AROS68K and the Freescale Coldfire CPU

[Zac67]

If you're breaking 68k compatability anyway - why not go for something that's available, fast and even cheap? If it's fast enough it's just a matter of emulation to get legacy software to decent speed while running recompiled / native code much faster still.

As much as I love the 68k family I totally fail to see the point in investing into dead ends with large price tags.

[utri007]

It is proven that is possible to write programs so that they run both systems 68k and coldfire.

Old programs needs a emulation layer, but new programs are possible to run without it. It is diffrent question what would developers do, what kind of effort would be to write program to run both, coldfire and 68k cpus

[amigappc]

It is proven that is possible to write programs so that they run both systems 68k and coldfire.

Old programs needs a emulation layer, but new programs are possible to run without it. It is diffrent question what would developers do, what kind of effort would be to write program to run both, coldfire and 68k cpus

It would be rediculous to make acellerator board which must use emulation. Better to bake softcore in fpga like Natami.

[WolfToTheMoon]

It would be rediculous to make acellerator board which must use emulation. Better to bake softcore in fpga like Natami.

They would run OS and recompiled apps natively(+ those not calling missing instructions)...

Natami will be very expensive and if I could get V5e cores, slower.
A cheap, fast, modern peripherals enabling 68K acc. board would make sense... I think.

Imagine running V5e at 600 MHz, a few gigs of RAM, a AGP or PCI graphics card + (S)ATA controller, USB 2.0 and possibly even Wi-Fi. All that on classics for less then half the money NATAMI would probably cost you.

[Piru]

Imagine running V5e at 600 MHz, a few gigs of RAM, a AGP or PCI graphics card + (S)ATA controller, USB 2.0 and possibly even Wi-Fi. All that on classics for less then half the money NATAMI would probably cost you.

You're grossly underestimating the complexity and costs of the design, development and production of such a HW. You can't just plug the CPU on some board and have it magically running. The limited numbers of boards you'd have to make would bump the price skyhigh. You're not the first one to make this mistake.

I fail to see the point of this anyway: It makes much more sense to run the whole thing inside a commodity HW. There's no way you can beat the bang/buck ratio with a custom design.

[jj]

Given that both elbox and olie have both tried and given up

[WolfToTheMoon]

Given that both elbox and olie have both tried and given up

For AROS68K? I think they have not tried...

sure, this would be a complex project. But at this stage it's just an idea.
Depending on whether I'd find anyone interested in helping and on some other factors as the availability of the V5e core and the price, I might just try and do it ...

If not, I'll revert to a 6502-based project.

I consider this primarily an educational project for myself.

[jj]

If its just an edu project for yourself then go for it.
 
If this idea is for  a commercial project to run a new branch or Aros then wouldnt bother, there is no advantage that can see

[eb15]

While I think you might have fun making a coldfire port of AROS, it seems to be limited to plain old PCI bus for the graphics.  Under AROS x86 with the nouveau driver there is a performance increase going from PCI to AGP to PCIe support.  It looks to me like ARM cortex devices would be more modern HD multimedia friendly than the coldfire because they can interface internally to their graphics subsystems and not run through a slower external bus interface, though I suppose someone would have to benchmark the two using similar code to be sure.

[warpdesign]

It is proven that is possible to write programs so that they run both systems 68k and coldfire.

It will be proven when someone will show a working solution... Until then...

[kolla]

@WolfToTheMoon

The only reasonable way to start is to get hold of a CF V4 developer board and get AROS running on that first, _then_ you can come back and talk about doing all the other things you've mentioned.

[Iggy]

@WolfToTheMoon

The only reasonable way to start is to get hold of a CF V4 developer board and get AROS running on that first, _then_ you can come back and talk about doing all the other things you've mentioned.

That would be a valid idea, but I can't find one on Freescale's site. Do you know of any?

BTW- If you can get to France, these two courses look interesting.

http://www.mvd-fpga.com/training/en/files/formations003831A.pdf

http://www.mvd-fpga.com/training/en/files/formations003382A.pdf

Correction -First development board found
$850 for evaluation board for MCF547X Coldfire Microprocessor

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=M5475EVB&fsrch=1&sr=1

Freescales direct sales system erroneously pairs this up with a PPC processor that wouldn't be applicable for this board.
I still have to find out if this board comes with a processor (but it seems likely).

The MCF54455 would probably be a better processor to use. I haven't found an evaluation board fort this though.

http://cache.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/data_sheet/MCF54455.pdf

I can get samples of the 266Mhz MCF54455 from Freescale, but starting a project with these is daunting.

OK, evaluation board for the MCF54455 (also $850)

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=M54455EVB&fsrch=1&sr=2

[yssing]

It can be done, how ever its a matter of money.
But what about the Dragonball?? There you can have everything in one unit. Its old, but still..

For 68k and coldfire compatibility there is this http://www.microapl.co.uk/Porting/ColdFire/cf68klib.html

[Iggy]

It can be done, how ever its a matter of money.
But what about the Dragonball?? There you can have everything in one unit. Its old, but still..

For 68k and coldfire compatibility there is this http://www.microapl.co.uk/Porting/ColdFire/cf68klib.html

Nice reference, interesting company. Although I'm still curious as to what a 68340 is (in the chart in their FAQ).
Looks like Coldfire could be used to work with some 68000 code, but the interpreter still doesn't handle instructions that operate differently on Coldfire.

BTW - Dragonball is slowww..
         And is EOL (not available).

[Louis Dias]

Alot of those expensive do-it-all printers are actually running linux and have harddrives.
If your friend services them you may want to look at a mainboard and use it as your platform.  However you may be missing a decent gpu...  They do run LCD-touch screens but the resolutions are low.

[WolfToTheMoon]

The best thing we found out is that seems that Freescale haven't given up on Coldfire family.

This V5e core is a complete mystery. Hardly any info about it but it is plain that it is not a simple derivation of the V5 core(since V5 goes up to 333 MHz, but V5e has a 540 MHz version, leading me to speculate it may be a significant upgrade to the base V5 core or maybe even a different manufacturing process/technology). It may lead to a V6 core Coldfire sometimes in the future. According to their plans that were presented 8-9 years ago, a V6 core should have been out by now, but obviously things have not be progressing in a manner they anticipated. Still, if V6 core gets launched, that would mean a potential 800 MHz 68K compatible, with possible USB 3.0 support, SATA, PCIe...