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bloodline · 21 February 2019, 10:05

So when I was more active in the AROS project I was very vocal about trying to integrate a 68K emulator into the system so older application could be run.

My first idea was to simply let a 68k emulator run in the native environment and see what happens. But endian and ABI issues immediately rule this out.

My second attempt was a project called "Emulatron" (a version of which can still be found on my GitHub) . This ran the 68K emulator in a private address space, with a custom set of exec type libraries, where each function entry had a 0x4E70 instruction, which halted my 68k emulation, allowed me to trap the function call perform the desired operation naively and then return control and any results back to the calling program. Essentially Wine for AmigaOS.

This worked quite well, but was a huge amount of work, and I simply ran out of time and interest, problems with missing hardware features made this project a real headache. The project is still there if anyone wants to carry the torch.

Now, I'm wondering if such an approach could be made the other way around. Since I now have a working Amiga Emulator which can boot Amiga OS and run programs. Perhaps this idea can be revitalised, but starting with a working Amiga emulation and then patching the OS running in the emulation (or preferably running a special build of 68k AROS) to call the native AROS functions via a similar mechanism I used in Emulatron.

Anyway, I wanted to open this up for discussion! Let's discuss.

21 February 2019, 10:05	#1
bloodline Registered User Join Date: Jan 2017 Location: London, UK Posts: 433	Integrated 68K in AROS So when I was more active in the AROS project I was very vocal about trying to integrate a 68K emulator into the system so older application could be run. My first idea was to simply let a 68k emulator run in the native environment and see what happens. But endian and ABI issues immediately rule this out. My second attempt was a project called "Emulatron" (a version of which can still be found on my GitHub) . This ran the 68K emulator in a private address space, with a custom set of exec type libraries, where each function entry had a 0x4E70 instruction, which halted my 68k emulation, allowed me to trap the function call perform the desired operation naively and then return control and any results back to the calling program. Essentially Wine for AmigaOS. This worked quite well, but was a huge amount of work, and I simply ran out of time and interest, problems with missing hardware features made this project a real headache. The project is still there if anyone wants to carry the torch. Now, I'm wondering if such an approach could be made the other way around. Since I now have a working Amiga Emulator which can boot Amiga OS and run programs. Perhaps this idea can be revitalised, but starting with a working Amiga emulation and then patching the OS running in the emulation (or preferably running a special build of 68k AROS) to call the native AROS functions via a similar mechanism I used in Emulatron. Anyway, I wanted to open this up for discussion! Let's discuss.