defender,
Quote:
Hi defender,

Only many versions of Windows (and WebOS but that's another story), although I've run UAE now and again for a quick blast on Civ or Worms :)

Quote:
Thanks for the tip, I've had a quick search for this but I'll have to look more to find a homepage or something that lists everything. I imagine it makes installing the whole lot easier.

exanian,

I see you are from the UK. I don't know how active Craigslist is in the UK, but it is worth a shot too. Here in the USA (South Florida), many Craigslist sellers are delusional on how much they can get but I find realistic sellers often enough. I picked up my Quicksilver with stock 800Mhz CPU for $25 and ran MOS demo on it for several months as-is. I also see PPC Macs from time to time at flea markets for semi-reasonable prices. I've heard stories of people finding them next to the curb during bulk trash days, so that may even be an option.

Good luck.

Oepabakkes,
Quote:
It is, for now. It sounds like the Graphite models are to be avoided unless I decide that sound and networking aren't important.

redrumloa,
It isn't really, not in the North West anyway, and whilst there are similar things, I don't know of any that have either the market or reputation that people trust that ebay has. But you never know, something might come up in the local paper!

exanian,
Quote:

Well one poster has mentioned the Soundblaster Live audio card and RTL8139C based network cards are cheap, so even the Graphite models can be used. However, you probably want something with a faster processor.
So a Quicksilver or MDD model make the most sense.

Finding a 1.5GHz Mac Mini can be tricky since they aren't labeled. But that can make an ideal compact system.
I'm not real impressed with eMacs as the built-in monitors tend to age poorly and are frequently too dim.

@exanian,

A few words of caution when you are evaluating MorphOS2.7 or later if the next release comes out before you get your hardware to run it on.

Think of MorphOS as a polished Linux type of OS that has a structure set up like your old Amiga computer from years ago. What I mean by that is that it is not as polished an installation as MacOSX, or even as much as AmigaOS3.1 was, and you might need to tweak a couple of things here or there to enjoy the experience.

What I am trying to say is, don't give up too soon if you run into any problems. Come here and ask lots of questions and you will get all the help you need. Also, you can improve your chances of having a good experience with your trial of MorphOS if you will read these forums and do some searching through old topics with the MorphZone.org search function, if you have questions or run into any difficulty setting something up, or getting something running properly.

If you have been away from the Amiga community for a long time, it may be a bit daunting to get back up to speed, as it was for me (and I wasn't really gone for very long). MorphOS is a little different than what you will remember from AmigaOS3.1, but it is an excellent OS, and the more you dig into it and use it, the more you realize that it is very much like AmigaOS3.1, or 3.9, but with many enhancements.

Good luck finding a cheap (or free) Mac computer to try out MorphOS. Remember to ask for help if you get disappointed with anything.

exanian,
Quote:

OK, you 've asked for it, pack Ultimate 1.6.4 contents:

-Communication:
AmIRC
PolyGlot
SimpleMail

-Audio:
AminetRadio
CodeAudio
DigiRoller
ExciterPlayer
SongPlayer
UADE

-CD-DVD:
CD Tools
FreeDB
FryingPan
Ripper

-Development:
Scout
FileX
SimpleCat

-Desktop:
April
ClockToy
CLONCK
CRABUM
Dragon
Elephant
Meridian
MisterBanana
PolyNET NG
Wetter
ZoomIt

-Files:
AMUIDiff
MultiRen
R
Rival
SimpleFind
Voodoo-X

-Hardware:
PCITool
TopCPU

-Log:
SnoopDos

-Monitor:
GammaMeter

-Network:
OWB
Crumb
AmiRSS
GoogleTool
OtrMUI
WallGet
dNETc
GiftMUI
MLDonkey
RC-FTPd
RDesktop
SmartSMBFS
Transfer
TwinVNC
VNC Server

- Office:
AntiWord
GhostScript
ODG-Viewer
PointRider
SCANdal
XML-Viewer
NowinED
CManager
PolyOrga
SAB

