amiga-news.de - Event: Report from the Pegasos/MorphOS demonstration at the "BeGeistert"

20.Oct.2002
Petra Struck Event: Report from the Pegasos/MorphOS demonstration at the "BeGeistert"

To give you a first overview about who I met in Düsseldorf at the BeGeistert, let's start with Nicholas Blachford, known through his audio software Aural-Illusion and Aural Synthetica. He did a detailed interview in February 2002 for Amiga Arena. He is working as a software engineer for Thendic France for about a month now.

Furthermore Bertrand Presles and Sébastien Lokhamkhouak were on board as well. Bertrand is president of the ASUM (Association of Sympathiques Utilisateurs de MorphOS), a union of MorphOS-fans, which originated from the AFUA group (Association Française des Utilisateurs d'Amiga), a union of Amiga-fans. Sébastien is currently founding a new French MorphOS print magazine called 'Fly High'.

The Pegasos "Betatester 1" computer system was being demonstrated with the MorphOS operating system. What hides behind the "Pegasos" and "MorphOS"? The Pegasos is a new PPC computer system, or better said new hardware, which bases on an ATX motherboard offering dual G3/G4 processor support. This computer was developed by bplan GmbH, Frankfurt, and is manufactured by DCE, Oberhausen, and Thendic France is the worldwide distributor.

MorphOS is an excellent fit for this new computer. Below we take a look at a part of an interview done by amiga-topcool with Ralph Schmidt (one of the MorphOS authors) to better understand why this OS was developed:
amiga-topcool: Ralph, when did the idea for MorphOS strike you, and what caused you to begin?

Ralph Schmidt: Let me go back a bit before that, because MorphOS is a stage in a longer sequence of events. In September 1995 we (the former Phase 5) decided to introduce the PowerPC as the new CPU in the Amiga market, because there was no visible future for the old 68K series of processors. To that end we worked not quite a year on emulations and plans for how the OS could be ported.

All of that went out the window as we opted instead for the ppc.library approach, for reasons of time and market conditions. Then in 1998 there was again a bit of energy to the original approach after the Flash, ppc.library and SCSI developments were winding down. We saw absolutely no sense in a simple AmigaOS port or a 68K Workbench extension ala OS 3.5, so our goal was the foundation of a new OS, an OS that would contain an "A-Box" for old Amiga API programs. In March 1999 the microkernel for this new OS was functional, in that such an AmigaOS box could be integrated and this would then serve as the OS foundation.

So the operating system MorphOS (boots in 2.5 seconds) is a microkernel based OS, upon which sits an A/box, which would then allow the execution of Amiga programs (which don't access hardware), but faster as compared to Amiga hardware. The operating system MorphOS has today matured to a good operational status, Ambient (the Workbench clone) is based on MUI and can be adapted to individual design wishes.

During the performance I have asked whether it is possible to use hard disks from the Amiga to be used without problems. Bertrand attached his Amiga hard disk as slave and booted his computer, after this we could use all the programs stored on his Amiga hard disk.

However, if I say that the OS has arrived at a good operational point, I mean that it currently runs faultlessly in the main areas, but there also are somethings left to do. Herefor I would like you to remember that the individual stages of development of our AmigaOS. AmigaOS wasn´t perfect at the beginning, and it isn't today. MorphOS is nevertheless promising because there are already many programs, that are converted natively to MorphOS, further software will follow, just think about those many programs which are in work by Titan-Computer and e.p.i.c. interactive. Around 15 programmers are intensively engaged in making MorphOS a better solution in the meantime.

Users who think themselves to be capable of coping with a system which still raises smaller problems, can purchase this Pegasos/MorphOS computer as a so-called "Betatester1" (with NDA). Later, users of the Betatester1 still have the possibility to test additional hardware, such as a smart card readers. The "Betatester2" will be sold at the beginning of the coming week, no NDA (obligation to be silent about certain things) needs to be signed anymore. A date for the official customer release isn't finalized yet. The German Distributor is Vesalia, and on their website you can find all the technical details.

Finally, some answers to the questions asked by amiga-news.de readers:

Which DVD- and CD-ROM-drives are utilizable? Are there any limitations?
Yes and no. Most devices run, there will be a detailed list on Thendic France´s website shortly.

When will the support for 512 MB RAM-modules be ready?
These already can be used, when it's registered RAM. There will also be a list of all useable RAM-modules.

Will there also be support for Firewire and SCSI-adaptors?
SCSI now, Firewire later, there will be a commercial solution for this interface not after the release of the video editing software 'Motionstudio' from Titan-Computer.

Is there planned TV out and dual monitoring support?
This does not run yet, but will be implemented. When isn't clear at this point. It has definately no high priority.

What is the current state of Eclipsis and the JAVA-VM?
In development and there are first prototypes.

My personal impression after this demonstration: Not yet finished, but very very promising!

Author: Petra Struck - Pictures of this event
Translation by Michael and Gary7
Proofread by Asemoon Abi
(ps)

[News message: 20. Oct. 2002, 23:45] [Comments: 10 - 31. Oct. 2002, 15:23]
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