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Apple Businesses Hardware

New G3-Based Platform Runs Mac OS X 315

Posted by timothy from the doomed-dumb-or-doable dept.
Worried writes "Pegasos is a new platform based on G3/G4 CPUs and it runs MorphOS and various Linux distros so far. This very interesting review of the platform over at OSNews points out that Darwin can play a significant role attracting new buyers. Another --possibly significant-- point in the article is that Pegasos can run Mac OS X via the Mac-On-Linux runtime kit. This is the *first* non-Mac platform that can run OSX without even the need for an Apple BIOS!"
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New G3-Based Platform Runs Mac OS X More

New G3-Based Platform Runs Mac OS X

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  • at some point... (Score:5, Funny)

    by TomRitchford ( 177931 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @01:47PM (#5993123) Homepage
    Apple will have to crack down on these "meta-clone" boxes.

    • Re:at some point... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by nattt ( 568106 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @01:53PM (#5993178)
      Nope. They're not macs, they're CHRP, which is totally legal and not Apple infinging at all.

      I ue briqs - www.totalimpact.com for a renderfarm ad they are G4 PPC CHRP boxes, running yellow dog linux and custom render management software that Total Ipmact have written. They're great little general purpose computers.

      • Breach of OS X EULA... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by The Placid Casual ( 661461 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @02:30PM (#5993417)
        The licence agreement on OS X precludes it being used on anything other than Apple licenced/made hardware.

        I would think that the manufacturers will be in the clear as they don't supply or load OS X on the system, but the actual owner of the installed copy OS X is in breach of the EULA...

        Can't see Apple identifying infringments, and tracking them all down though!

        (At least I hope they don't... they should be busy building the 970 Powermacs...)

        • Re:Breach of OS X EULA... (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          > The licence agreement on OS X precludes it being used on anything other than Apple licenced/made hardware.

          So don't agree to the license agreement and figure out how to install OS X anyways. From first sale doctrine, you not only have a legal basis to resell a book, etc (of course destroying any archive copies you've made), but you also have an implicit right to use the copyrighted work (in this case, OS X). This could of course lead to requiring a contract be signed prior to leaving the store with a

      • Re:at some point... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by cruppel ( 603595 )
        The article makes mention of Debian (go Purdue!) and MorphOS shipping with the computer, so It may be hard for Apple to come down on them for a EULA violation. Individuals would have to be the target .

      • Re:at some point... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Bastian ( 66383 )
        Hmm. . if they're CHRP, than doesn't that make the whole comment about not needing an Apple BIOS to run OS X become wrong? I mean, first, Apple computers don't have a BIOS, they have OpenFirmware. Second, the CHRP specification requires computers to boot using OpenFirmware. Sounds like it's probably using pretty much the same boot process to me.

    • Re:at some point... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 19, 2003 @02:01PM (#5993238)
      As long as this falls into the "interesting hack" category, Apple won't care.

      However, if someone tries to market these things as "Mac clones", they can expect a lawsuit pretty quickly. Apple's EULA restricts OS X to their own hardware, and vendors can not legally preinstall an OS without a written contract.

      But, in all likelyhood, this is just Amiga Ressurection Vaporware Project #312, so who cares.

      • Re:at some point... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ichimunki ( 194887 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @02:47PM (#5993571)
        This, of course, assumes that EULAs are valid contracts. Many of us would say they are not.

        • Re:at some point... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by SmittyTheBold ( 14066 ) <[deth_bunny] [at] [yahoo.com]> on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @12:31AM (#5996746) Homepage Journal
          No, it assumes Apple thinks EULAs are valid contracts, which it's pretty safe to assume they do. Apple's built a reputation as being a bit lawyer-happy, and I certainly don't want to be the one testing a licenses' legality versus them.

      • As long as this falls into the "interesting hack" category, Apple won't care.

        They did say that performance wasn't all that hot...on their 600-MHz G3, clicking a button in Mac OS X took a second or two just to begin to get a response from the computer. My 266-MHz beige G3 runs faster than that (it's not snappy, but it's not dog-slow either).