-Picture
Gallerius
Gribouillis
LoView
PtpDigCam
ShowGirls
WAManager

-Video:
FlashPlayer
MPlayer
RadioScript
ScreenRecorder

- Commodities
Altabber
KidLock
PointIt
sZoom
Unmask

the best thing is to install it right after installing MorphOS
(well, it needs some time for downloading, you should restart after installing MorphOS because of the 30 mins trial).

greets Defender

Jim,
Quote:

The eMacs are also notorious for exploding capacitors. I've seen this with my own eyes on a couple units. Unless you can find one for free to try MOS Demo, I'd probably avoid the eMac altogether. G4 Macs can be found for next to nothing if you look hard enough and will save a lot of headaches.

Jim,
Quote:
I'm glad you said this as I hadn't realised that's what defender was meaning, so thank you both for this.

amigadave,
Thanks for the warning - I actually ought to be right at home with that, I think that's what I spent most of my time on my old Amiga doing, and I think at one point I had most of Aminet's util directory on my hard drive :D

defender,
Quote:
Wow, thanks for listing that out, there's a lot there! :)

redrumloa,
Quote:
Sounds good, the eMacs didn't look that appealing and seem to be more expensive that a lot of the Powermacs out there.

Well since somebody allready mentioned PackUltimate one should not forget Geit's Grunch which can be very helpfull when setting up/maintaining a complex MorphOS-installation.

I don't quite get the "MorphOS is complicated to set up" comments.
I hadn't used an Amiga related hardware or software in decades and the only problem I had was getting the Soundblaster working.
That and getting comfortable (again) with the different window control/resizing buttons.

@Jim
MorphOS itself ain't complicated but some of the 3rd party apps can induce quite a headache when your no expert in MUI-classes or various libraries.

Oh, I did face some weird challenges with a lot of the software in the Pack ultimate collection.
But whenever I have any really troubling issues I just ask one of you guys or the developer and I can usually get it straightened out.

Maybe its just because I come from a background of using OS' that have really intense CLI interfaces, so I don't find it intimidating. Ever make a typo on an OS9 or Minix system and have it go off and do something completely unanticipated?
Now that's real fun!

Jim,
Quote:

Since I did not know the level of Amiga experience that the OP had, I thought that the warning might be appropriate. MorphOS is easy for Amiga users who had heavily expanded Amiga's in the past and were used to tweaking their systems with patches and extra files to get programs that had dependencies, which were not satisfied by a standard clean install.

For the A500 owner who never did anything except play 25 different games over and over again and who don't know the difference between having Kickstart ROM1.3, or 3.1 inside their Amiga, MorphOS could be a lot more challenging to get some of the programs running, that are discussed on these forums. Grunch takes care of this challenge for most programs and I think it is the greatest program ever written for MorphOS. What Grunch does not do (yet), is to fix, or find programs already installed with the Pack Ultimate, so some extra work is needed to inform Grunch where some of these applications are installed, so they can be updated properly and Grunch can check to see if any files that the application depends on to run are available and up to date as well. Maybe Grunch and the newest version of the Pack Ultimate work better together now than my older version of the Pack Ultimate?

Most Amiga users will have little to no trouble configuring a MorphOS system, but there are some Amiga users (more former Amiga users) out there who went from using an Amiga to play some games to using a Windows PC, or a Mac for the last 15 years. Those former Amiga users probably would have difficulty even using their old Amigas again, after all this time. Then there are a multitude of users in between those two extremes, so until I knew more about the abilities of the OP, I thought I would err on the side of caution and write several words to encourage the OP to stick with MorphOS and ask questions, if he ran into any problems.

I have read a few posts from people that have tried MorphOS and did not like it, because they had one problem of another (but mostly because it looked different than the Workbench they remembered).

> Geit's Grunch

Or in English language:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=8102&forum=3&start=13

Andreas_Wolf,
Quote:

A very nice program. I haven't been using this, but it looks very useful.

What the heck was that link?

I've been abusing the system!! And how!

