well I know this isn't the fastest setup, but I bought an Efika (with case) and a radeon 9250. I will purchase a morphos key once I get the hardware going.

why am I telling you all this? well, I was completely surprised that my local, web based, computer retailer still had plenty of Efikas. That retailer is Directron.com. They shipped it out the same day I ordered it, and since I live in the same city (houston, tx), I should get it today.

I just thought I would let everyone know that you can still find brand new efikas (the 5200B models).

yeah, yeah, I know the emac or mac mini will run circles around this board, but you see the emac will take up all of my desk, and I don't trust the long term reliability of those mac minis (sorry, i'm paranoid, those things seem to get HOT, and I can't exactly throw them into a new case and replace anything on it). plus, I like the efika. It is elegant. It's basically going to be a machine to check the weather, put things in my netflix instant queue, lurk irc, and administer all the other electronic crap in my house :)

In any event, I'm excited.

edit: by the way I got the 9250 on amazon, brand new for 30 USD

[ Edited by shickapooka800 on 2010/7/28 9:38 ]

Congratulations for your new adquisition! Efika is a good entry hardware for MorphOS, i have Efika and MacMini, both registered and working, and my MacMini doesn't get too hot, and it's the version with G4 at 1.5ghz and 64mb of VRAM, but Efika can be used with passive cooling only.

I suggest to search some tips to reduce ram memory used, like disable enhanced display, use 16 bits colors screen, use double buffer for display instead of tripe buffer, and you will get +85mb of ram free at boot, and you will enjoy a lot with your Efika!

great tips about the mem usage. I think it's more proper to start off with something that you've got to get your hands dirty to run efficiently. I'm notorious for using machines a bit too slow for the times, so I won't be complaining!

congrats and welcome to the club!:)

"It's basically going to be a machine to check the weather, put things in my netflix instant queue, lurk irc, and administer all the other electronic crap in my house :)"

are you intend to use morphos for these tasks? netflix is some kind of nas?

"are you intend to use morphos for these tasks? netflix is some kind of nas?"

netflix is an ondemand content service here in the USA. They send out dvd's via mail to your house per your queue, and also offer digital content on demand via silverlight plugins in browsers, and set top boxes. I use my PS3 to view my netflix instant queue titles. you need to add things to your instant queue via a web browser.

I intend to use morphos for small everyday computer stuff. mail, news, ssh administering, etc... listening to music may happen occasionally too.

Welcome aboard, m8!

Talking about speed comparisons - you could have a look here to be well prepared what to expect. Two major drawbacks of Efika are: USB 1.1 and very (and I mean very) poor HD transfer (due to some issue in DMA handling of MPC5200B AFAIR). Nevertheless it's silent (and can be made practically noiseless using CF card instead of hard disk) and does the trick quite well as an entry machine.

OWB is a great browser, albeit it feels a bit sluggish on an Efika. Remember to install the noSVG version (or use the one that comes with the system) and turn the memory gauge screenbar module on - OWB can eat all your RAM in no time, especially when you open too many tabs (and when there's only about 10 MB free there's nothing you can do to stop it from crashing).

it's funny, the thing these days that brings everyday computers to their knees is web browsing. you could build an x86 system to run even windows 7 using old components, but god help you when you fire up firefox and visit a modern webpage. IE might not even make it that far :)

the web is a fat bloated place, full of crap. I have no problem using a machine that is 'crippled' when it comes to the 'web 2.0 experience'.

and then you think "all this for some http?"... it's like if a small pedestrian footbridge was then used to carry a trailer, carrying a ferry, carrying some cars to the desired destination, only to have just the tires as the items of interest.
that's web 2.0.


edit: back on topic, I plan on using a 4GB 133x compact flash card as the hdd. am I going to be alright with 4GB? I'm going to be relying on smbfs for some file storage... is that a good idea?

crazy question too: does morphos have any netboot capabilities (i.e. can the root fs be on a network drive of some sort [anything from nfs to iscsi?]). ??
I like netbooting stuff.

[ Edited by shickapooka800 on 2010/7/28 12:36 ]

> That retailer is Directron.com. [...] I just thought I would let everyone
> know that you can still find brand new efikas (the 5200B models).

If you dare to enter "directron" into the search box on the left you'll realize that this fact is very well known here :-) And there's Axiontech as well.

actually I did end up stumbling upon a directron related thread just now.

funny enough, I had known about them selling the efika long ago when the thing was released (or close enough), but I just didn't have the space or money to spend on such things. This was several years ago. On a whim I looked up MorphOS about two weeks ago on wikipedia and noticed that the latest release was less than a few months ago! I was surprised. No offense but I considered MorphOS to be another one of those exciting computing things that I wanted to participate in, and is now defunct.
So I figured what the hell, I may as well see what things are all about.
Actually could it have been that long... it was 2007 i believe. wow. kudos to morphos for surviving!

<tacky mode on>

maybe you will enjoy my Efika devoted site.

www.efikafoundation.com

<tacky mode off>

I recently updated my Efika to Morphos 2.5 from 2.0. Wow! marked improvement once I turn off enhanced display,etc. Glad to get the mothballs off of it for sure. :) Mac Mini kinda made me brush it aside..as did many I am afraid. Nothing wrong with a 2nd Morphos machine though, right. FIRE IT UP! :)

> I had known about them selling the efika long ago when the thing was
> released (or close enough)

AFAIR Directron started selling the Efika about a year after it was released.

> it was 2007 i believe. wow. kudos to morphos for surviving!

There's a nice anniversary coming in the next days :-)

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7270&forum=3#75250

good lord that is a long time for something that basically flies 'under the radar'. cool.

My guess is that I will beat on that efika for a good while before I get an itch for stronger hardware.

looking forward to the anniversary.

well I've been pecking at this little thing since I got it.
lots of little gotchas, like using the correct partition map, my random choice of filesystem (nowehere does it say what I should be using), and some other wierdness I can't explain.

anyway, at the moment I can initialize the kernel but the boot process just stops right at "Quark/Openfirmware"
I looked at all the boot arguments I can pass, but none of them are of any use to try and determine why it hangs (no verbosity adjustment?). I tried passing the 'bd dh0:' and various variations therein but nothing seems to change.
my setup is a cf-IDE adapter with a 4gb kingston cf card formated as SFS. partition is set "boot priority 0" according to that disk partition editor app.

at this point I can't think of anything more. It's a shame the boot process doesn't at least spit out some sort of message either bad or good to let me know what is going on.

You can have all sorts of messages through serial debug, at least (depending on the debug options you can enable).

@shickapooka800,

Try not to get too frustrated while setting up your Efika. Search and read as much as you can first here on this forum site, so you can educate yourself and possibly read other users troubles doing the same thing, before you start complaining, or asking for lots of help (not saying that you are now, or even that you would start doing so). Then if you are still unable to find the answers to your troubles getting the Efika set up, try to make all your question short and to the point and you will have a better chance of getting help from other users, or even the MorphOS Development Team.

We try to avoid taking up the Team's time with questions so they can get more work done enhancing MorphOS for it's next release. I am not the most technically literate person around here, but I will try to help you get started with MorphOS on your Efika if I can.

As written before already, the Efika's USB1.1 and hard drive controller, or hdd access can be very challenging some times.

Gook luck, and don't give up. The end result is worth any trouble you might have getting started.

[ Edited by amigadave on 2010/8/2 20:39 ]

strange...

1. Can you list the partition from Open Firmware?
2. Are you sure you set it to bootable?
3. How does your boot string look like?
4. Was this CF card new, or used (MBR/RDB issue)?