-Box design was largely fixed and could not be made radically different. Consequently the A-Box has many of the same basic limitations present in the original. Some of these have been worked around with extensions but in some cases the limitations are either too difficult or impossible to remove without completely breaking compatibility with applications. These however are limitations of the A-Box, not MorphOS as a whole, the Q-Box shall not have these problems.

    Q - The Future of MorphOS

    The Q-Box
    Up to now the development has been concentrated on the A-Box. In the future this focus shall switch to Q.

    Q shall consist of an enhanced Quark kernel, a set of servers to provide functionality and the Q-Box in which applications run. The Quark Kernel itself is very small providing a hardware abstraction layer, drivers, memory management and message passing. Most of the real work will be done in the servers, i.e. Networking, File System, GUI, Media, Security, 2D/3D Graphics etc.

    Applications shall run in the Q-Box and make API calls via a message passing system. The API shall not be locked to any single programming language so application developers will not be required to learn a new language. The message passing is also extremely fast, instead of transferring the data in the message, the memory location of the message is remapped to the application where the message is due. Small messages are directly copied as this method is faster for very small amounts of data.

    Scalability and Other Bits
    The message passing system used within MorphOS means the system can be highly scalable. The components sending and receiving messages can be running on different processors or even physically different computers and the messages will still get there. A windowing system over a network (a-la The X Windowing System) could be implemented in this manner but the result is likely to be a great deal more responsive. An X Windows compatible wrapper is planned so X Windows applications can be ported but the resulting speed on the desktop will be very different from those using current X Windows implementations.

    The distributed capability of Q messaging means clustering will be possible without having to rewrite the entire OS. Applications requiring massive numbers of processors will be relatively simple to write under Q. One requirement of large scale applications is a large memory footprint, workstations and large servers have been 64 bit for many years now but this is yet to reach consumer level Operating Systems. Q was designed with 64 bit capability in mind from the start, it shall not be a bolt-on to an existing 32 bit OS. Applications will, from the start have access to address ranges much, much larger than existing desktop Operating Systems.

    Microkernel Vs Macro Kernel
    A common problem encountered in the development of microkernel Operating Systems is speed. This is due to the CPU having to context switch back and forth between the kernel and user processes, context switching is expensive in terms of computing power. The consequence of this has been that many Operating Systems have switched from their original microkernel roots and become closer to a macrokernel by moving functionality into the kernel, i.e. Microsoft moved graphics into the Windows NT kernel, Be moved networking inside, Linux began as a macrokernel so includes everything. This technique provides a speed boost but at the cost of stability and security since different kernel tasks can potentially overwrite one another's memory.

    Given the above, one might wonder why Q can be based on a microkernel (strictly speaking it's only "microkernel like") and still expected to perform well. The answer to this lies in the fact that MorphOS runs on PowerPC and not x86 CPUs. It is a problem with the x86 architecture that causes context switches to be computationally expensive. Context switching on the PowerPC is in the region of 10 times faster, similar in speed to a subroutine call. This means PowerPC Operating Systems can use a microkernel architecture with all it's advantages yet without the cost of slow context switches. There are no plans for an x86 version of MorphOS, if this changes there will no doubt be internal changes to accommodate the different processor architecture.

    Transition
    At time of writing the Quark kernel exists but is incomplete. The rest of Q is still only at the planning stage, the large details have been worked out but the fine details have yet to be filled in. Drivers are for instance included in the A-Box where they can get to the hardware directly. In the future the drivers shall be moved into the Quark kernel where they will be independent of the A-Box and indeed of any other boxes, this has the advantage of making them usable by all the boxes. This move has been pre-planned so drivers were written with it in mind and the move shall be a relatively trivial operation.

    Vapour Where?
    Almost all the information here about the Q-Box is in the future and this could lead to accusations of us generating vapourware. We are only setting out our goals here and how we plan to achieve them. However as is normal in the world of computing things change so this is all subject to change. Development of complex systems always takes a great deal of time, we are looking at ways of getting the system into the market as soon as possible but the final product will of course take time.

    The future will expand on the work already done and provide MorphOS users with a truly modern Operating System designed and built by now long experienced developers who know the benefits and advantages of the past but also have the knowledge and experience of what not to do and the paths not to follow.