BBIWY. But the picture was nice. Andreas' fooling us

> Andreas' fooling us ;-)

Actually, it's a MorphZone.org quotation bug :-)

I see the bug when I click on the quoted link from Jim's post, but I am here scratching my head trying to figure out the connection to "Geit's Grunch" and the thread about the MorphOS support mailing list?

I think it was only that post 13 in that thread had a link to a Grunch page in English. Which seems better than Google's translation of the original page :)

> I think it was only that post 13 in that thread had a link to a Grunch page in
> English. Which seems better than Google's translation of the original page :)

Exactly, except that it's post #14 ("start=13" must be specified in the URL due to MorphZone internally counting from 0).

Grunch sounds good, although it sounds like not everyone is using it - does it only cover certain software? In my Amiga days, it was just a case of running an installer for any particular bit of software (and not infrequently then tweaking things to make it run or fixing the install script) - how do things on MorphOS compare?

exanian,
Quote:

You will probably find that a lot of the experienced MorphOS users do not see much value in Grunch, as they are so used to managing what gets installed on their MorphOS system themselves and are used to doing manual installations of programs, or games that are ported to MorphOS without proper installation scripts and many do not contain the required support files that allow them to run on MorphOS.

I ran into this problem (at least it was a problem for me as a beginner) when I first started using MorphOS. I even complained in these very forums about how many times I was running into the same problems with programs and games not having any installation scripts, or the few that did have installation scripts did not handle the missing support files very well, or at all.

Grunch takes care of all of these issues, so in my mind it is a wonderful program that is essential to any new MorphOS user. I wish it had been available when I first started using MorphOS several years ago. It would have saved me much grief and trouble.

It does not handle all programs, only the ones listed in the database, which you will see listed in a window when you start the Grunch program. The programmer who created Grunch updates it with new programs added to the database it uses, but anyone can add new programs to Grunch by following the instructions provided in the documentation. Unfortunately, some people have added some programs without properly understanding how it needs to be done to get good results and as a result, the Grunch program itself has gotten some bad reviews by a few people, when the fault is not the creator of the program, but people that are not connected to it in any way, but have added programs to the database improperly, or sloppily. I have heard from the creator that someone added dozens of programs to the Amiga 68k version of Grunch database that were all very poorly done.

I have only used Grunch on MorphOS, and I have not had any problems with it at all so far and I think the program and it's idea is brilliant. In fact I just donated to Grunch several hours ago and will probably donate to it again, as long as the creator of Grunch continues to update it in the future. I hope that he is successful in educating people who try to add new programs to be installed and maintained with Grunch, so that they will produce better entries to the Grunch database and it will keep it's high quality on MorphOS and that the quality of installations and maintenance of program updates in the future will be better on AmigaOS3.x.

I was shocked when the creator of Grunch told me how few donations he has received for this great program, so I hope that if you install and use Grunch and you find it as useful as I do, you will choose to donate to the programmer of Grunch by clicking on the provided donate button in the program. If you do, he adds your name to a different database in the program which removes the donate button from the next version of Grunch if you are a registered user that has donated to it.

So everyone please donate to this great program called Grunch (if you find it useful of course). I am going to read the documentation and teach myself how to properly add more programs and games to it's database, so it will be even more useful to new MorphOS users. In my opinion, other than the Odyssey web browser, Grunch is the most useful program available to new MorphOS users and should be installed by default on all MorphOS systems.

Edit: I don't want to give you the impression that none of the MorphOS software or ports of software have good installation scripts. Many programs or games do have installation scripts that equal, or surpass what you are used to seeing from your Amiga days. But you will also find some software, probably mostly ports from other platforms, that have little, or no installation support and you must install everything manually, including finding and installing the support files and/or libraries. Things have improved since I started on MorphOS about 4 to 5 years ago.

[ Edited by amigadave 10.04.2012 - 20:11 ]

> Grunch [...] should be installed by default on all MorphOS systems.

According to information in that thread, Grunch will be contained in MorphOS 3.0, maybe as a contribution.