[HN Gopher] SheepShaver: macOS run-time environment for BeOS and...
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SheepShaver: macOS run-time environment for BeOS and Linux
Author : ecliptik
Score : 149 points
Date : 2023-03-22 06:09 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sheepshaver.cebix.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (sheepshaver.cebix.net)
| abujazar wrote:
| This repo is more up to date -
| https://github.com/kanjitalk755/macemu Currently recommended
| builds for macOS:
| https://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7360
| TheChaplain wrote:
| Look like a dead project by now, Mr. Bauer haven't been active on
| GitHub for years. :(
| wmf wrote:
| Maybe we should say it's a mature and finished project. The
| requirements haven't changed in 15 years.
| wk_end wrote:
| ...except it's not. It crashes regularly and has many
| compatibility issues.
| benkan wrote:
| BeOS! Good memories. I tried out BeOS maybe 20 years ago until it
| was dropped. Is it still maintained?
| lproven wrote:
| You might enjoy this piece I wrote at the start of the year.
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/11/haiku_beta_4/
| lillywastaken wrote:
| Haiku is an open source BeOS clone that is still developed, but
| the original isn't
| benkan wrote:
| Thank you!
| christkv wrote:
| You can use haiku os it's the open source beos and even runs
| the binaries
| memsom wrote:
| But this requires a PowerPC processor under BeOS so you can't
| use this with Haiku at the moment. The Linux version looks
| like it emulates the CPU so it can probably be made to work I
| guess?
| RuggedPineapple wrote:
| >But this requires a PowerPC processor under BeOS so you
| can't use this with Haiku at the moment.
|
| Bold of you to assume a forum full of tech enthusiasts
| don't have PPC machines sitting around.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| PowerPC was during my early childhood but our lines never
| met, so I would be one case where your assumption will
| unfortunately fall short.
| RuggedPineapple wrote:
| By the time my family got a home computer it was a 120
| Mhz Pentium system, but I spent basically all of
| elementary, middle and high school using m68k and PPC
| macs at school. During the pandemic i picked up two m68k
| Macs and 2 PPC Macs to satisfy my nostalgia. I enjoy
| playing with old tech, but theres nothing wrong if you
| don't! Different strokes and all that.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Ah, please don't get me wrong: I love playing with old
| tech too. The first computer I used was some 386 or 486
| machine running Windows 3.11, it even had a turbo button
| and a 5.25" floppy drive. Really wish we still had that
| thing.
|
| It's just my path never crossed PowerPC's, so I don't
| have the nostalgia for them that I do for classic x86
| hardware. Regardless I'm sure they are an important piece
| of computing history.
| speed_spread wrote:
| Will BeOS PPC run on a POWER workstation like the Talos
| Raptor? That would be a hell of a combo...
| RuggedPineapple wrote:
| Near as I can tell the POWER9 chips (at least the IBM
| ones) only have backwards compatibility through POWER7
| from 2010. The last PPC chip Apple used, the G5,
| implemented the POWER4 ISA, so that's pretty far back.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Haiku should be portable to it, but that's a lot of
| computer for an OS that is not daily-driver grade.
| memsom wrote:
| Haiku will never support legacy BeOS PowerPC apps though,
| as that makes no sense. PEF is hard to support even
| today.
| memsom wrote:
| Nope. It really never even supported G3 officially. It
| will boot on the BeBox natively an a Mac with a boot
| loader. Without modifying the kernel, I doubt it will
| boot on much else.
| memsom wrote:
| No, not really. It isn't just PowerPC, it is a very
| specific and picky Mac, has PCI, is old world, has a 603
| or 604 processor when shipped originally. If you have
| one, you then need a copy of BeOS R4.5 or R5, and getting
| that installed can actually be non trivial (as
| ActionRetro proved on YouTube - it was my custom pre
| built image that he finally got working.)
|
| I have 2 BeOS PowerPC boxes, so yep - know all the
| hassles first hand.
