Re: Just my 2 penny worth..

[Stephen Usher <Stephen.Usher@earth.ox.ac.uk>]

>IMO MiNT should go on supporting 68000. If i had an TT I would run Linux now.

I happen to agree.. though Linux doesn't give you the benefits of being able
to run legacy applications on a TT. The system I'm proposing would,, and
possibly the ability to do much more..

(I've just had another thought.. if the I/O is abstracted anyway, you could,
in theory, allow the TT or Falcon to pretend to be a lowly ST.. allowing
even those programs which wouldn't originally run on the TT/Flacon to do so.)

>>You've obviously not seen the group who have got a version of Linux running
>>on a US Robotics/3Com Palm Pilot! That has a processor which is basically a
>>68000 core with a few peripherals built in.. All they've had to do it
>>rewrite the memory management. Like MiNT, I believe, it currently has a
>>blocking fork etc.. but it proves what CAN be done even on a plain 68000!
>
>And I bet it is not 100% binary compatible. Unless they have the FPU
>Emulator the Linux/m68k people are working on (since years).

True, it's not binary compatible with normal Linux/m68k.. however that's not
what the proposed system would be looking to do. It's main priority would be
to run the old software, ie. backwardly compatible..

On a 68000 based machine you couldn't have all the features I proposed for
the 680x0 (where x>3) system, only a sub-set.. but that sub-set would be
enough to make it a leap forward from the current MiNT series (ie. no more
need for loads of TSRs to fix the OS as the OS would have all these things
integrated).

>Axel,

Steve

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