Frequently Asked Questions

Basic Information

Q: What is MorphOS?
A: MorphOS is a lightweight, highly efficient and flexible desktop operating system. It includes primarily proprietary as well as open-source components, most notably the Ambient desktop environment. Its many features range from a modern exceptionally customizable graphical user interface, which can utilize 3D hardware acceleration, to a high-performance Just-in-Time compiler which emulates the 68k family of processors and thereby allows to transparently execute legacy applications developed for the Commodore Ax00 series of computers.

Parts of MorphOS are based on work made by the the AROS project.

Q: What hardware do I need to run MorphOS?
A: MorphOS is currently focused on hardware systems based on the Power Architecture and includes special optimizations for the AltiVec instruction subset.

More specifically, it runs on Mac mini G4 computers and systems based on, EFIKA, Pegasos I and Pegasos II mainboards. There exist also development ports to the Freescale MobileGT platform.

For a detailed list of the supported hardware, please visit this page.

Q: Who is developing MorphOS?
A: You can find a list of developers and contributors on this page.

Q: How much does it cost?
A: A MorphOS keyfile is currently available at an price of 150 EUR (includes 19% VAT). The unregistered version of MorphOS includes the full functionality, but slows down operation after a 30 minutes period until you choose to reboot your computer.

Q: I would like to contact the developers. How do I do that?
A: Our contact details can be found here. In case you need assistence with your MorphOS setup, we encourage that you sign up to our support mailing list and post any problems there before you contact us directly.

For urgent matters, please visit #morphos on the FreeNode network (irc.freenode.org) where you can talk to other MorphOS users and various core developers.

Q: What are the key differences between MorphOS 2.x and the older MorphOS 1.4.5?
A: MorphOS 2.x is faster and features a more polished appearance. It also includes brand new as well as updated existing libraries, and an improved collection of bundled applications. It also introduces screen blankers, a new 64bit DOS, a state of the art memory system, and much more...

For more detailed information, please read the MorphOS 2.0 release notes , MorphOS 2.1 release notes , MorphOS 2.2 release notes, MorphOS 2.3 release note and MorphOS 2.4 release notes.

Q: I registered and I paid. How long does it take to get the key file?
A: Usually you should get it within a period of 24 to 48 hours. We would like to note that this process is handled manually. Please be patient and do not register a second time. If you think there is a problem, send an email to support@morphos-team.net instead.

Q: I discovered a bug and would like to report it. What do I need to do?
A: When you are looking at the Ambient desktop, move your mouse pointer to the screen title bar and select the menu column labelled as "Ambient". Now, choose "About MorphOS" and view the "Support" tab. Read the on-screen instructions and fill out a report. Finally, press the "Generate report" button. Thank you.

Q: I encountered a bug. After reporting it, I was asked to use the ramdebug boot parameter and send a debug log file. What do I need to do exactly?
A: Enter 'getramdebuglog ram:morphos.log' in a shell window and send the newly created file named morphos.log, which is to be found in your Ram Disk, to the developer.

Q: What is MOSSYS: and SYS:MorphOS?
A: MOSSYS: is an assign pointing to SYS:MorphOS. The idea is that SYS:MorphOS is a private directory for the operating system and you don't need to touch anything in it. A system upgrade will be done by simply putting a new directory (old one can be renamed or so). If you want to change the way the system is started edit s:user-startup, nothing else.

Q: I noticed that FXPaint Lite and Voyager are no longer included with MorphOS. Why are they missing?
A: Due to changes in licensing some applications are no longer included on the ISO.

Q: When will XYZ work?
A: When it is ready. Please do not ask developers repeatedly when something is ready as it is hard to predict and is being worked on most of the time irregardless of your questions.

Q: Somebody announced plans to release new PowerPC hardware. Will you port MorphOS to it?
A: The MorphOS development team cannot port MorphOS to hardware that does not exist. Furthermore, the developers do not make plans based on planned products. A product must exist and be for sale to be even considered for a port.

We strongly urge you to not buy or otherwise finance any hardware for the purpose of running MorphOS until you have read an announcement on this website that clearly states MorphOS will support it.

Booting on Mac mini G4

Q: How do I change the boot arguments ?
A: Mount the HFS Boot partition with Mounter application found in Tools. Open the bootinfo.txt in your favourite text editor and find the
<boot-script> line. It should be something like: boot &device;:&partition;,\boot.img ramdebug

Now add your boot arguments after the ramdebug keyword and save the file. You need to call HFSSetMacBoot Boot:bootinfo.txt EACH TIME you modify the bootinfo.txt or your Mac mini will not be able to boot MorphOS!