|
| If you do too - awesome, you should come find me on Haiku
| forums and we can contribute to the BeOS PowerPC
| preservation effort I started last year.
| lillywastaken wrote:
| It's probably worth mentioning that you can also use QEMU, which
| is a bit more involved but can use a bigger disk and also run OS
| X, and Mac OS 9.2.2 (as it supports an MMU, SheepShaver doesn't)
| memsom wrote:
| You can, but not under BeOS. Under BeOS Mac OS is run almost
| like Classic was on MacOS X. The OS is more or less virtualised
| as a user space app, and the CPU is not emulated in any way.
| That's the main reason that BeOS only supports PowerPC. Indeed,
| if you run it on a Mac under BeOS it doesn't even need a
| toolbox ROM
| kps wrote:
| Is QEMU the best option to run older OS X (in particular Snow
| Leopard, and yes, a legal retail purchased physical copy) on a
| modern machine? I currently keep a rather bulky cheese grater
| to run a few programs from time to time.
| stonogo wrote:
| QEMU will work the best, but Snow Leopord prohibits being
| virtualized via its EULA. Snow Leopard Server is licensed to
| run in virtualization.
| kps wrote:
| My memory is that it only had to be run on Apple hardware,
| but perhaps I should go back and check. Or just not tell
| anybody, and hope the Apple Police don't get me -- it's not
| like I'm letting something that old out to play on the
| internet (though I do sometimes miss iCab).
| stonogo wrote:
| The only reason I know this is that VMWare desktop
| products will refuse to run it for this reason. QEMU has
| no such self-imposed limitations...
| sharikous wrote:
| That's the option with the least headache. I believe there
| are other simulators too but they are much more specialized.
|
| With some hacking you can run all MacOS/MacOS X versions on
| x86, x64 and PPC from 8.6 to 13 if you have a x64 machine. If
| you have an Apple Silicon one it gets too slow to simulate
| around 10.10 (on x64 you can use hvf virtualization). It
| might be a bit less nice than tailored emulators like
| SheepShaver but having the same UI for all these OSes (plus
| other OSes) beats everything in my opinion.
|
| Unfortunately Apple Silicon machines cannot be simulated
| without some hidden knowledge only some secretive companies
| have. Hopefully the knowledge will become public some years
| from now.
| buserror wrote:
| Unfortunately qemu isn't as 'integrated' as Sheepshaver --
| theres the mouse grab problem, also no disk sharing with the
| host (the read[/write] fat32 disk don't seem to work, at least
| under 9.2.2)
|
| I had a a project for #marchintosh of making myself a nice
| powerPC emulation stack to recompile and open source quite a
| few free/shareware I did back then, but I more or less gave up
| as I couldn't find something 'comfortable' to work in. I guess
| I'll have to find, dust up and try to hook that old G4 Mac Mini
| that I'm sure is in a drawer, somewhere :-)
| snvzz wrote:
| Great it's open source software in the form of a git repo now.
|
| But for some reason, using the same repository for 3 independent
| projects horrifies me.
|
| The commits are unavoidably going to be all over the place, and
| tracking one project's changes hard.
| rvense wrote:
| I don't think they're completely independent.
| rizky05 wrote:
| It's called monorepo for a reason.
| snvzz wrote:
| TIL.
|
| Still, I see more cons than pros in macemu's case.
| sli wrote:
| > for BeOS and Linux
|
| And also for OS X, Windows, and BSD.
| exitb wrote:
| The use of "macOS" capitalization somehow makes it appear as if
| it's about the current Apple OS, when in fact this is about
| classic MacOS.
| troad wrote:
| I really look forward to reliable (modern) macOS emulation, a
| la wine. I miss some of my wee little Mac utilities / games now
| that I'm in Linux full-time. I'm rooting for the guys working
| on stuff like Darling[0], but it looks like they still have a
| long road ahead.