        I somehow doubt that people will be buying these to run Mac OS X...at least not as the primary OS. Apple doesn't have much to worry about here. For a few hundred

    • No threat to apple (Score:3, Insightful)

      by goombah99 ( 560566 )
      This is sort of silly really. People who like apple, dont want a cheap fake apple. they might want cheaper apples, but they want it to work like an apple does. And that means the total experience.

      There's no way a mac on linux clone will ever match the quality, ease of maintence, the no-surprises of hardware comaptibility or missing drivers.

      Its cute but its not a mac in the ways that attract people to mac.

      I think its main utility is for people who run Linux that occasionally need to run mac software

    • Re:at some point... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ePhil_One ( 634771 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @03:58PM (#5994072) Journal
      Why does everybody assume the only reason to build a PPC computer is to try to run MacOS without buying Mac hardware? Its a fast processor that draws very little power, meaning silent computers are quite possible. And since Linux is readily available for the platform, its not like there isn't a good OS available.

      Of course, so far it seems like I'd be far better off buying an iBook or eMac as far as form factor/price/speed/build quality goes and just loading linux on it.

      • MOL has NO GRAPHICS ACCELERATION! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by MarcQuadra ( 129430 ) * on Tuesday May 20, 2003 @11:08AM (#5999069)
        It's a strange slashdot obsession.

        Putting together a system with this board will probably cost MORE than buying a mac, and running OSX under MOL reduces you to unaccelerated graphics anyway. I can understand firing up an OSX session on your pegasos machine to test if an app compiles/runs under OSX, but the usability of OSX under MOL is minimal.

        I'd rather pay for Apple's workstation-class hardware than an obscure mobo running a VIA chipset, even if I have no intention of running an Apple OS.

  • Non-Apple BIOS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by extrarice ( 212683 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @01:47PM (#5993130) Homepage Journal
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but since the second-rev G3 machines (blue and white towers), hasn't the Apple BIOS been unnecessary? Or am I confusing the Software-ROM (that the New World mac architecture introduced, ROM-in-RAM) with something else?

    • Re:Non-Apple BIOS (Score:5, Informative)

      by JayPee ( 4090 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @01:55PM (#5993196)
      If I remember correctly, there's still a small ROM that handles boot information, etc. Most of the higher toolbox functions are now held in RAM.

      Here's the technote about it;
      http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn116 7.htm l

      • Re:Non-Apple BIOS (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Professor_Quail ( 610443 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @02:19PM (#5993356) Homepage
        check out the MacOnLinux [maconlinux.org] homepage, I couldn't find any specific info, but it says right there on the main page, "No ROM needed".
        • In the article linked to this story, it said that Mac-On-Linux ran like crap. Could have been their hardware (they were running MacOSX in debian on a G3 600), but I don't know. Personally, doesn't sound like a great option yet.

          • it runs GREAT (Score:3, Informative)

            by SHEENmaster ( 581283 )
            I have a 500mhz G3 iBook2. Aside from video access, it runs realtime. Hell, I've even used Bryce in it! Just try that with VMWare.

            It could be that I run OS 9 in mol [maconlinux.oorg] and OS X doesn't like the slower graphics functions.

            On a sidenote, Amigas can also do this, as can Briqs. The mentioned system is not the first.

    • Re:Non-Apple BIOS (Score:3, Informative)

      by transient ( 232842 )
      All "New World" Macintoshes use Open Firmware, an IEEE standard which (I think) was originally developed by Sun. You can find more information here [sun.com].
    • Not only that, but MOL has been running on non-Apple boxes (IBMs) for a long time. The submitted story is so inaccurate that it's as if the submitter was trolling for corrections.

    • Correct me if I'm wrong, but since the second-rev G3 machines (blue and white towers), hasn't the Apple BIOS been unnecessary?

