Aros m68k (Kickstart substitute)

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by cosmicfrog

wow you mean AROS don`t boot to a CLI

Where did I say it does not boot to CLI? Of course there is boot Shell/CLI.

[cosmicfrog]

core was worried for a moment then

hehehehe not really as this is what the amiga dose \o/ and thanks toni your

[Mrs Beanbag]

Could you compile it to run on a ColdFire CPU?

hmm...

[gilgamesh]

Aros m68k is Aros compiled for m68k. Of course you could compile Aros for Coldfire targets (with some minor adjustments).
But still Coldfire is not really compatible with legacy Amiga software. You could add an emulation layer for legacy code. But then why not use an emulator in the first place?

[Mrs Beanbag]

Coldfire* is mostly binary compatible with m68k, only a few instructions/addressing modes need to be trapped and emulated. Also asm can be re-assembled without modification because the removed instructions can be replaced by exactly equivalent sequences of other instructions, and even bytecode can in some cases be reprocessed.

But if the OS was entirely Coldfire compatible, we could at least do something. Also there are bigger differences in supervisor mode than in user mode I believe, which most application software won't touch.

Just an idea...

*Version 4 even adds back some of the instructions originally removed

[gilgamesh]

Yes, but reassembling is what an emulator does. And straightforward messing with object code will break a lot of things, first of all the (conditional) jumps. And if the the code does something fancy like modificating itself things get really messy.

Imho ARM has won over Coldfire.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

Could you compile it to run on a ColdFire CPU?

Of course, if someone is interested. Boot code and at least some parts of m68 assembly kernel code needs replacement. (Don't really see much point)

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by gilgamesh

And if the the code does something fancy like modificating itself things get really messy.

Never do this anyway if you want it to run on a CPU that has a cache.

[gilgamesh]

Well, since we're talking about software for the 68000 that's not a problem anyway. Did things break on 68020 I wonder? I mean, did they implement some bus sniffing code flush or something?

[Mrs Beanbag]

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. There will always be some code that doesn't work whenever you upgrade anything, usually because the programmer thought they were being clever but were in reality being stupid. Some A500 software stopped working if you put a memory expansion in. I guess then we shouldn't bother with memory expansions.

If any amiga software at all could be made to work on coldfire, I'd be happy, to be honest. If you just want to run old games that's fine, but I'm pushing the envelope here. Or pushing something, at any rate. My luck, probably. No need to whizz on my buzz.

Fortunately self-modifying code is rare, because on the whole it's difficult, dangerous and pointless. The biggest problem, as far as I gather, is opcodes that are still valid on Coldfire, but behave differently. That might be a problem, because they wouldn't throw an exception so you couldn't trap them. How often that would happen, I don't know. But UAE could be made to emulate coldfire I guess and we could try it there... worth giving it a shot, just to see what happens?

[gilgamesh]

My point is that I don't think any more Coldfire is the ideal choice for Amiga clones. Nearly compatible isn't compatible. Others disagree. There is also an interesting discussion of Coldfire's performance for Amiga clones.
There is CF68KLib which is used in the Atari Coldfire Project.

Sorry for straying off topic.

@Toni:

PostED (a simple note-taking utility) gives an "Illegal Instruction" Guru when trying to move its window across the screen.


http://hd-rec.de/Archive/PosTED.lha


Here's log:

[corpsicle]

So i just read through this thread and in my eyes the aros 68k project has gone from "interesting experiment" to something that looks like it could be the actual future of classic amigaos. Amazing work.

[NovaCoder]

I think that in the future (hopefully not too far off), AROS 68k will find it's natural home on an FPGA Amiga project.

[wawa]

another feature: http://aros-exec.org/modules/newbb/v...C&type=&mode=0
aros owb working on an amiga 4000/060 (screenshots).
join in aros68k and lets get some boost on that.

[corpsicle]

Wow!
I think its time for me to devote a weekend sometime soon to try out aros on one of my amigas.

@Toni Wilen:

When launching ImageFX, aros reboots!

I know that you don't like to debug complex programs; still what may tha cause of the crash be ? Can you look into it, please ?

Here's log:

[amigappc]

Is it posible to run Aros68k on A1200 030 32mb (blizzard 1230 with fpu)?

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by amigappc

Is it posible to run Aros68k on A1200 030 32mb (blizzard 1230 with fpu)?

From what I've heard you really need an 060 to run it because it's more demanding than standard 3.x

[Toni Wilen]

In my opinion it is not meant to be "used". Especially Wanderer (AROS WB), it is too bloated for m68k. I only consider it a proof of concept and ROM replacement boot loader for programs that take over the system.

Requirements are simple: 68000 or better and enough RAM.

Some programs work, some don't work (bug in some feature, missing feature, bug in program that only triggers under aros and so on..)

Speed is not a goal because one major reason for lack of speed is gcc m68k support which is not that good. (optimization isn't that good, weird looking code at least when compiling for plain 68000, register function parameters are not supported and so on). (EDIT: This is not the only reason and may not be the major reason but there are too many other reasons that makes it pointless. Premature optimization is bad)