Re: [MiNT] New MiNT distribution is n.. ..pro

[Johan Klockars <rand@cd.chalmers.se>]

> > Most people would probably find it more attractive to run selected GEM
> > applications in the emulator and run Linux applications else.  You're
> > right, this would be a little bit of a toy.
> 
> This is exactly my experience from work, I used to run GEMulator in order
> to use some familiar tools (like qed and Thing), but I quickly stopped
> using it as I got used to the (inferior) tools on the PC.

I never liked qed at all. Fortunately there is a really nice (and comes with
sources) emacs-like GEM editor called ME (Mutt Editor) for the Atari (among
others), which I've been using for many years. For some strange reason, I've
only ever heard of one other person who uses that editor and, IIRC, that was
after I mentioned it to him (Hi Eero! ;-).

The PC also, fortunately, has emacs itself and look-alikes available.
Another rather nice free editor is PFE (Programmer's File Editor).
Surprisingly, I find the Win98 desktop quite usable, once you move the
drive icons onto the background. Even DOS is tolerable with a full GNU utility
setup, perhaps 4DOS, and some other odds and ends.

> I think this would be a pretty cool thing:
> 
> Boot the PC directly into a 68k-emulator with a very basic and minimal
> (X)BIOS and GEMDOS. Emulate the absolutely necessary hardware, implement a
> PCI-BIOS, load fVDI and then MiNT. This would result in a pretty cheap and

Since the main jobs of the PCI-BIOS is to initialize the PCI cards (which
the PC BIOS can do for you) and set up some memory mapping (which isn't
needed with an m68k emulator), it really wouldn't be necessary at all.

> powerful Milan-clone :-) OK, it would require a lot of work, but it should
> be a lot cheaper than developing hardware. And the hardware will be a lot
> cheaper, more powerful and easily upgraded as technology advances. I'm

Except for the driver problems I've mentioned before, I agree. But if they
insist on developing hardware, surely it would be much better to put an
'040/'060 (or PPC for that matter) on a PCI card, rather than develop an
entire main board?

> pretty sure that something like this could be a real hit...

But would it really be worth all the (major) extra trouble just to not have
to load Windows? If you kept your eyes closed for a minute after you turned
the PC on, you'd never notice any difference.  ;-)

-- 
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