Amiga Coldfire project dead?

[Amiga_Nut]

Well, you could as well just ask them how they're going to handle any code that depends on:

• 68020 multiply/divide instructions behaving like they do on 68k
• MULU and MULS setting the overflow bit
• ASL and ASR setting the overflow bit
• MOVE.B ,-(A7) and MOVE.B (A7)+, changing ea by 2

As far as Atari TOS goes you only deal with pure 68000 and nothing ese. Even 68010s will crash GEM/TOS btw.

[Tension]

As far as Atari TOS goes you only deal with pure 68000 and nothing ese. Even 68010s will crash GEM/TOS btw.

Carl Sassenrath discusses this in one of the Amiwest videos IIRC.

Unbelievable!

[Amiga_Nut]

PPC = total rewrite of everything from scratch + a driver for all ppc boards/chipsets
ARM = total rewrite of everything from scratch + a driver for all arm boards/chipsets

I really don't see the difference with x86...

Because there are millions of motherboard/graphics/audio/hdd controller/network card combinations even in just the last 5 years. And that doesn't include all the laptop models. The mind boggles!

PPC via stuff like Warp OS is much further. ARM has 100s of combinations at best and PPC not much more either.

This is why Windows is such bloatware probably. But Windows has 70% drivers from previous releases completed anyway most of the time.

[Amiga_Nut]

Why not build hardware-based dynamic recompilation (or translation) into the execution pipeline, i.e. an MC68000 compatible ISA that translates only the necessary bits to the ColdFire ISA (the "microcode," so to speak). Could such a solution be faster than a complete recreation of the MC68000 ISA in an FPGA? Or could a solution that translates from one ISA to another, e.g. MC68000 to ARM, be just as fast or faster?

The inefficiency issue still gives you 060 performance whilst KIS.

I was really wanting just classic OS ie WB 1.3/2/3 I don't want it for OS4/MOS/AROS. An 060 used for an A1200 costs what £300 used? And 060 speeds on A500/1000 are not available full stop.

This is all I want.....

Load OCS/AGA game and play it without chipset emulation
Load Dpaint and speed up the calculations
Give me max ram specific version of OS allows.

Coldfire is cheap tech and has some semblence of 68k compatibility. As stage 2 by all means recompile KS/WB 1.3/2/3 to run in native Coldfire v4 at 400 MIPS.

As for £200,000 reward I offered hypothetically not being enough, I am not hiring anyone or paying you to do a project. I am stating merely if anyone can provide me with a working Coldfire accelerator and suitable OS patches for an A500/1000/2000/4000/1200 I will purchase them ALL for a one off fee of 200k. As a condition of the sale I wish to have the IP transferred to me for free.

So all I have bought is 5 Amiga accelerator cards for the princely sum of 40k each and the taxman can sit on his finger and swivel, nothing to do with him just like if I bought 100000 modified 75mhz 060 accelerator cards off you second hand. The IP transfer is to ensure my purchase is unique as far as the taxman is concerned. If I then choose to employ you in a business venture using my newly acquired IP and patents etc only after this point is there any income tax surely, not from the sale of the fruits of some hobby activity I found interesting enough to purchase exclusively for a large sum of money. If you had a McLaren F1 super car I would purchase that too from you lol, this is no different.

Besides half of the UK IT professionals are on the dole in the UK thanks to two successive idiot governments running the country into the ground without remorse

[Amiga_Nut]

Carl Sassenrath discusses this in one of the Amiwest videos IIRC.

Unbelievable!

I am surprised the Falcon runs any ST programs at all, games or serious software. But as far as I recall ST GEM and TOS where pretty much rushed and GEM was a hack from x86 DR DOS version source to 68k in record time.

[Iggy]

@ Amiga_nut

you have a very apt handle

[fishy_fiz]

Because there are millions of motherboard/graphics/audio/hdd controller/network card combinations even in just the last 5 years. And that doesn't include all the laptop models. The mind boggles!

PPC via stuff like Warp OS is much further. ARM has 100s of combinations at best and PPC not much more either.

This is why Windows is such bloatware probably. But Windows has 70% drivers from previous releases completed anyway most of the time.