Q: What does HFSSetMacBoot command do ?
It marks files as bootable by OpenFirmware, making a partition appear as bootable in OSX and OpenFirmware's boot menu.

Q: How to get to the OpenFirmware prompt ?
A: Press and hold Command + Option + O + F keys after you hear the chime sound.

Q: How to eject a CD before booting anything ?
A: Enter the OpenFirmware prompt and type 'eject cd'. You can continue booting by typing 'boot' or reboot with 'bye' or 'reboot-all'.

Q: Why do I need a HFS partition for the MorphOS boot.img file ?
A: Mac mini's OpenFirmware can only read HFS or HFS+ partitions, so it wouldn't be able to load the boot.img from a FFS or SFS partition. HFS is the only Mac filesystem with write support under MorphOS.

Booting on Efika & Pegasos

Q: What boot arguments are there?
A: Using and understanding boot options requires a little knowledge about DOS pattern management. If you are just searching for examples, skip the following part and take a look at the examples listed below.

General Meaning:
The character case is not important. Just the boot image file name must be exact.

• no / behind argument means that a textual argument is expected.
• = means you can use one of these key word as argument. e.g. Fuh=Bar=Chicken/S allows to enable the same switch by using fuh, bar or chicken.
• /S means no arguments needed. Just the keyword will enable option.
• /N means a numeric argument is required.

Arguments:

To get all available arguments simply use
> boot boot.img "

(" is important here, as it makes it fail and shows a template.)

• BM=BootMenu/S
  The boot menu can be opened by using F1 or pressing your left mouse button during the boot up, but this may be tricky due to issues of wireless devices or USB ones in general. This switch forces the boot menu to be opened without any additional key or button press.
• BD=BootDevice
  If there is more than one partition marked with the boot flag, you can use this option to specify the name of the boot drive / partition from which you would like MorphOS to be loaded, e.g. bd dh0:
• RD=RamDebug/S
  By default, debug output is routed though the serial port. This may slow down debugging or cause massive system slowdowns whenever applications with enabled debug or bugs are running. This option allows to redirect debug into a predefined memory section.
• RDS=RamDebugSize/N
  Normally the size of ram debug memory is 4MB on the Pegasos and 256kB on the Efika. This may not be enough for several debug purposes, so this option allows to increase the amount of memory to the desired size. Using the size of 0 disables ramdebug and enables default (serial) debug.
  
  
• RDO=RamDebugOffset/N
  This option allows to move the used memory area which is usually at the beginning of the memory block. As Open Firmware overwrites the first kB of the memory it may be useful to move the ram debug cache beyond that area.
  

Examples:
Please note that boot.img and ide:0 need to be adjusted depending on your hardware and partition layout.

Optimal arguments for using MorphOS on Efika & Pegasos:
> boot ide:0 boot.img rd rds 0

Optimal arguments for running MorphOS with basic debug functionality being enabled.
> boot ide:0 boot.img ed invzeropage

This will boot MorphOS from a device/partition named SDH2.
> boot ide:0 boot.img BootDevice SDH2

Q: How do I setup or modify the auto-boot feature? (Open Firmware)
A: First make sure its working when typing the commands by performing a test boot.

Then, define a boot file and set options. Boot command and boot device will be added by using the Open Firmware.
> setenv boot-file boot.img ramdebug

There are alias names available if you did not remove them, so this /pci/ stuff can be replaced by a simple ide:0.
> setenv boot-device /pci/ide/disk@...

Now, we set the auto boot delay. By default the Open Firmware counts down from 5 before starting auto boot. This would be a 5 second delay. It is possible to set up lower or higher numbers. It is recommended to refrain from using values below 1000, because it may be very hard to re-enter the Open Firmware command line interface again otherwise. The optimal values are between 3000 and 10000. (4000 equals 4 seconds, 1000 equals 1 second, and so on.)
> setenv auto-boot-timeout 3000

You may skip this for now. Using "boot" command without any argument will use the configuration specified above. If its working fine you finally can enable automatic booting using those set-ups.
> setenv auto-boot? true

Q: Booting from CD appears to be very slow. Is there any way to speed it up?
A: Yes, simply add the following part to your normal boot command: pc "addbuffers >NIL: cd0: 20000", e.g.
> boot cd boot.img 3d pc "addbuffers >NIL: cd0: 20000"

This should speed up the installation process a lot. Please note that each buffer is 2048, so this will consume about 40 MB of memory. If you can afford an even higher memory usage feel free to increase, if not than lower the value.

