Re: [MiNT] MiNTLib for ColdFire

[Peter Persson <pep.fishmoose@gmail.com>]

Hi,

The Aranym concept is great in that it provides a very fast machine to  
very little cost. However, it's built around the idea of having the  
system running in a virtual machine, and letting applications and  
system components run code natively if needed. Some of us prefer the  
idea of running the system + applications natively, with the  
possibility of launching applications under emulation if needed (i.e.  
in a fashion similar to Rosetta on OSX). Aranym is great at what it  
does, but it does not provide this kind of functionality.

Personally I wouldn't mind if the OS would run on ARM, CF, PPC or even  
x86 - as long as it runs natively on that machine. The Coldfire does  
provide a familiar environment, and it's not that difficult to port  
stuff to it. Some stuff is inherently compatible and will never work  
on a Coldfire machine, and in such case the system could provide  
"real" 68k emulation in software for that particular process (and I'm  
not refering to the 68k lib provided by freescale, but rather some  
open source 68k core which would compile on ARM or PPC as well).

In theory it's possible to create binaries which run on Coldfire as  
well as 68k. And when this is not the case - does it really matter?  
There are lots of 030 and/or FPU binaries which will never run on  
68000, and usually this is stated in the docs.

-- PeP