As we all know, the MorphOS team recently released MorphOS 2.4, which added support for the PowerPC G4 version of Apple’s Mac Mini. Even though this long-awaited ‘feature’ is a very welcome one, I personally think that of all the G4 Macs MorphOS could support, the Mini is the least interesting. As such, I want to find out if any other G4 Macs happen to be supported too – without us knowing about it.
This is pretty much a very, very long shot, but I figured I would call in everyone’s help anyway. The Mac Mini G4 is still quite an expensive machine (250-350 EUR here in The Netherlands at least), and combined with MorphOS’ price of 150 EUR, that’s a rather big sack of money.
There are other PowerPC G4 Macs out there that are much cheaper, especially if you look at the PowerMac line of machines. The G4 PowerBook and iBook models were also very, very popular, probably much more so than the Mac Mini.
Apart from the aforementioned money issue, I also want to do everything in my power to promote the use of alternative operating systems. In the end, that’s what OSNews is here for. Sure, you have to wade through boatloads of nonsense about Windows 7, Ubuntu, and Mac OS X, but alternative operating systems are still at our core. Sadly, news about these operating systems are rare.
This is why I am writing this article. I want to find out if the MorphOS 2.4 CD, which is available as a demo version, boots on other G4 Macs too. The chances we encounter a machine (other than the Mini) which supports MorphOS is extremely slim, but I want to try anyway. If we do find a machine, this could mean a few more sales for the MorphOS team.
Of course, before I explain how you can try out the MorphOS CD on your G4 Mac, it is important to note that whatever happens, this is a completely unsupported undertaking. The MorphOS team only supports the G4 Mac Mini, and any other machine that might happen to be able to boot MorphOS (again, highly unlikely) will not be supported in any way by the MorphOS team. If your machine blows up in the process, or kills your collection of rare Flavian dung beetles, that’s your problem – not mine, not the MorphOS team’s.
In addition, OpenFirmware should not be messed with. The commands in this article are completely harmless, and none of them change or alter any settings. Still, messing in OpenFirmware without knowing what you’re doing can have destructive consequences. As such, you’re doing this completely at your own risk. I am not responsible in any way.
So, how do you go about testing to see if your G4 Mac supports MorphOS? First, download and burn the .iso image. Bear in mind that this is a demo version, and will slow down after 30 minutes of use. It’s a live CD, so you can perform non-destructive testing. Since my very own PowerMac G4 (dual 400Mhz, 1GB of RAM, Radeon 8500 64MB of RAM) would not recognise the MorphOS CD using the default boot method (that is, hold down the ‘c’ key during boot), we’ll need to perform a little OpenFirmware magic.
After you’ve burnt the CD, put it in your Mac’s drive, and shut down the machine. Then, press the power button while holding down cmd+opt+o+f. Note that on newer Mac keyboards, opt has been renamed to alt. This will boot your Mac into OpenFirmware, leaving you at the characteristic ‘ok>’ prompt. Therefore, note that in the following commands, the ‘ok>’ does not need to be typed in.
Now that you’re in OpenFirmware, you first need to make sure it can actually read from the MorphOS CD you just burnt.
ok> dir cd:\This should list the contents of the CD in the drive. ‘cd’ Is automatically set up as a device alias in OpenFirmware on Macs, but in the unlikely case yours might use a different alias, you can issue this command to check:
ok> devaliasThis will list all current aliases. Here you can see which alias is used by your CD/DVD drive. Once you’re sure the device alias is correct, you can issue the boot command to try and load the MorphOS kernel:
ok> boot cd:\mac_ppc32\boot.img
Be sure to replace the device alias “cd” with whatever your Mac might use. The Mac Mini boot.img file resides in the mac_ppc32 directory – contrary to the Pegasos 1, EFIKA, and default boot images, which are all located at the root of the CD.