Q: I was told one can have an Open Firmware boot menu by typing some obscure commands. How do I do that?
A: We strongly urge that you DO NOT try to mess around with Open Firmware startup scripts or you might end up with a machine that does not boot at all.

There's a GRUB port done by Marcin Kurek available at http://tbs-software.com/morgoth/projects.html

Installation

Q: How do I format a disk?
A: Ambient has a Format menu.

Q: I cannot see my unformatted disks on the desktop! What is wrong?
A: You will see them in the Format menu.

Q: I cannot configure the hard disk, nothing is written to it, I get weird errors. What is wrong?
A: Always use 80 pin IDE cables for everything. 40 pin cables are not supported.

Q: Is the latest Open Firmware version required to install MorphOS 2.x?
A: No, it should work with any OF version. But some features like Gigabit Ethernet and SFS boot may not be available.

Q: I installed MorphOS 2.x on top of my old MorphOS 1.4 installation, now something is broken. What did I do wrong?
A: As stated in the installation tool, upgrades are not supported. They should work, but after 4 years of development many things changed and because of the pressing release schedule updating old installations was not tested / verified to work at all. Theoretically, it should work, but in case you run into any problems please try a clean installation first before reporting bugs to the MorphOS development team.

Q: I noticed a bug on a clean install, where do I report it?
A: The preferred way is to report the issue on the mailing list (see MorphOS.readme how to subscribe) or use the Bug Report feature in the 'About MorphOS' requester you can find in the Ambient menu.

Q: I'm trying to start IWizard or Regtool, but Ambient says 'no hexview'?
A: You must boot from MorphOS 2.x to use MorphOS 2.x components. MorphOS 2.x components cannot be started from MorphOS 1.4.

Q: I want to set-up a SFS partition, but its not available in HDConfig and iWizard. How is this working?
A: The problem is that you selected MBR as partition table which is not very flexible and no even contains a real checksum. The solution is to change the boot block type to RDB. This can be done by using right mouse button above the hard drive image. In the newly appeared context menu you can select RDB. After this is done, SFS can easily be chosen via the GUI.

Post-Installation

Q: How can I get rid of this mixer icon on desktop?
A: Double click on Mixer icon and choose MUI from menu item. In Mixers MUI settings select window from list and disable the "icon on desktop" check mark.

Q: How do I configure the screen mode?
A: MorphOS 2.x should automatically recognize your monitor and generate the best configuration for it.

In case you want to edit the monitor settings by hand, go to 'Monitors', chose a proper monitor in the monitor list or create one if you don't find it. Create some new screen modes, press 'Save'. Reboot. Go to 'Screens' and select them in the list view. You may also have a look at the file ModeEdit.pdf inside the Docs drawer.

Q: How do I activate screen bars objects?
A: Right click on the screen depth button (the button in right/top edge of screen) and select the module from the menu.

Q: Where do I put my 3rd party MUI custom classes?
A: In SYS:Classes/MUI

Q: Is it safe to install any third-party components to MOSSYS:?
A: As a general rule, no. It might work, but we do not support these type of MorphOS setups in any way. Possible bug reports or other forms of help requests caused by related problems will most likely be ignored. Only the MorphOS development team can make sure that all components of MorphOS fit together well and work in harmony. We encourage that you do not risk system stability in favor of adding unofficial software components to MOSSYS:

Q: Can the ramdebug be made reset resident?
A: You can use the additional boot arguments rds (ramdebugsize) and rdo (ramdebugoffset) to modify internal settings. Ramdebug does not survive a reset when it is located in the first 32MB of ram (i.e. it will be overwritten by the firmware)

Example:
> boot boot.img ramdebug rdo=33555456

If you type the above, this will result in the Ramdebug log surviving a reset on Pegasos computers by moving its buffer outside the first 32MB of RAM. Of course, this implies that sufficient memory is available to do so.

Q: I would like to replace some MorphOS components with software made by third parties. How do I do that?
A: First of all, we do not support such configurations. Once you start to replace system stuff you are on your own. That said,, if you want to replace a library, for example MOSSYS:Libs/foobar.library, put your 3rd party foobar.library into libs: (which is SYS:Libs) and *rename*
MOSSYS:Libs/foobar.library to MOSSYS:Libs/foobar.library_ (you can use any name but appending '_' is handy). The system will then fallback to LIBS:foobar.library. But you should really refrain from doing that as MorphOS libraries are heavily improved and extended compared to 3rd party stuff.

