whabang wrote:
Well, there's this wee little detail of actually designing a Coldfire-board, making a Coldfire-version of AROS, make it trap the non-supported instructions (which would be limited to non-MMU, and possibly non-FPU applications), and then write proper hardware drivers for the board, and any clones. But yes, it's doable.
Actually, if you want a coldfire/AROS based computer you could buy one of the development systems with built in VGA graphics and/or PCI card slots. They just need an AROS port, case and power.
http://www.futureelectronics.com/promos/coldfire/MCF547x/Or, instead of designing the entire Coldfire board for existing Amiga's you could build an adapter that holds one of the Coldfire module boards. Then you just need the logic between the coldfire and the Amiga connector, the rest already works and you just program it. I thought about doing this.
As for the MMU/FPU stuff... anything that hits the MMU or FPU itself isn't going to work. If programs use the math.library then a Coldfire math.library would do the trick. There's also an MMU.library and stuff that uses it might also work with a new version of the lib.
Something to think about... this year Freescale *should* start sampling the V5 Coldfore core to select customers. It should offer twice the performance of the current 4e core chips. That *might* be worth preparing for.
Reality check for you people drooling over the coldfire ...
When I first started looking at a Coldfire Amiga, Motorola hadn't even introduced the MCF5307 but they did have the 4e core on their roadmap. At the time it looked promising because PC's weren't nearly as fast as they are now. Since then the roadmap has slipped by something like 4 years and in that time the gap has widened so much (I just built my parents a nice 2.4 GHz PC for Christmas for $230) that I don't see the point in it anymore. I checked pricing on the new Coldfire CPUs in small quantities (less than 10000) and it's as much as I can buy an Athlon for. And the Socket A motherboards start at about $25. To print a small 2 or 4 layer board as an adaptor for a coldfire module board will cost at least 2 times that in small numbers and you still need the module!
AROS might make a great embedded OS for the Coldfire and it would be good for settop boxes or low end machines for third world countries. But even a V5 core is predicted to run only 610 Dhrystone mips at 333 MHz. A 2.4GHz CPU like my parents have offers 4644 Dhrystone mips! Even when the coldfire CPU speed gets bumped to 800+MHz like one of their roadmaps displayed (that roadmap isn't on the Freescale site) it will probably only be around 1500 mips and that will be at least two years from now when multi-core AMD and Intel CPUs should be everywhere. (Motorola did mention a multi-core Coldfire at one point but all discussion of it has since disappeared just like the 800+MHz)
AROS for UAE makes sense. For a real world miggy it makes sense for working to improve AROS compatibility and providing a migration path. For the Coldfire it makes sense for embedded/settop box use. For a way to bring a late 80's/early 90's machine into the new millenium in combination with the Coldfire... it's going to fall way short.
*IF* Freescale were to introduce a V5 Core Coldfire at 800+ MHz with MORE THAN 2 CORES then you could think about it. But with the Coldfire targeted at embedded systems I just don't see that anytime soon. (I do expect to see a Coldfire CPU with 800+MHz and multiple cores... just not for a few years)