    Further Information

    For details of MorphOS news and links see: www.morphos-news.de [morphos-news.de]

    For more details of the Pegasos main board see: www.pegasosppc.com [pegasosppc.com]

    v1.1 Copyright Thendic-France SARL November 2002

    All terms and names used in this white paper are trademarks and property of their respective owners.

  • I think this is a good thing, as long as it is done right. Any poor moves make it harder for anyone to justify investing in a non wintel system. However, if they do it right and are at least somewhat successful, it would do wonders for the market. We all know that competition is good for the consumer, so lets hope that these guys are ready to be good competitors.

  • Slightly off-topic: Amiga PDA. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jfisherwa ( 323744 ) <jason.fisher@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Saturday November 23, 2002 @05:07PM (#4740057) Homepage
    I never understood why nobody ever went the route of making an Amiga-based PDA. 68k. Originally built for "low-resolution" (320x240). Lightweight OS with a small footprint. Plentiful applications already available.. and an interface that is extremely gratifying in its responsiveness.

    *shrug*

    • Problem: Motorola (Score:4, Informative)

      by bstadil ( 7110 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @05:45PM (#4740185) Homepage
      Motorola is an awful company to do business with unless you are a volume user. They haven't a clue that its important to seed smaller designs with good pricing to win mindshare and have innovative designs flurish.

      TI understand this and look who won the DSP battle. (other reasons granted)

      Moto will charge you twice the price for half the performance vs x86 and still wonder why they are not able to make inroads. By the way Coldfire next gen. 68k has done ok but they are fumbling / killing this as we speak, ARM / Xscale will be the winner.

      • I agree with you on all accounts. An Amiga PDA would've only really made sense to a mass-market 2-3 years ago.. now it could be nothing more than a niche toy for the enthusiasts (sounding a little more like Amiga itself ;)) ..
      • There's a zillion motorola-based devices out there in the form of coldfire which should have no trouble running legacy 68000 code, so if you brought AmigaDOS (or AROS) to PalmOS you could probably run existing binaries. The best part is that all you would have to do is add a couple new drivers (which run in userspace) to the kernel ROM image and it should work okay. Well, and convince palm to port graffiti to AmigaDOS, or write your own HW recognition system.

    • Problem: Chipset. (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The 'Problem: Motorola' thread covers half of it. The other half is the chipset- only recently has CPU emulation of ECS/AGA caught up to snuff, and the original designs, while not power-suckers on the order of the Athlon, weren't really meant for low-consumption portable devices.

      When you're reliant on the custom chips for such simple things as standard system audio (meaning, until very recently, *everything* that needed to beep was hitting Gary or his equivalent directly), there isn't a lot you can do without them. That, combined with the hassle of 'crossgrading' to Coldfire, and the utter confusion over intellectual property ownership, is the reason it never happened.
    • The Amiga's never booted into such a small resolution..

      The default is 640x200 for NTSC and 640x256 for PAL. Double the vertical res if you turn on interlace.

      Of course after OS2.0 the Amiga got bigger modes too (not displayable on a normal TV frequency monitor, however)

      Of course you can switch the Workbench to 320x200 or 320x256 but who in their right minds would want to. :-) If you don't have any more than that, you must design everything carefully to fit the resolution .. The Amiga's GUI is designed for 640x200 minimum.
      • Yes, and that's the same sort of resolution as most keyboarded PDAs - which are much the best, after all

        I have to say I agree with this idea, but you don't use the custom chips. You use the existing RTG standards and then put in whatever cheap GFX and sound controllers you can get. It worked for the Draco after all...

        Yes, it won't run most AOS stuff out of the box but they're not really designed for a PDA anyway. The point is, it would be relatively cheap hardware with a clean, simple, easily extensible OS that's already well understood by developers. I strongly suspect it would have happened years ago if it wasn't for Amiga's various financial and ownership questions.
      • I'm pretty sure Amiga Workbench 1.1/1.2 booted right into that resolution unless you specified otherwise. :P

        But seriously, the most important part that fits into the pie are the games--most of which are developed for 320x200/320x256 anyway. Desktop applications run through Intuition, and thus will be compliant by default. ;)

        And as far as planar vs chunky graphics (a long time since I've heard anyone make/converse an argument here) -- I don't know, but maybe planar could be somehow magically better for handheld applications.