Now, the most likely outcome is that the boot process will fail at the line “Quark/OpenFirmware” (Quark is MorphOS’ kernel). This is what happened on my PowerMac G4, and this simply means that the machine is not able to boot MorphOS – as is to be expected.
It would be awesome if we can get an as wide a number of tests as possible. Even though the chances of us striking gold are virtually zero, I think it’s still worth it to try, especially as it takes very little effort, and can be done in a few minutes or less. This process is entirely non-destructive, but do be aware that if you do not know what you’re doing, you should not muck about in OpenFirmware. Stick to the above commands if you are not well-versed in the world of OpenFirmware.
I hope we strike gold, no matter how unlikely it might be. Happy testing!
there are a few power book models that semi work, and 1 or 2 desktop G4 systems. They much have an ati graphics card as I don’t believe they system will run at all on an nvidia system. if i recall correctly the graphics much also be on the AGP bus but i am not 100% sure.
(i think, in order. ati model only)
http://support.apple.com/kb/SP106
http://support.apple.com/kb/SP63
http://support.apple.com/kb/SP78
http://support.apple.com/kb/SP62
these are systems that should boot and be “useable” all features (such as firewire and combo drivers) are not likely to work, or at least work properly.
Edited 2009-10-14 22:56 UTC
I’ve been considering picking up some modern PPC hardware eventually, perhaps a decent cheap G4-based mac would be the ticket if it had a couple OS options to throw at it
Sorry off-topic, but I would like to know.
Open firmware is only found on PPC Macs. Is there something equivalent on the Intel Macs that I could access?
Thanks.
I dont have any personal experience but from what I believe , a G4-ppc CPU based system is an absolute must ..
Actually, OpenFirmware started at SUN. So it can be found in most SPARC desktop/servers, and quite a few IBM POWER systems. Besides the obvious Apple/PPC connection.
I’m not aware of any way to access the EFI on Intel Macs the way you could access Openfirmware on the ppc Macs. EFI is modular and a control interface need not be included if the OEM doesn’t wish to, and I do not believe Apple included any type of EFI shell other than the boot device selector (hold down option key at boot-up, or C to boot from CD/DVD) . I really loved Openfirmware though, too bad there’s no x86 systems that have it or another CLI-based boot firmware. Might be time for me to find a decently-priced Sparc workstation, I’ve always wanted one of those and that’s where Openfirmware originated.
This might interest you:
http://vfxweb.com/index.php?maincateg=18&subcateg=110&productid=115…
According to a MorphOS team member MorphOS asks at boot what maschine it is running on. In case of Apple hardware the boot will only be continued if Mac Mini hardware is found.
But it seems rather likely, that other Apple PPC hardware will be added to the hardware support list in the middle future.
For the long run another alternative is required anyway…
I tried to boot the livecd on the blue tower g4 and got stuck at the same place Thom did. I will check this out on a mac mini tomorrow.
On a side note I remember looking at morphos when it was still really young and wanting to test it out. However it has always been made for a platform I did not have. Being able to test a livecd is a real treat!
There is nifty a tool to get more use out of EFI on Intel Macs: http://refit.sourceforge.net/
Allows you to create boot menus and access an EFI cli among other things. I haven’t installed it in some time but it was helpful when I was trying out BootCamp.
Should have mailed the devs to see if this was a) even possible and b) something they wanted.
I love this article, and I for one are one of those who’ve been begging for this since years. I’ll see how my Quicksilver G4 performs, wish me luck.
C’mon guys, as a MorphOS user I appreciate the coverage but couldn’t you give 2.4 a shot on its supported hardware the PPC Mac mini (or Pegasos or Efika) before going off and experimenting with unsupported Macs?
I think everyone is a little excited including Thom. Can’t really blame us. This is very exciting.
I’ll be doing the supported bit, I will need time to actually use the OS daily and do a review proper justice. Just remember my GEOS review.