Troubleshooting for Mac mini G4 users

Q: My Mac mini doesn't boot, all I get is a gray Stop sign. What to do?
A: This may mean that the selected boot.img file or the filesystem Mac mini boots from is corrupt. Boot MorphOS from the CD, mount the HFS Boot partition with Mounter, format it using Ambient's Format menu (remember to name it Boot) and copy files found in mac_ppc32 directory on the CD to the freshly formatted Boot: partition. Now open a shell and type 'HFSSetMacBoot Boot:bootinfo.txt'. Finally, eject the CD and reboot.

Q: My Mac mini doesn't boot, all I get is a blinking disc icon. What do I need to do?
A: It may be that the HDD wasn't detected or that its partition table is damaged. In case you have your data backed up, the best way would be to try reinstalling MorphOS. You may also want to run HDConfig from Tools to see if the HDD is detected and has the proper partition layout.

Q: My Mac mini doesnt't boot, all I get is a black screen / my monitor doesn't power on. What are my options?
A: Try to erase the nvram. This is done by holding Command + Option + P + R keys after hearing the chime sound after you power on the mini. You should keep the keys pressed until you hear the Mac reboot itself again. Even if the chime sound was previously muted, you should hear one now.

Q: I tried erasing nvram, but it doesn't help. What else can I do?
A: You may try the same key combination, but this time power the mini off, hold the Command + Option + P + R keys and press and hold the power button with your third hand. Keep all keys and the power button pressed until you hear the Mac mini reboot again.

If this does not help, you should probably send the machine to your local service center.

Q: My Apple USB keyboard does not appear to work. Why is that?
A: We have successfully tested Apple's A1048 and M7803 keyboards but discovered compatibility issues with the A1242 and A1243 models, which at present have to be considered incompatible with MorphOS.

Troubleshooting for Pegasos & Efika users

Q: My hard disks or CD/DVD drive is not being recognized. What do I need to do?
Please make sure that you are using IDE cables with 80 conductors. Cables with only 40 conductors are not supported!

Q: The right boot file is in place and used, but it still fails to fully boot. How come?
A: You may have forgotten to enable the boot flags in IWizard or HDConfig for the partition you installed MorphOS 2.x on.

Reboot CD again and use the HDConfig tool in tools drawer to set the boot flags for that partition.

Q: I have a difficult time trying to boot MorphOS 2.x from CD. Do you have any suggestions?
A: You cannot just insert the CD and boot as you might do with a MorphOS 1.4.5 CD. The reason is that the old MorphOS 1.4.x boot.img on your hard drive is being used when you boot from CD unless you specifically tell your compter to not do so.

Type the following line to boot your Pegasos 2 via CD only.
> boot cd boot.img

On a Pegasos 1, please type
> boot cd bootpeg1.img

After making a proper installation, you can now boot any MorphOS 2.x CD without the need to type this again.

Q: When I play around with the 3D screen blankers my system may become very instable. What is the reason?
A: Make sure you use MorphOS 2.3 or higher.

Q: MorphOS 2.x and MorphOS 1.4.x are both installed on my computer. After running MorphOS 2.x, I cannot successfully start MorphOS 1.4.5 unless I do a cold reboot. Why?
A: This problem has been investigated and is related to the USB stack. Unfortunately, we cannot provide any information on if this might be solved. It should be only a comparably minor inconvenience, however.

Q: After the installation finished, the boot process stops right after the quark message. Why might this happen?
A: It seems your prior installation used a separate boot partition for boot images. During installation the boot file didn't get replaced. Boot from CD again and copy the boot.img file from your MorphOS 2.x partition over to your boot image partition and overwrite the old file. Now booting from hard drive should be possible.

Q: When selecting Shutdown from Ambient's Quit requester, a crash occurs on my Pegasos 1. Why might this happen?
A: Pegasos 1 does not support Shutdown. Nevertheless this issue will be addressed in next update to avoid the crash.

Q: USB preferences (Trident) hang when I press cancel. Why does this happen?
A: Its network thread needs to time out first. Disable the online update in USB preferences or set up your network properly. This issue will be fixed in one of the next releases.

Q: Everything is in place. I set the boot flag, yet booting aborts. What to do?
A: This may be a serious problem. It is known that some SCSI and USB cards or card revisions may cause trouble with MorphOS 2.x. Try removing those cards and file a bug report with a proper description of the used card.

Third-Party Software

Q: I cannot see 15/16/24 bits modes in screen mode requester of Candy Factory or some other application. How come?
A: The application in question depends on buggy behaviour of original asl.library: the width/height/depth limits can be bypassed. You can enable the original behaviour with 'setenv save asl/MODEREQ_EMULATEBUGS 1'.