|
| [0] https://darlinghq.org/
| drewg123 wrote:
| I took a look at their page, and they say that they _"
| finally have basic experimental support for running simple
| graphical applications"_. However, their blogs/progress
| reports are 4 years old. Do you know how far along their
| support for graphical apps is? Running GUI apps is what's
| going to make this useful, and is what nobody else (AFAIK)
| was ever able to do.
| Gys wrote:
| Yes, if I remember correctly this can only run Mac OS 9.
| Strange that this is not mentioned (?) on the github page.
| RuggedPineapple wrote:
| It can run up to OS 9, not just OS 9. It'll run any classic
| Mac OS that supports PPC, so I think that takes you back to
| the 7.5 line.
| Findecanor wrote:
| Please don't call it "OS 9" on the Internet. Googling for
| OS-9 resources is difficult enough as it is.
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS-9#Name_conflicts_and_cour
| t_...>
| mattl wrote:
| If I search for "OS 9" without any quotes or anything I
| get the Wikipedia article for Mac OS 9. I think it's
| fine. There's enough niners out there keeping things
| alive.
| Aloha wrote:
| I think that was what the poster was implying was the
| problem. MacOS 9 and OS-9 are not the same thing. OS-9 is
| a Real Time OS originally for 6800/68000 processors.
| IncRnd wrote:
| It's not really an issue. Searching for os 9 gives one
| OS's results. Searching for mac os 9 gives the other OS's
| results. Super easy.
| LoganDark wrote:
| The issue is that searching for "os 9" also gives results
| for Mac OS 9, making searching for OS-9 results harder.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Thanks for the explanation. In that case, the following
| search works:
|
| -mac os 9
| MarcoZavala wrote:
| [dead]
| babypuncher wrote:
| The proper name is Mac OS 9, you are never going to
| convince people to call it by something else just to make
| a far more obscure operating system easier to find on
| Google.
| philwelch wrote:
| 7.1.2 was the first version that ran on PPC
| haunter wrote:
| >Strange that this is not mentioned (?) on the github page
|
| "run classic PowerPC Mac OS applications"
|
| "Runs MacOS 7.5.2 thru 9.0.4. MacOS X as a guest is not
| supported."
| Gys wrote:
| I see it now as well, strange that I completely missed
| that. Thanks.
| doomlaser wrote:
| Mac OS, to be pendantic about styling :)
| lproven wrote:
| Nope.
|
| No space.
|
| MacOS == System 1 to MacOS 9.
|
| Mac OS == OS X == 10.0 to 10.12.
|
| macOS == 10.13 to 13.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _MacOS == System 1 to MacOS 9._
|
| I can't speak to previous releases, but Mac OS 9 definitely
| used a space. (Before looking it up I would've bet on "no
| space" too, BTW.)
|
| https://imagej.nih.gov/ij/docs/install/images/about.gif
| atdrummond wrote:
| I believe the space was added when they formally renamed
| the operating system Mac OS in 1996 (with System 7,
| specifically 7.6).
| chongli wrote:
| System 7.5.1 and later used the name Mac OS in its boot
| screen [1] but the boxes still said "Macintosh System
| 7.5" [2] up until the release of 7.6.
|
| [1]
| https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/12/69888558_ee83d000f9.jpg
|
| [2] https://o.aolcdn.com/images/dims?image_uri=https:%2F%
| 2Fs3.am...
| tgma wrote:
| Actually there was a period when they dropped Mac
| altogether and called it "OS X" (Mountain Lion era)
| lproven wrote:
| Good point!
| fzzzy wrote:
| Mac OS always had a space. Before it was called Mac OS, it
| was called the System Software.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Instead of emulation like this (which is really cool, BTW), I'd
| love to see something like GNUStep or Etoile growing into a full
| implementation of all macOS APIs so that I could just build a
| native Mac application against it and have it run on Linux.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I think that it's often underestimated just how much of what
| made/makes OS X/macOS good is actually in AppKit and the
| various other frameworks it's used with. Parts of it are a
| little aged compared to something that's received more
| attention in the past decade (like UIKit), but it still does a
| LOT of heavy lifting and makes developing a polished, capable
| desktop app much less of a headache.