      With the Apple "new world" machines the OS isn't in the BIOS, but the BIOS is still needed to load the OS into RAM in the first place, and to do some inital set up of the hardware and a few other pre-OS jobs. Much like the BIOS in a PC, or even more like the Sun OpenFirmware (since it is in fact a FORTH boot enviroment maybe licenced from Sun or just extreamly closely modeled af

  • The problem with Pegasos (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 19, 2003 @01:49PM (#5993149)
    Is the giant horn that sticks out of the monitor. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to get a closer look at the screen only to have it poke me in the eye. The wings are cool, though.
    • I'm just waiting for Hercules to appear and shovel shit for weeks. Might get rid of the smell... or is that the pizza I dropped in the PSU? I'll never know!

    • Re:The problem with Pegasos (Score:5, Informative)

      by bracher ( 33965 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @02:16PM (#5993340)
      funny, but not entirely accurate. not that one can be completely accurate when discussing mythological creatures, but......

      a pegasus is simply a winged horse. a _unicorn_ has a horn.

      • Re:The problem with Pegasos (Score:5, Funny)

        by Jace of Fuse! ( 72042 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @02:25PM (#5993390) Homepage
        a pegasus is simply a winged horse. a _unicorn_ has a horn.

        Yes, but a Pegacorn is your top of the line, fully equipped mythical steed.
        • And a Unisys is a cheesy attempt to run a Microsoft OS on a many-proc box.

        • Also referred to as an Alicorn, a winged equine with a single spiraling ivory horn centered on the upper precranial region. Of course, the mythical but less well known Bicorn also falls under this category. All of these were a favorite prey of Gryphons. (see Gryphon, Bicorn, Unicorn)

        • Re:The problem with Pegasos (Score:5, Funny)

          by erikdotla ( 609033 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @03:27PM (#5993842)
          So we obviously have a huge problem here. It won't poke you in the eye, but now we risk the computer flying away into the night. While it could create a nice artistic shot as it passed before the moon, at just the right angle so we could see the silouhette, we risk our machines flying away.

          This is the problem I've always had with Apple. They're so shortsighted that they don't think about the needs of users - all they care about is artistic aesthetics of their computers. My PC will never fly away, because I can do anything I want to it. I don't have to install wings if I don't want to, and I can put the horn on the back and sides to avoid injury. Once again, Apple screws all of us by creating a pretty machine that doesn't work the way we want - e.g., it flies away without any control by the user.

          Steve Jobs is really losing his mind. First the iMac, now this. Seriously, we need to boycott Apple. I think all of the Slashdot crowd should collectively work toward this goal, and make it a priority one item. This is where our focus should be - stop the flying macs. This is absolute absurdity. Once the Slashdot crowd puts their minds together and stops bickering - and we've demonstrated in the past a strong ability to stop the flamewars and put our differences aside to work toward a single goal - there's no telling what we can do! We could get Steve Jobs fired, and all macs returned to their non-flying status!

          Let's get to it!
        • a pegasus is simply a winged horse. a _unicorn_ has a horn.

          Yes, but a Pegacorn is your top of the line, fully equipped mythical steed.

          And then there's ofcourse Unisus, its bastard brother... it tried to sue Pegacorn but is now largely irrelevant and working as a services horse.

  • Yeah you can run it but.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @01:50PM (#5993158) Homepage Journal
    From the article: On this G3 600 Mhz, it would take 1-2 seconds for a MacOSX button to respond after pressing it.

    I don't know about anyone else, but I use my Macs to get work done, not to be waiting 1-2 seconds for clicks to respond. Therefore, I think I will keep using boxes made by Apple.

    • I think you misunderstand the situation. It makes no difference if Apple makes the Mac or not. If its a 600Mhz G3 running OS X, then it WILL be slow.

      Do we not remember how slow OS X ran on the current Macs of the time when it was introduced?

