AmigaOS 4.0 for PPC Mac Mini

There appears to be an AmigaOS 4.0 installation iso image for PPC Mac Mini in Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/amigaos40installformacmini

@jap

although old news I believe that was an early version of OS4.1 with many bugs

I think it was 4.0 not 4.1 yet biggest issue was
missing drivers i think. Still a shame this was not continued.

It was called "Moana Project", I think it stopped as some licences were missing.

This was a long time ago. I think it could be working already if AmigaOS was freely (as in copyleft) available but it's not. As I've read somewhere what happened instead was that the copyright owners treatened the authors of that experiment with bringing this to court so this was abandoned and they missed an opportunity to sell more copies of their software because they wanted to keep it to run only on the hardware they sell. Instead MorphOS found that market opportunity and sold copies for Mac machines that can do the same that AmigaOS could have done. (Or it was available already when this happened.) The copy you've found is probably still illegal to download and use (it might even be taken down now that you've brought it in attantion) as AmigaOS is still kept under locks that hinders its development, because e.g. nobody can make it work on Mac hardware other than the owners who lack the resources to do so. So it's just dying in agony while we're watching. This is unfortunate but the decision is with those who own the copyright. Techincally it would be possible to write drivers for Macs and there are even free (also for commercial use not only copyleft) driver sources available but if somebody wants to finance development from software sales there's probably no market for it to make that viable. So for now if you have a Mac you can get MorphOS for it which is simpler than AmigaOS4 but maybe more stable and have some features AmigaOS doesn't while lacks some others. If you just need an Amiga like environment that can ran legacy Amiga software both can do that well just on different hardware.

@jap

here you can see "Moana Loader" AmigaOS 4.0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0Z0fp77Ubs

(it's not my video)

I still have the archive and "moana loader" in my archives.

If I remember correctly what was missing was the graphics card support.

Today it could probably be played with qemu




found the iso with the instructions it was buried in my archives

Old news indeed, but the Internet Archive submission was fresh. There is a pirate copy of AmigaOS 4.1 FE, too

I wonder why the Mac Mini adaptation (Moana Loader) wasn't released separately as an AOS 4.x extension (without the OS itself) by the person who made it. Or is it that it's just not about the loader, but Exec needs to be modified too?

@jap

People who follow AmigaOS are people who have used it in the past.
And who are happy to continue using it.
But in 10 years there will be nothing left of AmigaOS.

Morphos could be ported to x64 but investors are needed but regardless of what you can do with it.

AmigaOS 4.1 FE is an expensive toy to then have the same applications that you can have with WinUAE on one hand without spending significant amounts.

The hardware that is given in exchange is practically zero the difference is the video card that uses ATI drivers and therefore you get acceleration.

In the end I personally thought about getting the Hardware for AmigaOS FE.
But the expense is not worth the offer at least for me.
I'm 56 years old, I got a PS5 just to play some games like GTA6
I updated the graphics side of the PC with a 4060, having a 1080p monitor I can basically play and do many other things.
I modded GTA5 with NaturalVision, I can emulate the PS4 with games like BloodBorne.
After all, for my age there are also too many things to use.

Not to mention the avalanche of games I have, we're talking about Terabytes of games.

Some of which I've never played.

And even though I was born with video games in BARs with arcades, I have to say that I'm starting to feel the tiredness on my shoulders from life.

I could update the hardware with faster processors and everything else.
And maybe the Playstation 6 will be my last console.
But I've seen technology progress and that made me happy.

Hey, when I play Fortnite every 10-15 games I come first at least 3-4 times, not bad for a 56 year old person.

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I imagine that Hacking AmigaOS is not difficult for those who still use AmigaOS as programmers.
But there are very few of them left.

@jap

Quote:
They weren't allowed to do that. IIRC, its authors showed it to Amiga Inc. (and/or Hyperion), but never got permission to polish it up and have it released.

Hans

@japQuote:
Or it was just too unfinished to be released... and no interest to finish it after all the objections against it.

I tried it back in the day, and I couldn't get it to work on common Mac mini versions (with 32MB graphics memory), it only worked on the one specific and rare model (with 64MB graphics memory). So if that really was the case for others too, the support should have been widened to all Mac mini G4 machines. It also lacked crucial drivers (network, audio, USB? At least two of them if not all IIRC.). So, not much to be used in the state it was left.