|
| In writing apps with other desktop UI frameworks, it's become
| evident just how much AppKit does well that many frameworks
| barely do or don't offer at all. Sometimes it's even really
| basic things, like how WinUI somehow has no first-party
| tableview despite that being one of the most fundamental
| desktop widgets.
|
| Cross-platform AppKit would be a dream setup.
| pflanze wrote:
| There's also Mac-on-Linux (MOL), which I've been using from ~1999
| to run the original OS under Linux on my Mac hardware until I
| dropped Mac OS completely a few years later. It does require a
| PPC host. I remember back then MOL was preferable to SheepShaver,
| but I don't remember why anymore.
|
| [1] https://www.maconlinux.net/
| goosedragons wrote:
| Fun fact! You can use Mac on Linux to run Mac OS on your
| Nintendo Wii.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > I remember back then MOL was preferable to SheepShaver, but I
| don't remember why anymore.
|
| Speculation: Running on native hardware probably give you
| better performance, and probably meant that you didn't have to
| provide a ROM file because it could just read the chip that's
| actually installed in the machine.
| memsom wrote:
| Sheepshaver runs natively on supported Macs under BeOS and
| you likewise don't need a ROM file as it uses the one built
| in to your Mac. The real reason is probably it doesn't
| support MacOS past 8.5 really. Not well.
| pajko wrote:
| SheepShaver does not run MacOS X, just the classic, while MOL
| runs both. Been using MOL about at the same time to check out
| OS X, which led me buying a Pismo, my first and last Apple
| machine.
| kstrauser wrote:
| SheepShaver was the successor to the Amiga's ShapeShifter Mac
| emulator (also written by Christian Bauer). I had fun running Mac
| OS and games on my Amiga. It also had the interesting property
| that my Amiga had a 68060 processor, which no Mac had, meaning
| that it was faster at running 68k apps than any official hardware
| was.
| mmphosis wrote:
| There is no ppc970 emulator that I know of that can run Mac OS X
| 10.5 with "Quad Core" PowerPC (64-bit) 16 GB RAM specs.
| https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/index-powerma...
|
| qemu-system-ppc (2019) can run Mac OS X 10.5 PowerPC
| https://wiki.qemu.org/Documentation/Platforms/PowerPC
|
| pearpc (2015) can run Mac OS X 10.3 PowerPC with caveats
| https://pearpc.sourceforge.net/
|
| _SheepShaver_ can run Mac OS 9.0.4 PowerPC
|
| Basilisk II can run Mac OS 8.1 68k
| indrora wrote:
| There was the Floodgap guy who got Macos running on the Power9
| desktop boards.
|
| I wonder where that went
| mmphosis wrote:
| https://www.talospace.com/2018/08/making-your-talos-ii-
| into-...
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I used Sheepshaver to emulate system non-PowerPC games + System
| 7.5.3 when making Mac game nostalgia videos on my YouTube many
| years back. I found it to be far more performant than Basilisk
| for anything that wanted to run with Quickdraw. It also seemed to
| have less clipping audio.
|
| I should see how it runs all these years later on a Linux box.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| The reference to BeOS brings me good memories. It was a time then
| the world of desktop operating Systems was much bigger than
| today.
|
| BeOS, Syllable, SkyOS, Atheos, ReactOS, QNX etc.
|
| At its time I liked BeOS phylosophy more than that of Linux and
| Windows, it's a shame it didn't take off.
| MisterTea wrote:
| BeOS felt like it was going to become a serious modern
| alternative OS for the PC focusing heavily on multimedia,
| similar to MacOS (Be was founded by ex Apple people so it makes
| sense.) Unfortunately it never happened. Thy pivoted to
| internet appliances, Palm bought them out, the end. I still
| have my R4 and R5 media somewhere.
