@bloodline,
from your reply I think I will go down the AROS path,
my line of action being:
1. decide on machine eg A1 or PC?
2. buy machine,
3. familiarise myself with machine,
if its A1 familiarise myself with UBoot,
4. look into what AROS are doing:
either to contribute directly
or to write or port things to AROS,
so step 2 could be in 3 weeks and step 4 in 7 weeks time,
probably I will always be on the outermost periphery of AROS
and all other projects as I prefer to be standalone,
Getting AROS to boot directly on an A1 sounds a very high priority
project, so if it hasnt been completed I may join that project,
it also sounds very interesting,
I understand AROS already runs above Linux on A1 so AROS is there
already but not the way many people want,
I am sure I can contribute things to AROS though it may be
several months before I can contribute something substantial,
ambitious projects are slow moving, this is why I am reacting slowly,
I can see that AROS only projects will help tip the balance towards AROS,
"portability" is a virtue but "porting" is strategy,
>>who is Crumb?
>An A.orger who wants inline 68k emulation in x86 AROS
if you compile AROS with big endian Intel gcc then you can have
seamless 68k + x86 AROS integration using some variant of my
suggestion,
read + execute exceptions would toggle between emulated and nonemulated
instructions,
Amithlon has a big endian Intel gcc on
www.aminet.net,
If the bytes of RAM are $12 $34 $56 $78 ...........
a big endian CPU sees this the way I have written it and
sees the first int of memory as $12345678
a little endian CPU sees this as .......... $78 $56 $34 $12
and reads the first int (address 0) as $78563412 totally different from
what the big endian CPU sees,
thus the 68k emulator is in danger of clashing with the x86 CPU,
eg addresses will be mangled,
resolve all this via a big endian Intel gcc compile of AROS:
68k and x86 can then access identical OS data structures,
>I'm not sure Eyetech would want to buy your A1 back...
>not with out a massive loss (more than the Price of a PC!).
they have a buy back policy with a depreciation formula,
not sure where I read this, but you could calculate how much
you lose,
I would only sell back the core machine, I would keep the peripherals,
the peripherals anyway wouldnt be bought from Eyetech
Would there be any point in creating your own AROS PPC platform?
:you could then open up the marketting policy,
>I suggest you talk to people and look around for the machine that
>best suits your needs for the lowest cost.
>(click the link for BlackTroll for great prices on AROS PCs)
>Yes you can run MacOS on both the A1 and the Pegasos,
>by using a special program called "Mac-on-Linux",
>but then you need to run Linux too.
I was thinking of directly doing it by reflashing the ROM,
but Mac being Mac probably have some proprietory obstacle to prevent this,
>MOS and OS4 don't run on the Mac. AROS should though.
>The Default Compiler is gcc.
this is the deciding factor,
which versions?
I hope you have gcc2.95.3-4 even though its not the most current,
is it a specifically AROS gcc or do you reuse generic ones?
Have you got 68k hosted cross compiler gcc's (PPC , Intel) for AROS?
(preferably gcc2.95.3-4),
>One AROS dev works in SAS/C on a real Amiga though.
SAS/C 650 compiles considerably faster (seconds) than gcc (minutes)
and produces slightly better code unoptimised than gcc -O2 optimisation,
gcc has its own strengths,
if I can use either I always use SAS/C, sometimes though
the only way to do something is with gcc,
eg ISTR that a really huge static array such as 1 million entries
(eg automatically generated look up table such as
int x[]={ 1 , 2 , 3 , ..., 1000000} ;} )
will crash the Amiga linker but I think gcc will be ok,
>But to compile for the x86 you need to use gcc.
>We also have an x86 Assember program, as well as BASIC, False and Python all
>included with AROS.
you realise that gcc is also an assembler, the moment a platform has gcc
it automatically has an assembler:
gcc -c xyz.s -o xyz.o
will assemble xyz.s, gcc uses nonstandard cross-platform assembler syntax though
eg for 68k gcc:
.text
.even
.globl _function
_function:
move.l #0,d0 /* this is a gcc assembler comment */
rts
to compile function()
it doesnt understand xref and xdef, .globl is xdef, xref is implicit,
so it wont assemble traditional 68k progs, they need fixing for gcc
I think it uses c style #define's for its macros, so it wont understand
Metacomco's macros,
on x86 it would also be .text, .even, .globl, /* comments */,
which reduces the learning curve,
to compile eg specific 68040 instructions you would type:
gcc -m68040 -c xyz.s -o xyz.o
(the default is 68000 + no FPU),
gcc -m68881 -m68020 -c xyz.s -o xyz.o
for 68020 + FPU code,
>Of course you can run commercial apps on AROS.
>That fits with my personal computer paradigm:
>
>1. You pay for the harware.
>2. You pay for the drivers.
>3. You pay for the software.
>4. But the OS is free and open source.
this is a deciding factor for me,
so eg commercial AROS IBrowse can be closed source?
(I think they wont do it open source)
>In fact the AROS licence even allows you to sell AROS,
>with certain conditions applying, this is how the MorphOS team
>are able to use the AROS sources (they bug fix the code they use).
>
>I hope to see comercial software appearing for AROS once it gets better established.
>
there is an opportunity immediately available for you here:
iospirit announced they have abandoned OS4 development,
there was a link to this from AmigaWorld.net at the time of the
KMOS takeover,
ask iospirit if they will recompile + sell IBrowse to AROS,
they have nothing to lose by doing this,
they already have an up and running website for selling IBrowse,
IBrowse is currently the flagship commercial program for the Amiga,
this would be a major coup,
tell them that you are working towards directly booting AROS on the A1,
AWEB is also now open source, so recompile that and you also get that,
(possibly it may need some work to compile it on gcc)