        The most nagging issue I can see is the power consumption of the custom chipset. If you don't do it right, you may as well not do it at all.. you would have to create an all-in-one Amiga chip, which is definitely a possibility in today's world, but would require a market to support it--cost reasons. .. We can still dream?
    • There's a reason there isn't even an Amiga laptop. Power consumption. The AmigaOS relied on custom chips and a hardware design that would eat batteries for breakfast.
      • Exactly. If you look through the other responses to this post, you'll find I responded to myself that they would have to do an Amiga system chipset-on-a-chip from the ground up to make that work.

        But.. system applications could be made to work in a 68k-only environment. You would use a 68k series, updated OS, and ignore the custom chipset--really all you want then is the lightweight OS and all of the compliant applications.

  • What is MorphOS ? read on... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 23, 2002 @05:08PM (#4740065)

    The target of the Quark microkernel is to provide modern functionality for a new OS layer and to run as many RTG friendly applications we loved from our old Commodore(TM) A1000, A500, A2000, A1200, A3000(T) and A4000(T) systems as efficiently as possible.

    Therefore we are doing an API compatible PPC reimplementation of the OS using our own and AROS' technology, which we call A-Box. The goal is to extend the A-Box with new functionalities which it painfully needs and also work on a new OS layer using Quark functionality called Q-Box.

    Older software, which accesses the custom chip hardware, will directly play no role in our OS plans. This is because it would only hurt the project's goal to be as fast as possible as custom chip emulation requires too much cpu performance.

    We believe that UAE is good enough to provide the functionality for applications that demand very true custom chip hardware emulation. Demos & Games are programs that are outdated very fast and they don't play such an important role to set the direction of future OS development. A version of UAE for MorphOS is available here.

    Because we believe that the original OS design has strong limits for newer technology through its design structure, we also plan a completly fresh and clean OS layer on top of the Quark kernel (called Q-Box now).

    The A-Box API was nice in its time, but today it has serious limitations because it doesn't hide OS structures and has no concept of memory ownership. This doesn't even cover all kinds of problems in many of the other system modules like layers, graphics, intuition or DOS which we at least try to resolve as far as possible with our A-Box extensions. As a consequence, we will not replicate the A-Box API in the Q-Box but we will try to do a new API without any compromises to the past but based on past experience.

    There is a general MorphOS FAQ on the Support Page. This answers many general question you may have.

    The people behind MorphOS have worked on most of the key products for this market since Commodore(TM) died. A few products we developed were:

    Fastlane - First Zorro3 DMA SCSI controller
    CyberStorm - First 68060 CPU card
    CyberGraphX - The first 24Bit OS RTG
    Several innovative Graphics Cards like
    CyberVision64
    CyberVision64/3D
    CyberVisionPPC
    CyberStormPPC & BlizzardPPC - The only PowerPC CPU cards & Wide SCSI system for this market
    New Hardware developments
    G-Rex - DMA capable PCI extension for the PowerUP cards
    Pegasos - A PowerPC 2xAGP MicroATX CHRP system
    Both will be supported by MorphOS

    Anon cos i dont need the karma

  • More Pegasos/MorphOS screenshots. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 23, 2002 @05:15PM (#4740087)
    For more powerful Screenshots showing the Pegasos (Motherboard) and MorphOS (Operating System) in action please go here [thendic-france.com]. A lot of Galleries!

  • What is it with the Germans? (Score:5, Funny)

    by sql*kitten ( 1359 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @05:19PM (#4740100)
    Genesi has been demonstrating prototypes all around Europe, most recently in Poland, in the USA, and is even making noise about Moscow.

    Everytime they invent a new technology the first thing they try to do with it is invade Poland and Russia! :-)
  • is made by bPlan which used to be Phase5, a german hardware manufacturer. They made accelerator cards for both the Mac and the Amiga, and were the ones who brought PowerPC to the
    Amiga.

    Seems like they have teamed up with french Thendic, who are making the hardware now.

    MorphOS is supposed to be able to run legacy Amiga software through emulation.
    • > Seems like they have teamed up with french > Thendic, who are making the hardware now. Wrong, bPlan makes the hardware. > MorphOS is supposed to be able to run legacy > Amiga software through emulation. Partly true, the only thing emulated is the 68k CPU, software run on a FULLY PPC native AmigaOS replacement called the A/Box.
  • I checked the links in the article, but I couldn't find anything indicating who these machines are being marketed to, or for that matter what their USP would be against a Wintel or Mac box. Can anyone clue me in?