Amiga > Mac 1991
MorphOS Amiga-like-OS > Mac OS 2009
morphos won’t run on macs with different northbridge (like peg1 version doesn’t work on peg2 and vice versa) than mac mini so only latest powerbooks and powermacs could run it. If morphos tests machine id maybe changing it in OF could help (if this change is available)
So in one article it’s mentioned that a)it would be nice to know if MorphOS 2.4 works on non-Mini G4 Macs and b)that there’s a dearth of non-mainstream OS articles on OSNews. These comments were made by the article author and editor of the site.
Here’s a crazy idea, contact the MorphOS devs and conduct an interview that you could post. This would allow you to get direct and correct answers to your questions and provide you with content for the site. It would certainly be more interesting and informative than asking a random collection of viewers to try an OS on hardware that is not officially supported. The best you’re going to get in this fashion is a bunch of comments of “Nope, doesn’t work” or “Well, it kind of works”. There’s no context to those responses, though. No answer to “Why?”. The devs could give you your hardware list and explain to you the through process(es) behind the decision.
This article represents a huge missed opportunity, truly.
Yes, a MorphOS developer interview would be fantastic. Would love to read that. Especially I’d like to hear more about the conflict with Genesi, future direction, their favourite applications, Ambient and how that is open source, congratulate them on supporting the Mac Mini, etc….. So many interesting things to write about……..
Although we have some of the mirrored door Macs still around at the office, my primary production machine at home is my first gen PPC Mac mini. So I downloaded the test ISO and boot from the disc. My USB Apple keyboard was not detected (the newer, slimline model with numeric keypad, product # MB110LL/A). So I had to plug my mouse in to the back of the mini since it didn’t work daisy chained through a non-detected keyboard.
I’ll try to remember to take home a more generic keyboard to test it with but that was a bit disappointing as I could launch a lot of apps but couldn’t do type anything to even find out if I had a network connection or not. As an owner of an Amiga 500 & 1200, I can’t say this is anything like the AmigaOS experience I’m used to. As it is, if I were to install an alternate to OS X, I’d probably go with Yellow Dog Linux or one of the other current PPC Linux builds.
-Gary
If it the same keyboard I’m thinking of, there’s a slight bug in 2.4 that means it dosn’t work, it did work in previous versions.
I’m sure they’ll be a fix sooner rather than later. At the risk of sounding like a Linux ‘fan’ my Generic USB keyboard works for me(tm)
MorphOS 2.4 runs very well on my PPC Mac mini from the first time I tried it. I’ve just used the liveCD functionality so far. It recognized my kb, which is the original one that came with my Mac mini, and the Logitech USB mouse I have connected through the kb. Sound worked. All that was required to get networking to work was to enter network preferences and click “use.” After that I could run either of the include web-browsers.
I think I’ve heard a couple reports that that silvery flat keyboard marketed (as an inexpensive replacement?) by Apple doesn’t work, but I imagine the MorphOS Team will issue an update for this in very little time.
The mini has never come with either a keyboard or a mouse. What keyboard are you using?
-Gary
I tried to fool the MorphOS’ bootstrapper using the following (in OF):
dev /rom/boot-rom
.properties
” Apple PowerMac 10,2 4.9.4f1 BootROM built on 07/12/05 at 16:57:27″ encode-string ” model” property
boot cd:\mac_ppc32\boot.img
But it continues to refuse to boot.
My machine is PowerMac3,4 and videocard is “0001:10:15.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV100 QY [Radeon 7000/VE]” (it is listed as supported on their site).
Internal developer versions obviously do already support further models (at least partially), thus it seems to be just a matter of time.
Recent photo of MorphOS on an eMac:
http://www.morphzone.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=1695
Old photo of MorphOS on a Powerbook:
http://bigfoot.morphos-team.net/test/powerbook_insert_forbidden_mes…
Sorry, it has ATI video, but freezes at the bootloader like Thom’s.
Any interesting OS’s to try on this machine? The hard drive is dead. I was thinking of booting a PPC linux LiveCD but don’t know of any.
Ubuntu has a live CD that would probably work for you.