      • not that slow (Score:3, Interesting)

        by stego ( 146071 )
        I'm very familiar w/ OS X on a G3 400 iMac, a G3 400 PowerBook, and a G4 450 Cube, and on none of these boxes is performance even close to that bad. The iMac can have its moments, but nothing like that.

      • Actually, I have a 600 Mhz G3 iMac running Webvision [utah.edu] on OS X and it is plenty fast. Go ahead click around, it can take it.

      • I think it's more likely an issue with the emulation and video hardware. It's my understanding that Quartz (OS X's video rendering/compositing layer) is coupled with the specific sorts of hardware that Apple puts in their machine. Mess with that combo, and it's almost certain you're going to take a performance response hit as far as interacting with the UI or anything visual.

        I've got a 333 Mhz Powerbook, and it runs OS X (10.1.5) at a sufficiently snappy speed to get plenty of stuff done. I *did* put a boa

    • Re:Yeah you can run it but.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 19, 2003 @02:11PM (#5993303)
      Then you'd absolutely hate this set up http://www.maconlinux.com/sshots/pic10.jpg where Linux is running Mac running Virtual PC running Windows running DOS.

      Personally, I don't understand why they leave it at DOS. DOS can run a C64 emulator which emulates the Vic20 which emulates CP/M (I've done it). Considering the speed of CP/M systems back in 1980, this setup should yield at least twice the performance of those old 1MHz clunkers.

      • That's nothing! (Score:4, Funny)

        by siskbc ( 598067 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @02:32PM (#5993427) Homepage
        Personally, I don't understand why they leave it at DOS. DOS can run a C64 emulator which emulates the Vic20 which emulates CP/M (I've done it). Considering the speed of CP/M systems back in 1980, this setup should yield at least twice the performance of those old 1MHz clunkers.

        You keep going until you're running the fucking ENIAC. And don't forget the custom punched-tape reader either there, Nancy

    • Strange, I get the same performance out of 600mhz G3 Apple machines as well.

  • Note: No US resellers. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday May 19, 2003 @01:51PM (#5993166) Homepage Journal
    Here is the order links page [64.246.37.205]. They say you can purchase online, but if you go there, you find out two things; You have to create a damned account, and they are sold out anyway. (this/A> is the purchase page; Note the IP address in the URL. Classy.) [64.246.37.205]

    The SSL certificate is not from one of the "trusted" providers, nor does the name on it match the site name, since they're using an IP.

    I decided to go through the rigamarole of creating an account to find out the price when they DO get them in, only to find out that while they are sold out, you cannot even list a price.

    In other words, this is a non-product. They made a small run of them apparently, but you might as well just call it a beta test, because that's what it seems to be. They have announced that they're bringing out a G4-based replacement, and a G4 upgrade for the current G3 board. All of this will be neatly swept under the rug by dramatically more powerful systems based on next-generation 64 bit PowerPC.

    If you need a cheap system to run MacOSX, buy a used Mac or one of those ATX systems based on Mac motherboards. Both are available now and not very expensive, all things considered, plus faster than this unavailable hardware.

  • Just what I need! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 19, 2003 @01:52PM (#5993171)
    Man, I have been waiting for this! A computer that will run MacOS X and Linux slower than the slowest Apple Macintosh. Now where is my wallet?!?!?

  • This is the sickest Hack ever! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ehudokai ( 585897 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @01:53PM (#5993176)

    fp!

    Why would you want to run Mac OS X under MOL?

    It completely defeats the purpose of MOL... and Mac OS X. MOL is designed to allow you to access your mac os x programs when running linux on a dual boot mac, but as far as I know you loose most of the flashy speed that you would get from a standard OS X install.

    I say just run linux and be happy.

    • If MOL manages to get to the point where it can run OSX as well as it runs OS9, then it's set for some good things.

      I run OSX, OS9 and Debian PPC iMac 400. Under MOL, OS9 runs as quickly as it ever did on the iMac. (ignoring for the moment the fucked up networking which is flakey-as).

