Re: [MiNT] GCC 4.4.3

[Eero Tamminen <oak@helsinkinet.fi>]

Hi,

On Monday 01 February 2010, Jo Even Skarstein wrote:
> > It is a shame to waste STEem's potential as a based 68000 test unit
> > when so many of us do not have the hardware, and its reputation for
> > compatibility is so high.

STEem development seems to have stalled on last years.  Hatari is nowadays
on par with that even on STE emulation (not just ST) and latest development
version AFAIK surpasses it (only Microwire/LMC1992 emulation is missing, but
that's audio quality issue, not compatibility one).


> Testing on a particular emulator is only saying something about how
> FreeMiNT works on that emulator. If you want to test it on a ST, you
> need an ST.

E.g. Hatari's ST emulation is pretty perfect (unlike TT or Falcon emulation
which is still experimental although many programs run fine).  I would be
surprised (but interested to know) if there are issues with something like
MiNT as it doesn't do as dirty tricks[1] as demos do.

[1] Rely on HW bugs and cycle accurate emulation of them
     (which Hatari supports).

Hatari doesn't have full IKBD chip emulation, it just emulates known IKBD
command sequences, but that's enough to run all programs we know of.

FDC code doesn't emulate reading the data between sectors, but that's only
used by some game copy protections.

ACSI emulation has some gaps, but as MiNT relies on HD drivers to take care
of them, I don't see that too much of a problem either nowadays.


> If something doesn't work when testing on an emulator, how do you know
> if the problem is FreeMiNT or the emulator if you don't have the
> original hardware to compare with?

What is hard though, is getting a full MiNT distribution with latest SW that
doesn't rely on Aranym host drivers (fDVI etc) and is set ready for use on
real ST HW (68000).


	- Eero