    PS. This is not flamebait, I really would like to know what the plan is regarding these boxes.
    • Initial market, of course, is to developers. Notice it's placement at CeBIT (heavily developer-oriented show) and other developer shows. The price is low enough to convince many shadetree coders to take a look into the system, especially those that remember the ease of coding on the Amiga. Lock in a core of developers, you get apps. Once you get apps, then you can attract joe-schmo users. Till then, the best bet is to attract the "way cool" buying folks and developers.

      Then look at the other boards they have coming. Eclipsis, a PDA-scaled board... how many PDA's do you know that run the same OS as your desktop? Makes developing for them super-easy. And sharing software and data would also be easy... great USP for businesses and software makers.

      MorphOS API's are designed around a distributed setup, message-passing similar to QNX. It would also be simple to make MorphOS-based supercomputers, something many developers will not ignore for long.
      • Thanks for that info. Not really something I'd be looking into, but I wish them luck anyway. Here's hoping they've read their history of (recent) computing, particularly re: Be{OS|Box}, and are keeping an eye out for MSDonkeyKong...
      • And don't forget, you're mostly able to just recompile your RTG app for PPC, so the existing Amiga developers won't have a hard time creating MorphOS and AmigaOS4 native versions of their software.

        What saddens me, however is why every time something new comes up in the Amiga world, there must be at least two mostly incompatible standards for it. When will they learn that the market isn't big enough for that.
  • It seems to be missing from the article.

    http://www.morphos.de/ [http]
  • What does this system do that:
    • Can't be done as well or better already, AND
    • That a large number of people want, or could be induced to want?
    i.e., what is the selling proposition here?
    • Ok, let's start with #1:

      Scale upwards with multiple processors quickly (just switch the CPU card). Very useful for many high-end apps.

      CPU is better utilized, resulting in a faster machine while using lower-end CPU's.

      The Eclipsis board (one of the other products in this family) makes even the strongest PocketPC machine look like a tinker-toy by comparison.

      The OS scales better, from PDA's to clusters all running the same OS seamlessly. (Yes, Linux can do this too, but only with patches and add-ons, this does it natively)

      As for #2, that's up to the business. MorphOS/Pegasos has an advantage over BeBox in that the hardware is mostly off-the-shelf, just implimented in a more efficient manner. Means a much lower production cost over the BeBox when introduced. Admit it guys, if the BeBox was $1k when released, Be would have sold many more copies of it. Genesi's product range is far more flexible, even moreso than Apple's range. That they're using third-party suppliers means that clones are more than possible (actually encouraged) in that any POP board running OpenFirmware can run MorphOS. This gives these guys the edge for cloning. More PPC machines ship, the lower prices go. As for CPU speed, I think IBM and Mot are about to go after each others market, resulting in greater CPU speeds as each competes with each other. And don't forget that AMD also has a PPC license. If the PPC market suddenly heats up, AMD would have no compultion from jumping into the fray.
  • For more information on this upcoming show in Aachen turn here [amiga-messe.de].

    Some further background info on MorphOS can be read here [osnews.com] and here [blachford.info].

    To see what last year's big Amiga fair is like, here [virtualdimension.de] you can see a welldone video coverage of last year's show.

  • cool (Score:2)

    by zogger ( 617870 )
    cool, the machine itself looks like the quicktime player to me, like a screen cap got changed into a piece of hardware.

    here's list of apps if anyone is interested and hasn't clicked over.

    new software
    program: version:
    CVS 1.11.2
    Frogger 2.05
    Frogger Codecs 1.4
    xquiz 1.2
    nettoe 1.1
    mp3ai release 0
    deutex 4.4.0
    tictactoe 1.2.1
    surfboard 1.1.5
    othello 0.03
    ID3ren 1.1
    wget 1.8.2
    Mencoder CVS 06.10.2002
    SDL 1.2.5
    Poseidon 1.31
    ahi.device 5.29
    ScummVM CVS 23.09.2002
    guigfxlib 19.2
    Freeciv 1.13.1
    ScummVM BE 0.2.0

    frogger, heh, still got that one some of my coal burning macs, heh, if it's that same frogger that is!

  • Really want these things to move... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Eric_Cartman_South_P ( 594330 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @05:53PM (#4740206)
    ...then make the base nice and small. And give me a flat screen. Maybe wide-screen format! Yeah! And add a nice gui, and some good usable apps for chat, DVD burning, mail, some web services, music... uh... wait... nevermind.

