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I confess I would really like to see EmuTOS and/or FreeMiNT running directly on the Raspberry Pi, though I suspect it would be a huge amount of work. Right now,

I confess I would really like to see EmuTOS and/or FreeMiNT running directly on the Raspberry Pi, though I suspect it would be a huge amount of work. Right now, if you want Atari compatible hardware, you can either pay $$$$ for a vintage machine (and replace all the capacitors), or you can get something like a Vampire V4SA and put in a lot of effort to make it work run anything. Raspberry Pi is a really nice (and relatively simple) hardware platform that would be great for running something like this and I have thought about it myself. Something like adding ARM [32|64] support to the kernel and then using an emulator of some sort to run 68k usermode programs. But I don't think FreeMiNT has ever been ported to any other architecture and imagine it would be a _huge_ effort.

lproven 4y ago
Natively would be amazing but a vast amount of work. The way Apple moved classic MacOS from 680x0 to PowerPC was to write a tiny kernel emulator, with an API to run native stuff on the metal, and run more or less the whole OS under emulation, profile it and just translate the most speed-critical bits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_nanokernel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_nanokernel That's a lot of work for a FOSS project but given the performance delta between 1980s 680x0 and 2020s ARM, total emulation of the whole thing should be perfectly fine. It's how the PiStorm Amiga upgrade works. https://amigastore.eu/853-pistorm.html https://amigastore.eu/853-pistorm.html So all I envision is something like Aranym: https://aranym.github.io/ https://aranym.github.io/ ... running on top of Ultibo, say: https://ultibo.org/ https://ultibo.org/ Or maybe Circle: https://github.com/rsta2/circle https://github.com/rsta2/circle
- chris_j 4y ago
  Got it. Thanks for explaining; I was definitely assuming running natively. I quite like the idea of running Aranym without a full OS but with something like Ultibo or Circle (neither of which I'd heard of before you mentioned them so thanks for putting them on my radar screen) but I'm not quite clear how much OS functionality it would miss in that sort of environment.
  - lproven 4y ago
    I came to this because I was involved in a very very minor way with FreeGEM and the project to resurrect PC GEM after Caldera made it GPL. There was the idea to somehow port TOS to x86, but as we discussed it, the issues became clear. A native ST os on x86 couldn't run ST apps, because they're 680x0 code. And it won't run PC apps either, as they target PC OSes, not TOS/GEM. Even if it's doable, it's a vast amount of work and there's no point. You still need emulation. This is also why Apple ended up buying NeXT and switching OSes. Remember, Apple already had a UNIX: it had A/UX. But A/UX is a native 68030 Unix, with integrated classic MacOS. If Apple ported the underlying Unix to PowerPC, the embedded MacOS part that provided the UI wouldn't work, and MacOS apps wouldn't work. Without that, there's no point. So Apple built a 68k emulator and ported the OS to the emulator. Then it speed-tweaked some bits. It worked and it delivered fast RISC Macs for a decade or more, which could still run old 680x0 Mac apps, but also allowed for new PowerPC apps to be delivered. It was a good strategy, but it left them in a dead end. Copland failed, and so that's why NeXT, which was an excellent deal. Well, honestly, we're not going to see any major new ST/TOS apps in 202x. It is not going to happen. But there is this rather neat all-FOSS OS, or even pair of OSes: EmuTOS and FreeMINT. And they have apps, and programming languages, and are still vaguely usable. So my thinking was: is there any way to glue together some existing code that enables them to run, providing an emulated 680x0 environment, on this cheap readily-available ARM hardware, without there being a whole other OS underneath?
  - lproven 4y ago
    AIUI this is the motivation behind Emu68: https://github.com/michalsc/Emu68 https://github.com/michalsc/Emu68 To run 680x0 AROS (and maybe real AmigaOS via PiStorm) on bare-metal on the Raspberry Pi. See: https://www.patreon.com/posts/i-owe-you-some-20956961 https://www.patreon.com/posts/i-owe-you-some-20956961

lproven 4y ago

Natively would be amazing but a vast amount of work. The way Apple moved classic MacOS from 680x0 to PowerPC was to write a tiny kernel emulator, with an API to run native stuff on the metal, and run more or less the whole OS under emulation, profile it and just translate the most speed-critical bits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_nanokernel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_nanokernel That's a lot of work for a FOSS project but given the performance delta between 1980s 680x0 and 2020s ARM, total emulation of the whole thing should be perfectly fine. It's how the PiStorm Amiga upgrade works. https://amigastore.eu/853-pistorm.html https://amigastore.eu/853-pistorm.html So all I envision is something like Aranym: https://aranym.github.io/ https://aranym.github.io/ ... running on top of Ultibo, say: https://ultibo.org/ https://ultibo.org/ Or maybe Circle: https://github.com/rsta2/circle https://github.com/rsta2/circle

chris_j 4y ago
Got it. Thanks for explaining; I was definitely assuming running natively. I quite like the idea of running Aranym without a full OS but with something like Ultibo or Circle (neither of which I'd heard of before you mentioned them so thanks for putting them on my radar screen) but I'm not quite clear how much OS functionality it would miss in that sort of environment.
- lproven 4y ago
  I came to this because I was involved in a very very minor way with FreeGEM and the project to resurrect PC GEM after Caldera made it GPL. There was the idea to somehow port TOS to x86, but as we discussed it, the issues became clear. A native ST os on x86 couldn't run ST apps, because they're 680x0 code. And it won't run PC apps either, as they target PC OSes, not TOS/GEM. Even if it's doable, it's a vast amount of work and there's no point. You still need emulation. This is also why Apple ended up buying NeXT and switching OSes. Remember, Apple already had a UNIX: it had A/UX. But A/UX is a native 68030 Unix, with integrated classic MacOS. If Apple ported the underlying Unix to PowerPC, the embedded MacOS part that provided the UI wouldn't work, and MacOS apps wouldn't work. Without that, there's no point. So Apple built a 68k emulator and ported the OS to the emulator. Then it speed-tweaked some bits. It worked and it delivered fast RISC Macs for a decade or more, which could still run old 680x0 Mac apps, but also allowed for new PowerPC apps to be delivered. It was a good strategy, but it left them in a dead end. Copland failed, and so that's why NeXT, which was an excellent deal. Well, honestly, we're not going to see any major new ST/TOS apps in 202x. It is not going to happen. But there is this rather neat all-FOSS OS, or even pair of OSes: EmuTOS and FreeMINT. And they have apps, and programming languages, and are still vaguely usable. So my thinking was: is there any way to glue together some existing code that enables them to run, providing an emulated 680x0 environment, on this cheap readily-available ARM hardware, without there being a whole other OS underneath?
- lproven 4y ago
  AIUI this is the motivation behind Emu68: https://github.com/michalsc/Emu68 https://github.com/michalsc/Emu68 To run 680x0 AROS (and maybe real AmigaOS via PiStorm) on bare-metal on the Raspberry Pi. See: https://www.patreon.com/posts/i-owe-you-some-20956961 https://www.patreon.com/posts/i-owe-you-some-20956961