Coldfire V4 emulation

Mrs Beanbag · 12 September 2012, 21:49

How's this for a bizarre, off-the-wall, experimental suggestion? Add Coldfire to emulated CPU list, see if we can get anything to run on it. AROS m68k ROM could be recompiled easily enough, MOST 68k instructions are binary compatible, the ones they dropped being "infrequently used". So maybe some applications will work without modification, to a greater or lesser degree. It would be interesting to see how far you could get.

majsta · 12 September 2012, 22:56

Yes, if it is possible this could be great test for real accelerator hardware. But after my investigation it is not possible to get it 100% compatible. Maybe for start should be nice to have it in UAE so we can figure out what's missing.

Mrs Beanbag · 12 September 2012, 23:08

main instructions missing: BCD instructions (who ever used them anyway?), binary rotations (not entirely uncommon), dbcc (quite common), and binary arithmetic in other than longword sizes (probably fairly common on Amiga).

Nothing you couldn't easily do without if you were writing new code but... it would be interesting for research purposes at least, and as a programmer I'd like to play with it.

Toni Wilen · 13 September 2012, 19:17

I don't think it is as simple as disabling some instructions and addressing modes.

Shadowfire · 10 April 2014, 07:55

A few years back I checked out the Coldfire embedded CPU's (I think it was the 68340 at the time) for use as an accelerator, but declined due to memory map interference due to the onboard peripherals.

The newer Coldfires seem to be no better; they would require glue logic (not unexpected), and (the dealbreaker) not all interrupt levels are externally supported.

12 September 2012, 21:49	#1
Mrs Beanbag Glastonbridge Software Join Date: Jan 2012 Location: Edinburgh/Scotland Posts: 2,243	Coldfire V4 emulation How's this for a bizarre, off-the-wall, experimental suggestion? Add Coldfire to emulated CPU list, see if we can get anything to run on it. AROS m68k ROM could be recompiled easily enough, MOST 68k instructions are binary compatible, the ones they dropped being "infrequently used". So maybe some applications will work without modification, to a greater or lesser degree. It would be interesting to see how far you could get.

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12 September 2012, 22:56	#2
majsta www.majsta.com Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Banjaluka/Republic of Srpska Age: 43 Posts: 448	Yes, if it is possible this could be great test for real accelerator hardware. But after my investigation it is not possible to get it 100% compatible. Maybe for start should be nice to have it in UAE so we can figure out what's missing.

12 September 2012, 23:08	#3
Mrs Beanbag Glastonbridge Software Join Date: Jan 2012 Location: Edinburgh/Scotland Posts: 2,243	main instructions missing: BCD instructions (who ever used them anyway?), binary rotations (not entirely uncommon), dbcc (quite common), and binary arithmetic in other than longword sizes (probably fairly common on Amiga). Nothing you couldn't easily do without if you were writing new code but... it would be interesting for research purposes at least, and as a programmer I'd like to play with it.

13 September 2012, 19:17	#4
Toni Wilen WinUAE developer Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Hämeenlinna/Finland Age: 49 Posts: 26,505	I don't think it is as simple as disabling some instructions and addressing modes.

10 April 2014, 07:55	#5
Shadowfire Registered User Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Connecticut USA Posts: 617	A few years back I checked out the Coldfire embedded CPU's (I think it was the 68340 at the time) for use as an accelerator, but declined due to memory map interference due to the onboard peripherals. The newer Coldfires seem to be no better; they would require glue logic (not unexpected), and (the dealbreaker) not all interrupt levels are externally supported.

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