Amiga emulation in BIOS?

[Oxygene]

I'm not certain this is the right place,but here is rather crazy question.

Would it be possible to place Amiga emulation in bios code,ie. 68k emulation code and stuff,to completely transform PC to Amiga?I realize my knowledge in programming is severely limited,so I apologize if this sounds silly.

This is how I thought it might work:

Custom code flashed in Bios initializes hardware in computer,loads 68k emulator and whatever else is needed,then gives control to AmigaOS installed on HD.I'm talking about complete "un-x86ing" process,so AmigaOS would "think" it's running on real Amiga.Something like Amithlon,but without linux layer.It would be wonderful,IMHO.

Once again,sorry if this is utter stupidity :-)

At the BIOS level this is utter-stupidity ! Most PC BIOSes have about the same power as the microchip in your washing machine. There job is simply to look for a boot-record on a hard disk/floppy disk/CD or whatever and boot from there. They do other things as well and might display a pretty picture on modern machines but this has always been (and always will be) the basic job of the BIOS.

Even if the BIOS was powerful/flexible enough to allow this you then have the problem of thousands of different BIOSes to support which would mean Tony (or whoever was coding this idea) would need access to all these machines - unless you have a Micro$oft budget then this is impossible.

However - the next thing that generally happens on a x86 machine is then Windows/Linux/DOS/OS2 or whatever loads and fills the PC's memory and processor time up with stuff that doesn't need to be done and only slows down Amiga emulation.

So the ideal method of emulation would be before the Operating System, but after the BIOS. In fact you would be writing a new sort-of "Operating System" whose sole role would be to emulate the Amiga.

This is a great idea for the fastest possible, most efficient emulation.

As what usually happens with great ideas is that somebody else has already thought of them. See Amithlon. But, unfortunately it died.

[Amiga1992]

What you look for is a device like the Commodore One, that has a reprogammable array that can be instructed to act asa myriad of processors. Computer data is loaded from compactflash cards at bootup.

Quite impossible for the Amiga, at least at a consumer-affordable level.

The PC BIOS is a ROM which, I think, because of how the x86 platform is structured, would render impossible this task. It is possible, for example, in a C64, to replace the Kernal ROM with a program of your own so when it boots up it loads the program instead of the BASIC interpreter, but this is not possible in a PC, because teh BIOS is a completely different sort of rom.

[Oxygene]

Oh,I see.
Well,it was just a thought,anyway.
What got me thinking is that most modern mbos have 2 or 4 megabit eeproms,that is 256 and 512 KB respectively,and there is quite a lot that can be stuffed in there.
It seemed far too much for just basic initialization process...
I still like this idea,whether possible or not :-)

Originally Posted by Oxygene

I still like this idea,whether possible or not :-)

Yeah, and I like the idea of my washing machine being able to take out my clothes, hang them up, and to dry and iron them - wether possible or not

[Fackamato]

www.aros.org

[Peanutuk]