Re: [MiNT] Re[2]: GEM boost

[Evan Langlois <Evan@CoolRunningConcepts.com>]

On Sun, 2005-07-17 at 01:08 +0200, Johan Klockars wrote:
> Getting MiNT to run on an '040 NeXT would be a neat thing. That NeXT 
> even had the same 56001 DSP as the Falcon (perhaps all of them did?).
> I've always wanted to get hold of a black NeXT cube...

All NeXT machines had a 56K, although if I remember they had less RAM
and a slower clock speed than the Falcon's DSP.  I have a fractal
generator and an oscilliscope that uses the DSP, and the result is
pretty impressive for the age of the machine.  I should turn it on some
day.

The hardware differences would be the issue.  No documentation really
available for the NeXT special chips either, like their weird DMA
controller that everything is connected to.  Is there an Atari emulator
designed to run on a 68K mac?   Like maybe MagiC for Mac?  I could run
that under executor possibly - the Mac emulator for NeXT (not sure about
the speed or compatibility of running emulators inside each other).  It
wouldn't export the 56K thats in there, like running it native, but it
would be the quickest path to making it run.  I wonder if Aranym can be
ported to the NeXT to use the host CPU?

And mine isn't a cube, its a color slab (can't add cards to it, no
optical drive or CD ROM - I had to net-boot it off the PC/Linux box to
install the OS).  The best bet for a fast NeXT would be getting one of
the black 040 cubes (the Turbo one with a 32Mhz/040) and that video card
add-on that was available (good luck finding it - VERY expensive if you
can find one).  They did full 24 bit color, plus video in, genlocking,
and they had their own Intel 64bit RISC graphics processor on the card
complete with its own version of Mach.  The RAM on the card (SIMM
expandable) held all the window backing store and OS and such, and the
card could even do virtual memory by handing off disk/io to the host
CPU.  There was supposed to be some other special hardware for some
operations like JPEG or MPEG decoding, but some of that hardware wasn't
ready and not included.  If I remember, all of display postscript ran on
the card so it handled the display all by itself.

I really wish those 040->060 pin converters were cheaper.  I talked to
Motorola and they said some MMU differences might mean I'd have to
change the boot code, but hardware wise, just grab the pin converter and
the 25Mhz 040 becomes a 50Mhz 060.

> I was talking about normal work above, not demos. That is, using the VDI 
> running GEM programs, in for example 1024x768x32 bit mode. With a 

Yeah, I know.  I just picked demos as a "worst case" scenario.

> Of course, that's because of the graphics card having really fast memory 
> itself, and hardware accelerated drawing.

Yeah, my ATI should be faster on my PC, but it can be a dog.  I'm
surprised how fast Atari machines are even without all the bells and
whistles and specialized harwdare that PCs have access to.

I really think a 266Mhz Coldfire (FPU, MMU, eMAC, DDR RAM - everything
you want on your Atari is on the chip) combined with a decent graphics
chip connected, running MiNT/XaAES would really turn a few heads.
Especially when you consider that the Aranym project has already done a
VDI natfeat where the VDI is handled by OpenGL .. ATI has open-source
OpenGL drivers.  I bet side-by-side with machines that are 10 times the
clock speed, the 266Mhz machine would keep up just fine.  If any company
produced such a thing - it would be my next machine - especially if it
had decent audio (24 bit/96Khz or better and clean DACs).

OK - dream mode off. We're WAY off topic.  The computer industry just
doesn't go the direction I want.  Gotta live with it.   *sigh*