| sharikous wrote:
| It was seriously considered by Apple as the successor of the
| classical MacOS but they got too greedy with the price and
| Apple went with a NextStep based OS.
|
| In all honesty BeOS had no leverage because they were so
| committed to build the successor of MacOS that they had no
| alternative plan
| lproven wrote:
| Be _did_ get too greedy with the asking price, you 're
| right.
|
| But that was not the only thing.
|
| Be had no particularly special story about dev tools; NeXT
| had the world's best, plus a charismatic, visionary CEO.
|
| Be should have gone and done a deal with Acorn, who could
| have done them a silent-running, passively-cooled SMP
| multi-ARM workstation in 1998 for less than the cost of a
| mid-range Mac.
|
| Acorn had cheap SMP hardware ready to go. Be had _the_
| state-of-the-art SMP workstation OS before Linux 2.2 made
| it able to scale usefully.
| smm11 wrote:
| Be didn't have anything. Developers, developers,
| developers, right?
|
| Late 90s I was running OS X Server, Be, and NeXT. NeXT
| was better than OS X Server, and Be was far behind.
| Looked pretty, but that was about it. Funny thing is I
| live in a browser and text editor now, and the Be install
| I ran in 99 would just about do it!
| sillywalk wrote:
| If only, I miss BeOS. ... Though I think it would be the
| same chicken/egg APPS problem with the BeBox: Unless you
| could run existing Risc OS apps under BeOS, I doubt Acorn
| users would want to switch, and porting existing apps
| through a Carbon-like API subset would probably be hard,
| because I gather a lot of apps use assembly and hacks to
| the OS..
|
| ps I just started trying out Risc OS after reading a
| couple of your articles on it (modernizing (or not) and
| the gem of an os (or not)).
|
| I've got it on my pi 400, and use it for writing without
| distraction (no wifi!), and there is _no_ latency while
| typing. The ADJUST button thing is also pretty neat.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| Neal Stephenson's _In the Beginning Was the Command Line_
| speaks quite favorably of BeOS. He described the Windows world
| as being a kind of car dealership that sold clunkers, Linux as
| a place where anyone could walk in and buy a US Army M1 Tank,
| and BeOS as fully operational Batmobiles.
|
| https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs81n/command.txt
| lproven wrote:
| You missed the point.
|
| You could buy a Ferrari or a Ford, but an M1 Tank that ran
| for 1000 miles on a cup of fuel was _for free_. Keys in,
| sitting there. Get in, drive off.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| yeah sorry it's been twenty years since this was published
| ofalkaed wrote:
| In those days Linux was an M1 that sort of but not quite
| ran on your local fuel and was 1/2" wider than your garage.
| The fuel problem would be sorted out just as soon as the
| engineers can get your city to admit what they added to the
| fuel but they won't even admit having knowledge of anything
| called "fuel." Eventually you get the new part that will
| make your M1 run on your local fuel but you need to rebuild
| the engine to install it, you don't really have any clue of
| how to do that but you have been talking to some vague
| personas in an alley for the past 3 nights and you are
| fairly certain you can do it. All seems to go well until
| you try and reinstall the engine, somehow it has gotten
| considerably larger than it had been and no longer fits in
| the engine compartment. So you rebuild it again, and again,
| and again, finally it works but now the glove compartment
| light is flashing error codes in Morse and the radio
| constantly drifts out tune. Repeat once or twice a year
| until about 2005 or so.
|
| But you have your M1, you can not buy ammunition for its
| guns or drive it on any roads because the tracks will eat
| up the pavement but it is your M1.
| tialaramex wrote:
| On the whole tanks don't have keys. Similar reason to
| airliners.
| lproven wrote:
| :-D Fair point.
