On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 12:02:23PM +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Derek Stewart of D&D Systems is just back from a trip, I guess he'll check > the "sales" account soon.
Derek just told me in private my mail did not come through in the first place, so I simply mailed him again to its own email address. > It touches me to see that folks still want native highend 68k systems > although we are nowhere able to compete with the price of a PC based > emulator. We are not even advertising in the magazines anymore but orders > keep coming. I am so delighted to hear that. Right, m68k hardware is not yet dead! ;D > When folks invest so much money there still must be more in a native QL > system that just the capabilty to execute a QL OS. What is this today? Of course, it is. ;) > Is it the simplicity of the system? Power consumption issues / fanless CPU > operation? Direct access to the hardware without emulated software layers? > The fast boot into the 68k OS after power-on? The option to do totally > without Windows or Linux? Intel outside? Nostalgia? Tinkering and > learning? A little bit of all of them? Something else? Well, I do not know for the other people. However, in my case, it could be criticise by QL native system people like you who prefer using the original system. Of course, all your hypothesis are also my concern. ;) I am a Debian GNU/Linux m68k contributor, I need decent hardware to: 1/ Learn the architecture. Of course, I can do that with an Atari Falcon, an Apple Quadra 650, or an Amiga 4000T, but that last one is at most a 68060 at 56 MHz. There are some new extensions boards for Falcon with a 68060 at 105 MHz <http://www.czuba-tech.com/CT60/english/prices.htm>, but Linux does not support them yet. I need to get in touch with people working on the related kernel part, before getting my money into it. :) 2/ Learn Linux kernel inner-working for the m68k port flavours, and Linux kernel generic behaviour. Well, the 68LC060 is well supported by the kernel, and I have been told FPU emulation runs smoothly. ;) 3/ Help the building of Debian packages on m68k by setting up an auto-builder. The goal is to get the fastest hardware to have the building done. See <http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/msg02441.html> to know why. By the way, there is *NO WAY* yet to get a fast emulation of an MMU which is required by Linux. See <http://atari.sh.cvut.cz/~aranym/aranym/msg07758.html> and <http://atari.sh.cvut.cz/~aranym/aranym/msg07763.html>. BasiliskII for Mac68k has no MMU support. ARAnyM for Atari has a huge MMU implementation which consumes a lot, even when Videl graphics emulation is offline. I was at 15 MHz at most on a dual Athlon MP 2400+ and 20 MHz at most on a dual G5 at 2 GHz. UAE for Amiga has an old unstable MMU implementation which does not work anymore. Cheers. -- ((__,-"""-,__)) Aurélien GÉRÔME .---. `--)~ ~(--` Free Software Developer / \ .-'( )`-. Unix Sys & Net Admin [EMAIL PROTECTED]@./ `~~`@) (@`~~` /`\_/`\ | | .''`. // _ \\ | | : :' : | \ )|_ (8___8) `. `'` /`\_`> <_/ \ `---` `- \__/'---'\__/ _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
