Re: TOS platform (Re: Opera)

[ebertbd@tick.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de (Bernd Ebert)]

Hi,

>1) A good, fast, MiNT-only WWW browser, what you Jo were talking about. As
>far as I know, Odd Skancke is developing something like this. Perhaps it
>should be a larger project, but its up to him to make sources available
>for more developers experienced in 68030 assembler and networking.

Not really necessary to develop a new browser, it would be sufficent if
Cab could handle more than one connection at time.

>2) An ethernet card for Falcon & TT, for a reasonable price. It may
>be just a connector for a PC ethernet. These days its a need.

Indeed, I already thought about getting a scsi-ethernet-adapter of the
Mac-World, but so far I was unable to find one with documentation for
programming included (But I think SCSI is the only way if you wan't 
plug'n play).

>3) A PC and Mac emulator for TT, Hades and Afterburner machines (perhaps
>for Falcon too). I was considering starting such a program, because I
>think I got enough experience with emulation while developing the EmuXL
>for Falcon. But I am lacking PC & mac knowledge.

Not necessary. Even a Hades would have trouble to emulate an Intel/PPC
fast enough to get the Software work smoothly.

>5) New memory management for the MiNT kernel (mainly to avoid the annoying
>   memory fragmentation effect).

Yes, and perhabs we could make it possible do do protection and swapping
the same time.


>7) platform specific developments, like critical portions of the kernel.
>   device drivers, and generally as much stuff as possible should be
>   written directly in pure assembler. Assembler programs is the only
>   hope for the 68030/40/60 to kick Wintel & PowerPC ass.

It should be as portable as possible and as platform specific as necessary.

>8) we should also slowly being to prepare to move to another processor
>   such as Motorola PowerPC or DEC Alpha. This will need a Motorola
>   68k-line emulation software for them and a solution for a system
>   capable to run 68k software as well as PowerPC software!

I think PowerPC is the only real possibility, because it is the next generation
of the m68k-series.
There are Processor-Board for the Amiga available including PPC with 150mhz (or
even 200mhz?). Perhabs it would be good to design a clone which could use
these Processor Boards (also available as 040/060-Board).

 
>By the way, since Kay Roemer (it seems) has dropped the MiNT Net
>development, perhaps we need some guy with enough BSD & TCP/IP experience
>to continue that. MiNT Net 1.01 seems to contain some bugs (land.c) also
>new IP-style is coming!

He's very busy right now, that's true.


Greetings,
				Bernd