|
| I merely quoted -- or at least paraphrased -- the
| original essay itself:
|
| << They've been modified in such a way that they never,
| ever break down, are light and maneuverable enough to use
| on ordinary streets, and use no more fuel than a
| subcompact car. These tanks are being cranked out, on the
| spot, at a terrific pace, and a vast number of them are
| lined up along the edge of the road with keys in the
| ignition. Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and
| drive it away for free. >>
|
| https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs81n/command.txt
|
| This essay is so important, so valuable, and so blasted
| insightful, that even though I read it more than 20 years
| ago, I can still remember key phrases, and search for it,
| find it, and quote from it in _seconds_.
|
| It should be one of the seminal texts of the FOSS
| movement. And yet most people don't know it, or if they
| do, they don't get it and misquote it or misinterpret
| important points... such as here, claiming that people
| were trying to _sell_ Linux up against BeOS and MacOS and
| Windows, when the _real_ point was that although it was
| better than all the commercial competition in important
| ways, it was _FREE_ and yet the people that developed it
| _literally could not GIVE IT AWAY_ for nothing, up
| against inferior commercial OSes.
|
| And they still can't.
|
| Everyone has probably also forgotten by now that Sun
| bought StarOffice and tried to give it away, and nobody
| cared. So some forgotten Sun exec, who actually
| understood how businesspeople's minds work, made a
| discount version. It was $89.95 or something, alongside
| and as well as the free version.
|
| The result was a modest explosion in business uptake.
|
| A free office suite? Must be junk. But a bargain basement
| full-function office suite, for eighty bucks when MS
| Office costs a few hundreds? That's a steal! Great -- I
| will have that and push it out across my business!
|
| It worked.
|
| And now, Linux is on the desktop and it's a roaring
| success, selling hundreds of millions of units, and
| outselling Macs.
|
| It's called ChromeOS, and when I point this out, the
| geeks of HN get _very angry_ at me, and complain, and say
| that I 'm moving the goalposts, that ChromeOS doesn't
| count, that it's not _really_ Linux.
|
| They accuse me of "bad faith":
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34925697
|
| They call my argument "BS":
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34928295
|
| Even one specific commenter I really respect and whose
| posts I find richly informative and learn from, flat out
| deny that it is Linux:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34971384
|
| Ah well.
|
| We all know Linux runs servers, routers, and most
| smartphones, but if it's on the desktop, and it costs
| money, then it's obviously not Linux. If it's a
| successful desktop that people like, it clearly can't
| really be Linux, right?
|
| _Shakes head, walks away._
|
| Anyway, for better context, here's the whole passage from
| ITBWTCL:
|
| << With one exception, that is: Linux, which is right
| next door, and which is not a business at all. It's a
| bunch of RVs, yurts, tepees, and geodesic domes set up in
| a field and organized by consensus. The people who live
| there are making tanks. These are not old-fashioned,
| cast-iron Soviet tanks; these are more like the M1 tanks
| of the U.S. Army, made of space-age materials and jammed
| with sophisticated technology from one end to the other.
| But they are better than Army tanks. They've been
| modified in such a way that they never, ever break down,
| are light and maneuverable enough to use on ordinary
| streets, and use no more fuel than a subcompact car.
| These tanks are being cranked out, on the spot, at a
| terrific pace, and a vast number of them are lined up
| along the edge of the road with keys in the ignition.
| Anyone who wants can simply climb into one and drive it
| away for free.
|
| Customers come to this crossroads in throngs, day and
| night. Ninety percent of them go straight to the biggest
| dealership and buy station wagons or off-road vehicles.
| They do not even look at the other dealerships.
|
| Of the remaining ten percent, most go and buy a sleek
| Euro-sedan, pausing only to turn up their noses at the
| philistines going to buy the station wagons and ORVs. If
| they even notice the people on the opposite side of the
| road, selling the cheaper, technically superior vehicles,
| these customers deride them cranks and half-wits.
|
| The Batmobile outlet sells a few vehicles to the
| occasional car nut who wants a second vehicle to go with
| his station wagon, but seems to accept, at least for now,
| that it's a fringe player.
