ADOOM on A600 running 22-35 FPS

[kolla]

I bet at least 10% of Pi sales have gone to people that would prefer to have an Amiga computer or 68k CPU but only Raspberry Pi was offered instead of Cherry Pi. Let's say only 3% would have payed up for the Amiga or 68k which would be 150,000 potential Amiga users.

I would say this is a huge over estimate, huge huge HUGE over estimate!!!

It would surprise me a lot if a 68k Cherry pi would sell much at all, probably less than 5000. At least without a full fledge capable CPU with MMU, so that it easily can boot a relevant operating system.

I think you have misunderstood why people buy the raspberry pi, it's not just because it is cheap, it is because it is cheap and fully supported bu Linux. Extremely few are interested in a lamed down EC 68k that only can run AmigaOS and maybe uCLinux if you are lucky.

[kolla]

What I'm guessing is that at least 10% of Raspberry Pi purchasers know and have a favorable opinion of either the Amiga or 68k (the 68k may be more popular than the Amiga).

Who are these 10%? You are pulling numbers out of nowhere. Again, people buy R-pi because it has HDMI, is cheap, and runs Linux, fully supported. The company I work for bought a whole bunch of r-pi to plug into big monitors that we use as info displays, the R-pi is perfect as it is tiny, powered by the TV and has HDMI, and because it runs full fledge Linux.

[kolla]

May be of interest:
http://www.fleasystems.com/

[kolla]

You must first tell me what the poll is supposed to be about, without MMU it will have extremely limited use. With a proper implementation that is compatible and has MMU you could get it to run NeXTStep, Plan9, MiNT, Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, SunOS etc which people would actually be interested in, especially if it was mindbogglingly fast. Without MMU, there are already plenty of hardware alternatives, and none of them very popular.

So what is your idea?

EDIT: I see now that Gunnar says Apollo has MMU, which makes it a lot more interesting.

[kolla]

There are plenty of us running Linux on m68k, and m68k is well supported by the Linux kernel and the GNU tool chain, in parallel with ColdFire. If you manage to provide a modern and fast, and well documented 68k CPU, you will quickly find Linux running on it, as well as NetBSD.

[kolla]

For sake of compatibility for those who want hardware to run old m68k OSes (NeXTStep, Plan9, A\UX, MacOS...) I think compatibility with 68040 is favourable. It may be worthwhile to check with people over at http://www.nextcomputers.org/ if they would be interested.

[kolla]

i am asking around in various relevant communities, it would be nice if the http://www.apollo-core.com pages could say a little more about compatibility (68020 instructions) and about your MMU plans.

[kolla]

when you say "communities" how many people are these roughly?
what hardware systems are they using exactly?

I need to do counting too?

Well, there's Amiga and Atari peeps obviously, running you know what. There's the NeXTStep die hards using NeXTStation and Cubes, there's people who enjoy firing up unixen for old (*gasp*) Apollo computers, there are people keeping their old macs alive for A\UX and ditto for old SunOS. Then are there people like me who happily run Linux and *BSD on anything that has a capable m68k inside, from old Macs, Amigas, Ataris, Motorola VME boards... anything. How many all these add up to? No idea, but certainly way lot more than Amiga folks alone.

[kolla]

The first answers at NeXT forum is that compatibility with 68030/882 or a full 68040 is needed, which is pretty much what I expected. Also the rumour was that apollo core is mostly vapourware, only 68000 capable, and that among all the 68k cores, the TG68 is the most preferable anyhow I can understand the centiment, how can one trust people with only background in Amiga to do a capable 68k MMU for example. I would say the Apollo team could benefit greatly by pulling in people from other plattforms to chime in, especially Atari people are easily available.

[kolla]

Gunnar, providing cards for old computers was not in my agenda. While building acc cards for old systems is pretty cool, it's the stand alone systems that are of main interest, at least for me. The question is if you can reimplement a lot of old hardware using an FPGA, so that the old operating systems will be able to run on them.

[kolla]

Not sure I understand the question.
If we would not put SAGA into the FPGA how could we run Amiga OS?

Exactly, and for Amiga (and Atari) this is pretty much done deal, FPGA implementations of chipsets exists, but I don't this is the case for other m68k systems.

@matthey, a "cherry pi" would need an FPGA anyhow to be useful for AmigaOS. Price wise, what is more expencive you think, a bigger FPGA to hold both CPU and chipset and whatnot, or an ASIC for CPU and a "cheaper" FPGA for chipset++?

[kolla]

I'm curious if old MacOS 8 under Shapeshifter has been tested on Vampire600?

[kolla]

Of course both BSDs and Linux are banging the chipset, how else would they provide screen output and sound? Of course these also have the advantage that they will be able to support and make use of SAGA too, when that time comes. Other OSes are not so fortunate, and require that people replicate their old chipsets in the FPGA.

[kolla]

Anyone have Vampire600 and Indivision ECS with P96 driver to show off?

[kolla]

Or Shapeshifter and MacOS8, would be a nice demonstration of CPU compatibility.

[kolla]

I have now read that Vampire600 is incompitible with Indivision ECS. Why?!