      For running an OSX system on non apple hardware, it may be possible to get a Pegasos board, booting an absolutely minimal Linux install purely for the purposes of bypassing the Apple Hardware Tax.

      • Re:This is the sickest Hack ever! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Monday May 19, 2003 @03:02PM (#5993693) Journal
        Architectural differences between OS9 and OSX will mean that MOL will be significantly slower for OSX for a long time.

        MOL has to buffer the screen in order to make its graphics drivers glue the two operating systems together. MOL-in-a-window may buffer the screen twice or more. Iduno. OSX buffers each window, composites it, and buffers the resulting screen. Between the two of them, you've got so many layers of buffers that the MOL+OSX GUI is destined to be really tetchy.

        If some OpenGL hackers were to spend a while writing a Mac OS X OpenGL driver for MOL, and then MOL were able to pass those OpenGL calls to the Linux OpenGL drivers, QuartzExtreme could give us bufferless graphics for MOL+OSX.

        Does that sound like a lot of work? Yes, yes it does. I don't think it'll probably ever happen. That means I don't think the MOL folks will ever be able to get OSX running like they've got OS9 running right now. If some big company threw a couple (good) full time developers at it, then maybe.
    • Running Linux PPC then Mac On Linux allows me to run the Mac OS on my Apple Network Server [erik.co.uk] allowing it's usefulness to be #1 on the list of:

      Usefullness

      Historical/Collectible value

      Coolness factor (one of the coolest enclosures Apple has built

      Hardware compliment

      I have 5 36 gig 15K RPM SCSI HDs, 1 gig of interleaved RAM, the processor upgrade, a slot load DVD drive, and a CD Burner, + 4 multiport PCI ethernet cards and one I/O card on my ANS.

      Linux PPC and Mac On Linux saved this beast from eBay.

      *for wha

    • totally agree, I too prefer linux for reliability and apple for eye candy.

      Thus the system I run - RH 8.0 + KDE with the a theme thats a lot like some OS we know [kde-look.org] :)
    • Why would you want to run Mac OS X under MOL?

      Personally, I run Gentoo Linux PPC and have the best possible performace I can get on the hardware. But from time to time I have to run MOL (with Macos9) in order to run:

      • games - there are some good educational games, not ported to Linux (ppc) yet;
      • flash - there are some site with good content but with bad design decisions to limit to only flash compatible users;

      Also I have to reboot to Macos directly some times for other reasons: scanner, DVD playing.

      Bu

  • Is it really the first? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Wesley Felter ( 138342 ) <wesley@felter.org> on Monday May 19, 2003 @01:53PM (#5993179) Homepage
    Couldn't you run OS X on MOL on an IBM RS/6000, er pSeries? And what about the Briq?
  • They don't have a screen shot of Aqua and they only said that their OS sucked through a straw and needed something better like Linux or OS X (and not even Apple would object unless they try to get Aqua running on it. Then they'd feel the wrath of Jobs and his legal minions.)

    This was a bogus post.

  • The first...? (Score:5, Informative)

    by ikewillis ( 586793 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @01:56PM (#5993201) Homepage
    Let's not forget that MacOS X can also be run on an AmigaOne [eyetech.co.uk] through Mac-on-Linux [slashdot.org].

    From the Mac-on-Linux FAQ [maconlinux.org]:

    Q: Does MOL run on the AmigaOne hardware (or in general, on non-Apple hardware)?

    A: It does. MOL runs on any PowerPC hardware (except 601-based systems). However, the EULA of MacOS prohibits its usage on non-Apple hardware (it is of course perfectly legal to use MOL to boot a second Linux thoiugh).

  • oh but that price problem (Score:4, Insightful)

    by loomis ( 141922 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @01:56PM (#5993202)
    You are paying $500 for a 600MHZ PowerPC G3 motherboard at the entry level. Not exactly a bargain by any stretch. We're talking Celeron-esque performance here for considerably more money, not something that's going to attract a lot of customers in my opinion. This is similar to the problem we saw in an article here awhile ago about building one's own Macintosh: high cost of parts made the project rather unreasonable for anyone other than financially-stable tinkerers. And moreover, judging from the author's conclusions, the OS isn't exactly stable either. Someday, in a happy world, there will be inexpensive Mac clones and we will even be able to build them ourselves from a vast and inexpensive selection of parts.