  • Well, they actually don't present prototypes, these boards are the production version of the Pegasos MB. What is still in beta (and will still be for some time, probably till 8/Dec) is MorphOS.

  • Catweasel MK3 PCI/Flipper board (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mike Bouma ( 85252 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @06:10PM (#4740283) Homepage
    Another interesting product which will be sold at the Aachen fair is the new Catweasel MK3 PCI/Flipper board. This PCI board can be used with AmigaOne boards, Pegasos boards, Classic Amigas and even ordinary PCs to read just about any disk format using ordinary mainstream diskdrives (including 880kb/1,76 MB Amiga disks), connect digital c64/Amiga/Atari joysticks, connect Amiga keyboards or even add a real c64 SID soundchip'.

    Here's a picture:
    http://home.t-online.de/home/indcomp/bin/cwmk3.jpg [t-online.de]

    For more infor turn here [jschoenfeld.de].

    Previous slashdot coverage [slashdot.org].

    Also interesting for Retro fans is that an ATX form factor c64 clone will be launched at the upcoming fair as well. (No kidding!)

  • When? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mbogosian ( 537034 ) <matt&arenaunlimited,com> on Saturday November 23, 2002 @06:48PM (#4740441) Homepage
    When was the last time a company had the nerve to attempt a worldwide introduction of an all-new desktop computer with dedicated OS?

    1997: Be, Inc.
  • It must take a really DENSE person to program one of those hahaha

    ahhh.. i kill myself with those ones!

    [cx]

  • im confused... (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://www.morphos-news.de/help.php?lg=en&id=i nst

    "Its important, to have an 68040.library higher then 46.2 and quite a lot of memory, means, who has less then 32 MB should better not start (MOS itself gulps 16MB). Furthermore the AmigaROM 3.1 is needed (Version 40.68, incl. 40.70). It play no role, if this is in existant via the internal ROM or a ROM-File. If its a File, it has to be added to Butterfly/extensions at Kickstart! Without this ROM MorphOS wont start!
    Maybe its also important to know, that MorphOS aims on OS3.1 compatibility, not on OS3.5 or 3.9, although it runs with both of them.
    From OS3.5 on: Regretfully in this Versions there are still problems with "Reaction" left, so it might be, that when starting the Preferences in Sys:Prefs and change something there, the Amiga-Emulation-Box (A/Box) of MOS immediately freezes.

    Another point: dont be worried at the installation, no files will deleted, overridden or otherwise changed. Improtant: Copy the files unchanged!
    And dont worry, the copied files delete no others, they also dont disable the normal 68k-operating in any way.
    Concret: If a file is named "blabla.elf", it will be copied as "blabla.elf" and not "blabla". "

    you need 2 os'es to run this thing ? man..wierd logic
    • You've read a very old beta statement on MorphOS. The early Beta's of MorphOS needed the AmigaOS ROM's to provide the "fill-ins" for the missing parts of the Amiga API. MorphOS's team has been replacing the Amiga libraries one-at-a-time constantly. Now, no AmigaOS ROM is needed, as all of the libraries have been utterly replaced.
  • The problem with the many attempts at ressurecting the best parts of the old Amiga platform is the GUI, we need a nice looking, responsive interface which will re-invent the magic. A pleasurable user experience was the best part of these systems.

    They just worked... nicely.

  • I swear.. if I even see ONE commercial with a young female spokesmodel saying, "Hello Navi" I'll seriously sell my TV :P
  • Men's skin is different from women's skin. It is usually bigger, and
    it has more snakes tattooed on it. Also, if you examine a woman's skin
    very closely, inch by inch, starting at her shapely ankles, then gently
    tracing the slender curve of her calves, then moving up to her ...

    [EDITOR'S NOTE: To make room for news articles about important world events
    such as agriculture, we're going to delete the next few square feet of the
    woman's skin. Thank you.] ... until finally the two of you are lying there, spent, smoking your
    cigarettes, and suddenly it hits you: Human skin is actually made up of
    billions of tiny units of protoplasm, called "cells"! And what is even more
    interesting, the ones on the outside are all dying! This is a fact. Your
    skin is like an aggressive modern corporation, where the older veteran
    cells, who have finally worked their way to the top and obtained offices
    with nice views, are constantly being shoved out the window head first,
    without so much as a pension plan, by younger hotshot cells moving up from
    below.
    -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

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