|
| The group giving away the free tanks only stays alive
| because it is staffed by volunteers, who are lined up at
| the edge of the street with bullhorns, trying to draw
| customers' attention to this incredible situation. A
| typical conversation goes something like this:
|
| Hacker with bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our
| free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across
| rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a
| hundred miles to the gallon!"
|
| Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is
| true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"
|
| Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon
| either!"
|
| Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If
| something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a
| day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it
| while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to
| elevator music."
|
| Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks we
| will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free
| while you sleep!"
|
| Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!"
|
| Bullhorn: "But..."
|
| Buyer: "Can't you see that everyone is buying station
| wagons?" >>
| ofalkaed wrote:
| We have Haiku which is getting quite good and Amiga is still in
| production, their new computer that is currently in beta
| testing looks pretty good, they would possibly get me to part
| with the money if they released a laptop.
| tialaramex wrote:
| > Amiga is still in production, their new computer that is
| currently in beta testing looks pretty good
|
| The Amiga "Tabor" or "A1222" is a very, very silly machine.
| Because they insist on PowerPC even though that's basically a
| long dead architecture, the best available CPU for it was the
| QorIQ P1022 a SOC designed to be inside say a mid-range
| Ethernet switch a decade ago.
|
| In the event they actually ship a product in some sort of
| volume (say, dozens) before NXP discontinue the processors
| altogether this would be _far_ worse than a PC or Mac you
| could have bought in 2015 when it was conceived, and yet also
| far more expensive, very silly.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| It is very very silly of you to think they are trying to
| compete with modern general purpose desktops, they are
| attempting to fill a niche which Amiga helped create and
| has never quite been filled since their demise despite
| modern computers being so much "better."
|
| I was referring too the X5000 which is PowerISA
| architecture. A1222 is planned to be around $500 which is
| not all that expensive, X5000 is on the expensive side.
| Considering my use of such a computer would be to run
| various audio software that was designed for much slower
| single core machines I suspect a dual 2ghz processor with
| XMOS coprocessor would be quite satisfactory. It would
| allow me to use some software which does not play well with
| emulators and would probably be just about ideal for my
| needs when it comes to a studio computer.
|
| I suspect the A1222 project was scrapped due to shutdown
| fallout, chip shortages, etc but who knows, it may still
| happen.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| I installed Haiku on an old netbook recently.
|
| It ran like a dream, except for kernel panicking every 5
| minutes.
| waddlesplash wrote:
| That's not normal behavior (these days, anyway!) A lot of
| users are able to go months without kernel panics,
| especially on certain kinds of older hardware.
|
| Did you report any of these panics?
| rebolek wrote:
| I installed Haiku on an old Eee and yes it runs like dream
| and I haven't experienced single kernel panic yet. I'm
| thinking about installing it on something "bigger" than Eee
| as I was really surprised how usable and nice the OS is.
| eddieroger wrote:
| I can't remember if I learned about BeOS on ZDTV or a magazine
| or where, but I do remember going in to Best Buy with the
| intention of buying it as a nascent teenager with a license. My
| heart broke a little that I couldn't just walk in a store and
| get it, but I still ordered it and learned a lot about dual
| booting my parents' Packard Bell thanks to Be. I loved how it
| was focusing on being a media operating system, with good
| graphics and audio processing capabilities, and I was a kid who
| loved music and the radio. If only it had survived.
| [deleted]
| sjm-lbm wrote:
| There was a version of BeOS (iirc, it was the last version
| they released) that could be installed in a file on a
| Windows9x hard drive and booted to by using a boot floppy.
|
| It really was an impressive and innovative way to get people
| to try a new OS, keeping in mind that most people couldn't
| (and still can't, to be fair) set up a more normal dual boot
| setup. I think they were just too close to shutting down by
| that point, so nothing ever really came of it.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Rather a shame that Executor got lost in the shuffle:
|
| https://github.com/ctm/executor
|
| and didn't stick around until Rosetta and so forth went away and
| it became potentially more useful.
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