    Loomis
    • You were right about everything else except the OS not being stable. Mac OS X is VERY stable. Its built on Unix for crying out loud. It gets better uptimes than Windows XP thats for sure.

      So make sure you update your Mac knowledge concerning OS X.

  • mac on linux (Score:2, Interesting)

    by swifticus ( 191301 )

    Mac-on-Linux makes it possible to run Mac OS (including OS X) under Linux/ppc.

    The Mac-On-Linux [maconlinux.com] capabilities of this system with debian [debian.org] would make it a perfect solution for an avid linux user to access Mac new media software without having to purchase two systems. I bet if it was tested with the G4 dual processor systems they discussed, performace would be much enhanced in OS X, and even more enhanced in OS 9.

    I would definitely love to be able to run adobe [adobe.com] products on my linux box.

  • not true, old news and more... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    firstly, morphOS isnt the first PowerPC box not from apple that can do this. there have been several before it. the MOL site gives more details.

    secondly, theres to be a G4 module for this board later in the year

    thirdly, these boards are currently not available to you /.'ers - only 600 were made in first run... the next run is with a new chipset (no MAI, instead its Marvell) and will be in late summer.

    theres always the AmigaONE too. this board isnt as small as Pegasos, but its already got G4 and its avail

  • Apple Schmapple (Score:5, Informative)

    by Seehund ( 86897 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @02:04PM (#5993260) Homepage Journal
    Why does Slashdot insist on posting anything "PPC" under the Apple category?

    One of the interesting points with the Pegasos is that it's a PPC based consumer-oriented (as in non-workstation/server á la IBM) system that's NOT from Apple, it comes on a nice micro-ATX mobo, and it comes with a rather new non-Apple OS! The POP concept has come to fruition, and hopefully the Teron PX (a.k.a. "AmigaOne XE" when marketed to AmigaOS users) will also do well.

    That running Mac-On-Linux on Linux on a PPC system let's you run MacOS isn't all that sensational IMO...

    People might be interested in hearing a new Pegasos system has been announced for this autumn(?), which won't be hampered by the currently buggy [flyingmice.com] Articia S northbridge. This will have a Marvell Discovery II northbridge (366(?) MHz DDR, gigabit ethernet...).
    • Why does Slashdot insist on posting anything "PPC" under the Apple category?

      RTFA:

      You can run MacOS or MacOSX via Mac-On-Linux without needing to buy Apple hardware or acquire a BIOS.

      Does it answer your question?

      • RTFPost:

        That running Mac-On-Linux on Linux on a PPC system lets you run MacOS isn't all that sensational IMO...
        [original superfluous apostrophe removed]

        Running MacOS on MOL is not news, and even if it were news, IMO it would still not warrant placing this in the Apple section (thanks MyHair). The reviewed system runs several OSes natively, and the primary OS it's delivered with is one called MorphOS.
        • Lemme try one more time: it worth to remind OSX zealots that there is another choice. And it's good to put that reminder in the place where all OSX zealots would look at first. You've noticed it, you even talk to me - so it works :)
    • Why does Slashdot insist on posting anything "PPC" under the Apple category?

      Well, to be annoyingly picky, it's in the Hardware Topic Category [slashdot.org]. It is in the apple Section, but there doesn't seem to be a PPC section or RS/6000 section or anything closer to appropriate than the Apple section.

      Besides, a lot of geeks seem, like me, to be looking for a commodity PPC platform on which to play with LinuxPPC and OS X via MOL [maconlinux.org]. (Yeah, yeah, licensing...tell me you never have anything unlicensed on your systems even
    • I heard somewhere that the Teron boards could run MacOS X nativley as if they were on real Apple hardware(not with MOL) can anyone confirm this.

