Hi Malcolm, >I thought this free Coldfire hardware design might be useful. >It looks like a PC104 graphics card should plug in.
Thanks. It is indeed interesting. But unfortunately of no use for running QL software. E.g. at home I have a more advanced Coldfire board, which includes ISA slot and DRAM as well. Simple designs around such Coldfire chips are relatively easy, especially without graphics. (The Q40 and Q60 designs were magnitudes more challenging.) I'm sorry, but I must destroy any hopes that Coldfire CPU's (version > 1) could execute our existing QL software. Not even the new announced ones with better 68k compatibility. Important instructions which behave different to 68k can not (generally) be identified or trapped out by a Coldfire CPU, in order to emulate them correctly. Absolutely not. Additionally, available QL hardware outperforms any Coldfire board emulating 68k code. So even *if* we accepted incompatibility and crashes of a lot of software, we'd have no overall performace advantage. This status is likely to remain for at least about two years. All the best Peter
