Aros m68k (Kickstart substitute)

[Mequa]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

It means what it says on the main page

Working m68k C++ crosscompiler exists. Mesa (and other C++ projects) can be compiled now.

Are we far off from being able to port the likes of Icaros Desktop and AROS Broadway distros to m68k?

Sure, it would be much slower than on x86, but what a proof of concept that would be.

[mihcael]

Originally Posted by Mequa

Are we far off from being able to port the likes of Icaros Desktop and AROS Broadway distros to m68k?

Sure, it would be much slower than on x86, but what a proof of concept that would be.

This looks like a start (AE)

[arti]

Netsurf doesn't work anymore.

Is there a chance make it work again?

Would be good to have an internet browser on Aros.

Originally Posted by arti

Netsurf doesn't work anymore.

Is there a chance make it work again?

Would be good to have an internet browser on Aros.

@Arti:

Cross-compiling OWB from aros x86 to aros 68k should be easier now,
as Jason did a 68k c++ crosscompiler!

[Mequa]

Silly question, but since AROS isn't dependent on Amiga hardware, would it be possible to port AROS-68k to, say, 68k Mac or Falcon030?

[Ezrec]

Originally Posted by Mequa

Silly question, but since AROS isn't dependent on Amiga hardware, would it be possible to port AROS-68k to, say, 68k Mac or Falcon030?

Yes - the m68k generic and Amiga-specific sections have already been split apart a long time ago.

If you have interest in developing a Falcon or Mac 68k port, PM me and I'll send you my email address.

Realize that you probably won't be able to play any Amiga games (most of them bang the hardware directly), but most workbench apps should work just fine on a port to Falcon or Mac.

[Mequa]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

I don't care about Wanderer, it is too slow and resource hungry for m68k machines.

(Reply to old post)

But here's the thing, Toni. Wanderer runs very well under WinUAE with JIT. Classic Amigas come with Workbench. WinUAE does not.
One needs to either purchase Amiga Forever, rip it from a real Amiga, or obtain an illegal copy.
Wanderer is a good free and legal Workbench replacement for WinUAE (far better than the minimal Workbook), so I hope its 68k port can be debugged.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Mequa

(Reply to old post)

But here's the thing, Toni. Wanderer runs very well under WinUAE with JIT. Classic Amigas come with Workbench. WinUAE does not.
One needs to either purchase Amiga Forever, rip it from a real Amiga, or obtain an illegal copy.
Wanderer is a good free and legal Workbench replacement for WinUAE (far better than the minimal Workbook), so I hope its 68k port can be debugged.

I still won't care about it, sorry I am hoping for Scalos to become m68k WB replacement (which is now opensourced too)

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

I still won't care about it, sorry I am hoping for Scalos to become m68k WB replacement (which is now opensourced too)

Good call, Toni!

[mark_k]

Is there any interest in building the AROS ROM so it can be soft-kicked? That would allow many more real Amiga owners to experiment with it.

By that I mean, compile it for address $200000 so ReKick (well, a slightly modified version compatible with 1MB ROM images) could be used to load and reboot into the AROS code. Some small changes to Exec & expansion.library would be needed if building a ReKick-type image. I can dig out my ReKick disassembly for some info/documentation on how it works.

For Amigas which have memory at $200000 that has a couple of benefits:
- (Possibly 32-bit) Fast memory is faster than 16-bit ROM
- Soft-kicking that way doesn't need an MMU
- It should work on any Amiga, even ones which can't have 1MB ROM fitted

Another theoretically-possible idea could allow A1000 users to maximise available RAM. If the ROM were built such that the first 256KB is at $FC0000 and contains enough code to load and unpack the remaining data from disk, an AROS Kickstart disk could load the first 256KB to the Kickstart RAM. On resetting, that code would look for the remaining 768KB on the Kickstart disk (it would have to be compressed to fit of course) and load that to $200000.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by mark_k

Is there any interest in building the AROS ROM so it can be soft-kicked?

Search this thread for "arosbootstrap".

[mark_k]

Okay, I did that, and noticed this:

ArosBootStrap comes with source tree, Aros softkick loader that works on any Amiga that has either 2M of chip or 1M or more local fast RAM. (*)

Most (all?) 16-bit Amigas (A500, A1000, A2000, possibly with A2620/A2630 accel - maybe A1200 with trapdoor fastmem card too?) don't have any local fast RAM. By local, I assume you mean MEMF_LOCAL, i.e. non-AutoConfig memory which doesn't go away at reset? A ReKick-compatible ROM image would allow AutoConfig Fast RAM at $200000 to be used for the ROM data.

BTW, you also mentioned that arosbootstrap uses the BCPL ReadArgs-like routine under Kickstart 1.x.

