Is the Coldfire project dead?

[TheMagicM]

No updates for quite some time.  Would you buy one?  If so, how much would you be willing to pay?

Me..yea I would.  I'd pay up to $400-$450..why? dunno..cause nobody has one and because it has USB, memory, sound etc..  

[Stew]

 I would buy around that price point myself. I would rather have one than a A1XE or PeGII. Would be fun to try and get toaster/flyer running on it.

[Karlos]

I sincerely hope not.

Whats the sketch, Oli?

[Samuar]

Unfortunately, Coldfire isnt 100% compatible with the 68Ks. It misses some key stuff that the AmigaOSs have been using for quite a while.

samuar

[MskoDestny]

Samuar wrote:
Unfortunately, Coldfire isnt 100% compatible with the 68Ks. It misses some key stuff that the AmigaOSs have been using for quite a while.

The coldfire project they were referring to had a little ROM that emulated the missing instructions.  It's not that hard to add them in since I believe that the missing instructions cause an exception which the emulator can trap to execute the equivalent instructions.

[kd7ota]

I really hope it is not dead....

I wouldnt mind have a powered Amiga 4000.  :-D   Though $400 is kinda pricy, I would be willing to pay for it.  :-D  :-)

[Effy]

But in terms of speed, just imagine what the SDram would do to your A4000 comnpared to the PPC Cyberstorm with EDO or Simm modules  :-D

[bloodline]

Well Oli is still around, he is posting on the Vulcan website about that one that got sold on Ebay.

[lordv]

Coldfire V4 & V5 have an ability to fully emulate 68k opcodes... But only AT THE FIRST SIGHT. No provisions made to emulate 64-bit mul, 64-bit div and division with remainder instructions (coldfire just won't trap on them and will make rubbish), so virtually every piece of real amiga code will fail on coldfire.

The overall JIT emualtion as well as other methods of workaround for this bug will make coldfire totally uneffective when compared even with 060.

So the coldfire accelerators "suck and must die" =)

[bloodline]

lordv wrote:
Coldfire V5 has an ability to fully emulate 68k opcodes... But only AT THE FIRST SIGHT. No provisions made to emulate 32-bit muls and mulu instructions (coldfire just won't trap on them and will make rubbish), so virtually every piece of real amiga code will fail on coldfire.

The overall JIT emualtion as well as other methods of workaround for this bug will make coldfire totally uneffective when compared even with 060.

So the coldfire accelerators "suck and must die" =)

It would probably work out better to build the emulator around an XScale, and then run a 68k JIT on that.

[whabang]

lordv wrote:
Coldfire V4 & V5 have an ability to fully emulate 68k opcodes... But only AT THE FIRST SIGHT. No provisions made to emulate 64-bit mul, 64-bit div and division with remainder instructions (coldfire just won't trap on them and will make rubbish), so virtually every piece of real amiga code will fail on coldfire.

The overall JIT emualtion as well as other methods of workaround for this bug will make coldfire totally uneffective when compared even with 060.

So the coldfire accelerators "suck and must die" =)

As far as I understand, there is also a software-bit to the ColdFusion accelerators. There will be somekind of emulation made in software (on a ROM on the board) that will take care of this.

This would probably just take care of the normal 68000-instructions, though, I don't know if FPU-instructions will be supported aswell.

[TheMagicM]

how much faster is the coldfire then a 060?  What is the actual processor used? (ie. 68060, 68030 etc etc..do they have a # for it? or is it called "coldfire" )
Is it faster then a PPC g3/g4?

-Alex

[whabang]

The Coldfire CPUs are classified as V3, V4, etc.
They are pretty fast, comparable to the 060 IIRC, but most of them don't have MMU or FPU. The major advantage is that they are availible in speeds up to 200+ MHz, and that they can use "modern" SDRAM.

They are semi-compatible with the 68k-series, and there are tools both for making 68k-software run on them. They are also cheaper than the 68ks, as they are produced in much larger quantities.

[Effy]

Still I would want one, because it would mean that I could stick even longer to my classic systems. I also like the PPC upgrades, but somehow I do not favor the A1 or PegasosII .... even though they are much faster and modern and can work with OS4 ...

[billt]

>As far as I understand, there is also a software-bit to the
>ColdFusion accelerators. There will be somekind of emulation
>made in software (on a ROM on the board) that will take care
>of this.

The "emulation" would be very very similar in concept to 68040.library or 68060.library. In fact, it's the exact same concept, but will probably need to trap and emulate more instructions than those libraries did. If they put it on the board and not in a file on disk, I sure hope they use a nice FLASH that can easily be rewritten with bugfixes and performance improvements.