This train of thought always baffles me.
Those same nic/gfx/sound/scsi/sata/etc. cards are also options for other architectures. The only thing that's specific to an architecture (besides the arch itself) is core logic (and even that isnt arch dependant all the time). AROS has done fine over the years on multiple north/south bridge combos without needing specific support for them (as is the case with modern computing), why would it be different for any other OS ? If x86 isnt an option due to the sheer volume of options then either is arm, ppc, 68k, etc systems with agp/pci/usb/etc... too many options  

[warpdesign]

As far as Atari TOS goes you only deal with pure 68000 and nothing ese. Even 68010s will crash GEM/TOS btw.

I'm wondering how does the Falcon work then

[fishy_fiz]

I'm wondering how does the Falcon work then

Or even the TT's ?  
Having said that I dont know a lot about the ST range of machines, I mostly just remember adverts in magazines from when I was a teenager. Is the ST restricted to any specific version of TOS ? (ie. is there infact a hardware restriction that keeps ST owners updating ?)

[Amiga_Nut]

This train of thought always baffles me.
Those same nic/gfx/sound/scsi/sata/etc. cards are also options for other architectures. The only thing that's specific to an architecture (besides the arch itself) is core logic (and even that isnt arch dependant all the time). AROS has done fine over the years on multiple north/south bridge combos without needing specific support for them (as is the case with modern computing), why would it be different for any other OS ? If x86 isnt an option due to the sheer volume of options then either is arm, ppc, 68k, etc systems with agp/pci/usb/etc... too many options  

PPC laptops don't exist, maybe there are 3 different ARM mobile motherboards and a handful of hobbyist ARM motherboards with no sound/video/network card on PCI/AGP.

How many actual drivers are there for PPC boards with PCI or AGP? Nobody will be buying anything like all of the 1000s of different video cards that may physically slot into a PPC board if there is no OS4 driver really.

Think of the Mac, the largest group of PPC users in the past, yeah sure they had AGP or PCI slots in their machine but very few cards had OS9 or OS X drivers for them in the box so Mac users didn't buy them and so the subset is tiny, and sound/network/motherboard is locked per generation of CPU pretty much. Only PCs can have 100s of motherboards with 1000s of graphics cards 100s of network cards and 100s more sound cards plugged into them and then you have totally bespoke laptop hardware...a particular Toshiba XP CD has drivers that the Dell XP CD does not. And the retail copy of XP would have drivers for neither. I have lived this nightmare for a decade and I know it only too well trust me

[Amiga_Nut]

I'm wondering how does the Falcon work then

I'm not sure how many ST games (ie not GEM based application software) work on the Falcon, but TOS on the ST is just CP/M written specifically for 68000 CPU which is probably why it won't work with 020and up. And CP/M is from Commodore PET times and the port is very rough and ready for 68k.

ST+TT+Falcon all have GEM on top, but I think it is completely different OS underneath on Falcon and TT ie not CP/M 68k.

TT runs bugger all ST stuff except GEM based apps if I remember correctly and you couldn't burn a ROM using the Falcon/TT equivalent of TOS and place it in an ST as it wouldn't work (and they probably aren't small enough to fit in the ST's memory map probably...~160kb IIRC).

[bloodline]

Guys... The falcon used MultiTOS and later MiNT...

[alexh]

PPC laptops don't exist

[fishy_fiz]

How many actual drivers are there for PPC boards with PCI or AGP? Nobody will be buying anything like all of the 1000s of different video cards that may physically slot into a PPC board if there is no OS4 driver really.

Now that's actually pretty close to my point. Why would this fact change just because the cpu type is different? There's thousands of options for any machine that has even a few industry standard connection types. If a person is interested in something they'll buy what works (as per your os4 example). There's simply no need to support everything. This doesnt limit you to only a few motherboards either, and doesnt need as much maintainance as a lot of people seem to think. ich7 based boards have been in existance for about 3 years now for example and Ive used a few different chipsets on a few different motherboards to update my aros machine in that time without issues. I beleive AROS also supports ich8/ich9 as well, but Ive never bought one. Anyway, this is slightly off topic, but just an example.

 At the end of the day I simply dont buy into x86's potential options being a show stopper, or even really an obstacle. Having said this though Im perfectly happy for things to stay as they are with each platform having it's own reasons to be happy about how things are going at the moment.

[jj]

 
I was wondering about this as well.  I am sure all the pre intel mac laptop users are actually using then ?
 
Guessing he meant currently manufactured laptops.  And even then I am pretty sure there are still PPC laptops being made.

[Tension]

PPC laptops don't exist

Are you mad?