      • Re:Apple Schmapple (Score:3, Informative)

        by Seehund ( 86897 )
        That's not correct. Nothing but Apple Macs run MacOS natively AFAIK.

        Actually, the Pegasos would be closer to a Mac than the Teron, as the Pegasos uses Open Firmware (but it still doesn't present itself as a Macintosh to MacOS, should you try to install it natively). The Terons use U-Boot (ex PPCBoot) firmware these days.

        Apart from the firmware differences, MacOS doesn't come with drivers for the onboard components of a Teron or Pegasos. You need MOL.

  • Wait A Minute... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by neildiamond ( 610251 )
    Wasn't the Amiga the first non Apple (certified) computer to boot MacOS? Besides, I thought that this would run on any PPC machine under Linux. What's the news here?

  • Not good for MorphOS (Score:4, Funny)

    by egg troll ( 515396 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @02:31PM (#5993425) Homepage Journal
    Overall, MorphOS doesn't have the sparkle that a modern OS should have. It feels like a nemnant of another era. A beloved era for many people for sure, but another, older era nonetheless. I don't see MorphOS (in its current shape) as the main attraction for this platform, unless Genesi puts a number of engineers to work hard to bring this OS up to speed and usability levels that other OSes today like OSX, Linux or Windows have.

    you know your OS is bad when Linux is considered more usable than it is. :)

  • Illegal (Score:5, Informative)

    by BitwizeGHC ( 145393 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @02:35PM (#5993458) Homepage
    From my Mac OS X license agreement:

    "This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time."

    It is illegal to run Mac OS X on a non-Apple computer. Even machines built from Apple parts are iffy.
    • I bought some apples at the grocery store today and put one of the labels on my box, so I should be safe.

    • Re:Illegal (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Animats ( 122034 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @03:14PM (#5993763) Homepage
      It's illegal for Apple to try to impose that restriction. It's an illegal tying arrangement. See 15 USC 1 [usdoj.gov].
  • The BriQ http://www.totalimpact.com [totalimpact.com] has been able to run MacOS via MOL for ever so long, so this is in fact not great news itself. Question is: Why do so? Neither machines were intended for this purpose.
    However it is nice to see companies supply motherboards based on the PPC processor because of the lower powerconsumption. More Power less Heat.

  • why bother? (Score:2, Funny)

    by McAddress ( 673660 )
    Why would anybody use OS X if it does not come with a weird shaped colorful case?

  • Has NetBSD been ported to this hardware yet? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Brett Glass ( 98525 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @04:04PM (#5994110) Homepage
    It runs on several PPC platforms already and would provide a non-GPLed option for those so inclined.

  • coolest screenshot (Score:4, Informative)

    by swifticus ( 191301 ) on Monday May 19, 2003 @04:06PM (#5994121)
    here [maconlinux.com] is a screenshot of virtual PC on Mac-on-Linux on KDE. Very cool.

  • Why so many hacks? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Stonent1 ( 594886 ) <stonentNO@SPAMstonent.pointclark.net> on Monday May 19, 2003 @04:33PM (#5994333) Journal
    Darwin is Open Source. It would seem to me that if someone wanted to get OSX running without MOL (or Xpostfacto) on a non-approved PPC machine, they could compile a darwin kernel that does not exclude non-standard hardware.

    For example this board has what appears to be a non-standard north bridge and south bridge (non-standard as far as apples go)but they work under linux. Someone could port the modules over to darwin, I'm sure. From what I can tell, there is not very much of a "community" behind darwin. Most seem content to let the apple guys do the darwin work. If I had any level of programming skill beyond 1 semester of C programming I'd seriously look into this myself.

    Where do the major differences exist between darwin and Freebsd? Certainly FreeBSD is written to be portable since it runs on i386, alpha, and 64bit Sparc platforms. I'd think that some of the code could be inserted into darwin to add kernel level support for unsupported hw.

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