On Wed, 2 Jan 2002, Malcolm Cadman wrote:
> I use RISC OS, as well as QL and PC ... so you are in good company :-)
Risc PC 700/SA@287MHz, plus a LART (www.lart.tudelft.nl)
> ARM have made considerable progress with the RISC chips ... they even
> have INTEL on board now, after all these years ...
I wouldn't say they have Intel on board. Intel won the intellectual
property that is the difference between an ARM and a Digital StrongARM in
a lawsuit with Digital. They saw the embedded marketplace as the largest
growth area in the future, and they were right - by controlling their
already-biggest competing product, well...
> The problem with the Motorola 68000 series is that they aren't making
> them anymore.
They do. Unfortunately, it's something of a poor relation. They're made on
.5 or .65u processes with aluminium interconnects - generally very old
hat. If they were fabbed at even .25u, they would happily run at
250-400MHz speeds. But that would cost a few tens of millions of bucks ;)
Is there any QDOS/compatible OS that's written in C? I could try to get it
converted to compile on ARM chips - I realize for QDOS itself that's a
no-no, as it's basically hand assembly... what's the nearest to a version
of QDOS written in C?
Finally, with "open hardware", and/or doing it the old-fashioned way,
what is the likely interest in a QL-compatible SBC? note the Q40/Q60 are
not an SBC - an SBC would have the interfaces and connectors all built
onto the same board. I can hunt around for a schematic for the original QL
and dig out my SQB schematics and see what else could be added in... This
isn't likely to happen, but if it was, what would people be looking for?
Not getting anyone's hopes up, but asking seriously...
Dave