Another program which uses one of the BCPL routines is Metacomco's ABasiC. That wasn't written in BCPL, but uses a BCPL routine to attach a CON: handler to an existing window. Commodore's Andy Finkel published example code using that technique (http://aminet.net/dev/src/Window.lha), but CBM removed support for it in Kickstart 2.0. Out of interest, has anyone tried running ABasiC under the AROS ROM? A few years ago I developed a patch to make ABasiC compatible with Kickstart 2.0+ (http://aminet.net/dev/basic/ABasiC_patch.lha) but it would be cool if the original ABasiC executable could work in AROS.

The patched executable uses the new supported way of attaching a CON: handler to an existing window (open "CON://///WINDOW0xNNNNNNNN").

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by mark_k

Most (all?) 16-bit Amigas (A500, A1000, A2000, possibly with A2620/A2630 accel - maybe A1200 with trapdoor fastmem card too?) don't have any local fast RAM. By local, I assume you mean MEMF_LOCAL, i.e. non-AutoConfig memory which doesn't go away at reset? A ReKick-compatible ROM image would allow AutoConfig Fast RAM at $200000 to be used for the ROM data.

This has changed. Only kernel.resource, exec and expansion require MEMF_LOCAL, all other modules are loaded to any free memory. Arosbootstrap also supports MMU remapping for chip located modules.

This is the only generic solution that does not require any hardcoded memory addresses.

I don't think ReKick method can work because AROS ROM has to do everything itself, including autoconfig. It is quite difficult to run autoconfig code from non-MEMF_LOCAL RAM.

[mark_k]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

This has changed. Only kernel.resource, exec and expansion require MEMF_LOCAL, all other modules are loaded to any free memory. Arosbootstrap also supports MMU remapping for chip located modules.

...

I don't think ReKick method can work because AROS ROM has to do everything itself, including autoconfig. It is quite difficult to run autoconfig code from non-MEMF_LOCAL RAM.

Yep, from what I remember -- and it's been a few years so this might not be 100% correct -- the ReKick program (which runs from chip RAM via ColdCapture) contains low-level code to configure at least Zorro II RAM. It builds a structure in chip RAM which the new Kickstart expansion.library refers to. That's why ReKick-compatible ROM images contain a slightly modified expansion.library.

Regarding modules in chip RAM and MMU remapping, would it be feasible to make the AROS exec and expansion libraries copy and relocate themselves to autoconfig RAM as part of the initialisation routine? Kind of how Kickstart moves the supervisor stack to fast RAM. There probably isn't much else running that early on, and that could give a nice speed-up on machines which don't have an MMU. How to get that to survive a Ctrl-A-A reset could be interesting though...

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by mark_k

Is there any interest in building the AROS ROM so it can be soft-kicked? That would allow many more real Amiga owners to experiment with it.

Hiya,

I was thinking the same thing, if some can give me a link to a pre-built AROS 3.1 ROM then I can try soft-kicking it with my ACA and see how much stuff can be run using 0S 3.9

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

I was thinking the same thing, if some can give me a link to a pre-built AROS 3.1 ROM then I can try soft-kicking it with my ACA and see how much stuff can be run using 0S 3.9

What is AROS "3.1"?

http://aros.sourceforge.net/download.php amiga-m68k-boot, included adf image contains both image and softkick loader but you can also use ACA's rekick option.

Hey, now that you are talking about memory maps! Natami is an Amiga 4000 as far as where it expects the ROM image to be located.

Arosbootstrap requires that the machine is already running AmigaOS right? Can you please make or de-mystify how to make an AROS Kickstart for A4000? (Because that would make Natami boot.)

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by jakov

Hey, now that you are talking about memory maps! Natami is an Amiga 4000 as far as where it expects the ROM image to be located.

Arosbootstrap requires that the machine is already running AmigaOS right? Can you please make or de-mystify how to make an AROS Kickstart for A4000? (Because that would make Natami boot.)

Yes.

Check above link. It contains both relocatable (softkick) and standard Amiga compatible absolute ROM images.

Real A4000 does not support 1M ROMs (without hardware hacks), softkicking is required. Natami and other reimplementations don't need to (and most likely won't) emulate this limit.

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Yes.

Real A4000 does not support 1M ROMs (without hardware hacks), softkicking is required. Natami and other reimplementations don't need to (and most likely won't) emulate this limit.

No Natami will probably not emulate this limit, but Natami expects the ROM to start in the same absolution location as on an A4000.
The AROS download only has aros-amiga-m68k-rom.bin and aros-amiga-m68k-ext.bin which I assume are located on A1200 memory location.

Or should we (Natami) write some sort of low-level softkick-loader which relocates on from ROM on boot to some RAM address. We can do that but it feels needlessly complicated.

[Toni Wilen]

Standard 1M ROM addresses are: "extended" 0xe00000-0xe7ffff and "normal" at 0xf80000-0xffffff. All Amiga models that support 1M ROMs use above addresses.

I am also quite sure Natami also supports above addressing as long as it has 1M ROM image support.

There is nothing that AROS can do (except use softkicking), it is hardware limit.