I managed to purchase an eMac 1.25ghz for (?8.50) to have a play with MorphOS and the experience apart from general non system friendly 68k software problems has been a very good one. Whilst as some will know I am a serious Aros advocate, I want to have a usable MorphOS machine because in a number of ways it is better than Aros at the moment.

My problem is this, whilst the eMac and MorphOS is to be honest, wonderful, the size of the screen is too small (15.5 inch) and I cannot use it for longer than half hour anyway because of headaches and eye strain possibly a refresh issue..

So I want a machine to register MorphOS on that I can plug into a 1920x1080p display which is nice and sharp rather than the non eye friendly eMac display.

I also think that 64mb vram is important as I am always skirting with being full.

Thanks for advice in advance.

Oh and I will be doing a video soon about my experience if any are interested next week.

Steve

Steve,

I'd set your sights on a 1.5ghz Mac mini with 64MB video ram then - though a little trickier to nab than the other Morphos compat. minis. and certainly wont be found for 8 UKp :) Otherwise twiddle your thumbs and wait for hopeful Mac G4 MDD support with a forthcoming release down the road.

RE: Video - 'was thinking that a new Morphos video by clusteruk would not hurt actually. :)I do find your AROS videos entertaining to watch.

[ Edited by Debaser on 2010/7/10 9:31 ]

@clusteruk

For your headaches issue, I have read the eMac can only display at 75Hz when used in 1280x960. If this is true, you should try to lower the resolution (1280x960 is way too much for such 15" monitor anyway, IMHO).
It should be able to display 1024x768 over 85Hz (up to 100Hz, it seems) which is much more sane. You can check which frequencies are used (and eventually tweak them) in the "Monitors" preferences.

@Henes

Cannot seem to get to grips with montior prefs, when I select save and reboot it just stays at 1280 instead of 1024. Am I missing something.

@Debase

Thanks for advice, the 64mb versions seem quite rare. I may fix picture on emac for now but Mac Mini would be good with my 4 way KVR switcher. On video, I will always be honest and fair, just sharing what I find with anyone interested.

EDIT: @Henes
Cracked the screen res changer

Got it in 1120x832 and it is in 85hz i think. Much better, thanks.
[ Edited by clusteruk on 2010/7/10 15:34 ]

[ Edited by clusteruk on 2010/7/10 15:50 ]

Oh dear, strike that.

Got it running perfect and rebooted, now I have nothing after the Morphos splash screen, just a black screen.

What have I done.

Steve

EDIT: Sorry this has gone way off topic.

[ Edited by clusteruk on 2010/7/10 16:05 ]

@clusteruk
Pegasos II G4@1000 with AGP 128/256Mb or (better) PowerMac G4 MDD/firewire 800 (@1250<=G4>=@1420 dual) with AGP 128/256Mb.

regards

[ Edited by Divinity on 2010/7/10 16:16 ]

@Divinity

Thanks but don't want to go slower than 1.25ghz and prefer to keep hardware spend and licence around ?250 mark.

@clusteruk

You seem to forget this is an amiga where you can have several logical screens running different resolutions.
The "Monitors" preferences is where you define screen modes for every physical gfxcard/monitor connected to your machine.
The "Screens" preferences is where you choose the resolution to use for every existing logical screen.

So just go to Screens prefs, edit Ambient screen and select some 1024x768 mode there.
Then press use. And if it works fine then press save.

:-)

I have not forgotten but it is organised diferently and I am just getting to grips with MorphOS subtle diferences. I have no complaint at all but will disagree on test and save bit. I did that and on reboot had a blank screen.

Anyway I have now got to grips with it and it is very nice

Have to say that the upgrade pack in another thread is awesome, love it transforms a nice basic setup into a very usable machine with most of tools I need.

Hi. As you can see this is my first post, so you can take whatever I say with a grain of salt as I'm a complete MorphOS noob.

Anyway, I just picked up an eMac on ebay with a view to installing MorphOS and at the same time I ordered an apple mini-vga to vga adapter for it so I can hook up a better (and bigger) LCD monitor.

Have you considered this?

@AlaCarcuss

I am a newbie here too and that answer was genius, did not know there was such a think on the side. Does this turn off the monitor and pass through to external because that would be awesome.

edit: Ordered one off Ebay for ?5.99, total Hardware cost so far, a total rip off of ?13.99, may buy another machine.

[ Edited by clusteruk on 2010/7/12 14:54 ]

[ Edited by clusteruk on 2010/7/12 14:55 ]

Not sure, (the adapter's still in transit) but I'm pretty sure it just clones the eMac's display - extended desktop not supported on the mac side of things anyway.

Wheather or not it allows hiding the emac's screen - dunno (I doubt it). I'm not sure if it will allow a higher res than the emac's screen is capable of either - but even 1280x960 on a 22-24" LCD will still look a hellava lot better than the native crt (no flicker also).

Quote:

Haha, the emac I picked up on ebay I got for $50AU (bout 25 uk quid) - just the bare box and stock 1.25ghz, 768mb etc... The next day another was listed just down the road from me that included 2GB ram, genuine Apple KB & mouse AND a 320GB external firewire drive! I bid on it and won it for $60AU - now I have 2 of the bloody things!!

I just wanted try out MorphOS FFS - now I have to bloody move to a bigger house

[ Edited by AlaCarcuss on 2010/7/13 1:37 ]

@AlaCarcuss

I am having to run at 102x768 at the moment so running at 1280x960 will be excellent, as my external monitor is wide screen it may cause problems but nothing that a normal 4:3 monitor canot cure. All in all, still a great tip, thanks.

Quote:

My PowerMac MDD firewire 800 has two CPU G4@1.42 ghz and It's very powerful in single and dual CPU mode ... give a look at my benchmarks test here :
http://amiga.ikirsector.it/forum/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=13185