[MiNT] MiNT on Coldfire

[Norman Feske <nf2@inf.tu-dresden.de>]

Dear MiNT folks,

I just want to let you know that the MiNT kernel runs
now also on the Coldfire. I wrote a detailed description
of how I ported the kernel to this platform. You can read
it at:

http://acp.atari.org/articles/mcf5407eval/mcf5407eval.html

There is also a summary about the TOS-dependencies of
MiNT (at least the needed things for the startup),
I stumbled across.

All in all, I must say that I liked the fact that MiNT
leaves the hardware initialization for timers, keyboard etc.
to TOS. This enabled me to perform these initializations
in a Coldfire-specific way in advance and then calling
the MiNT kernel. (very much like a PC BIOS, that sets
the system to a well defined state)

Frank told me that he wants to make MiNT take over
the whole system and kick out all dependencies to the
underlying TOS. This means, to include all drivers
that are needed for MiNT's startup (keyboard, screen,
timers etc.) into the MiNT kernel.
I would like to keep MiNT behaving like it does now.
The great advantage for now is, that MiNT makes no
assumptions about any devices except the CPU.

My current execution environment for the MiNT kernel is
very small (ca. 600 lines of code). It supports character
output and keyboard input (over a serial connection).
There is no block device support yet.

Thank you all for your great achievements with MiNT!

Greetings,
Norman