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The basic requirement for this would not be that someone add DirectX support to Plex86, but that:

• someone write a VESA (preferably XVGA+ or better ;) emulated video hardware using DGA, DirectX or some other direct-to-hardware method on the host system
• THEN write a Windows95/98/NT/2000 driver (Or X driver depending on guest system) for that emulated hardware that include direct-to-hardware support.

This would also be the requirement on Xwindows, and Mesa would probably be a good package on which to base the 3D emulated hardware support.

For the record, this is what UAE (Ubiquitous Amiga Emulator) does. Basically it has a "UAE" graphics card, and a driver was written for the Picasso96 accelerated graphics replacement subsystem for AmigaOS that used this "hardware". On WinUAE this basically allowed me to run the AmigaOS in 1400x1050 resolution on Windows2000 (WinUAE hosts on DirectX) on my Dell laptop. Fun fun fun.

Hmm. Perhaps, when the Plex86 folks are done, they can do Plex68K. There's a good 68K emulator in UAE, and Bernie Mayer wrote a patch for JIT compilation in UAE.

The basic requirement for this would not be that someone add DirectX support to Plex86, but that:

• someone write a VESA (preferably XVGA+ or better ;) emulated video hardware using DGA, DirectX or some other direct-to-hardware method on the host system
• THEN write a Windows95/98/NT/2000 driver (Or X driver depending on guest system) for that emulated hardware that include direct-to-hardware support.

This would also be the requirement on Xwindows, and Mesa would probably be a good package on which to base the 3D emulated hardware support.

For the record, this is what UAE (Ubiquitous Amiga Emulator) does. Basically it has a "UAE" graphics card, and a driver was written for the Picasso96 accelerated graphics replacement subsystem for AmigaOS that used this "hardware". On WinUAE this basically allowed me to run the AmigaOS in 1400x1050 resolution on Windows2000 (WinUAE hosts on DirectX) on my Dell laptop. Fun fun fun.

Hmm. Perhaps, when the Plex86 folks are done, they can do Plex68K. There's a good 68K emulator in UAE, and Bernie Mayer wrote a patch for JIT compilation in UAE.

It works quite well for some applications, but not as well for the Amiga games, which were really exploiting the processor and hardware to begin with and do not lend themselves to easy analysis/translation. I don't suppose I need to mention that this is basically what Transmeta does in hardware....


~wog

Today, I can do the same things (and much, much more) with Linux, Windows, Mac, Be, etc. Hell, I can even simulate any of those machines with UAE.

The Amiga had it's chance to rule the world and due (partly) to Commodore's incompetence missed its opportunity.

Please, dear fellows... let the Amiga rest in peace. Soil no further my memories of that great machine, and let her spirit join the pantheon of the great (?) machines of the past: the Sinclars, Apple ][s and the TRS-80s... the TI-99s and the Atari Jaguars...

/**
I have a "Zero Policy" tolerance.

For a while now, I have been following discussions on OpenBIOS to see what they could come up with. Very impressive, really. OpenBIOS and LinuxBIOS have been sharing for some time. The big reason for it is even simpler than booting faster or putting cool things in your BIOS like graphics (which, I must admit, is cool): The project is about having a system truly free of proprietary software. Feel free to join in and contribute to either project; in the true spirit of Opensource, they share, so helping one will help the other. Ultimately, I would like to see a package that will help sysadmins customize and install thier own bios. Also, lets see Intel try and pull the serial# off a machine that has the serial#'s memory location specifially blocked off in the bios... See? The reasons for doing this go on and on. It's a new frontier in Open Source. How can anyone call themselves a hacker when they depend on Phoenix or Award to turn thier computer on for them?

vdkBuilder uses VDK and GTK, and there are win32 ports of both of those. The RAD IDE is similar to C++Builder, and is GPL'd.

VDK Builder

WX Windows

WX GTK

VDK Builder is maturing rapidly, is on source forge, and has a responsive developer mailling list.

It's fair to say that WX leans towards inheritance, while VDK leans toward composition. After that, it's up to you.

Gtk+ is very nice to use and is totally free (GPL) across multiple platforms (Win32/BeOS/*Nix). In spite of the fact that it is written in Object Oriented C, it is quite easy and nice to use with C++. Also, Gtk-- is a C++ wrapper that is supposed to be very nice as well, and they have a Win32 port going on right now. When you add Glade (visual gui builder) into the mix, you get a very slick and powerful package. Definitely look into it.

As an aside, another C++ portable library that i hear is quite tasty is WxWindows.

For anyone interested in developing apps for PalmOS, there is a GPL'ed Palm emulator; which borrows code from other neat GPL'ed projects - UAE: The Ultimate Amiga Emulator and WinUAE (the windoze port).
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'

For those who can't wait and want to play their old games/demos, get UAE.
It's cool! I just love watching those old demos - State of the art was a classic!

Oh, and there's WinUAE, too.

OpenBIOS including link to 'Linux BIOS'

If you think there is a problem, then be part of the solution:
OpenBIOS!

I guess you'd mean something like OpenBIOS, eh?

From the web page:

PCs have had BIOSes since the dawn of time. And since the beginning, they have been DOS-specific, 16-bit, real-mode, etc. -- not something that a modern OS such as Linux, Hurd, or BSD can use. The OpenBIOS group intends to create a free BIOS for PCs. So far we have little code, but we are working on it

~~~~~~~~~
auntfloyd

but then... why hasn't someone written an open source bios?

I wouldn't go about holding your breath. . . The last project that I know about trying to do this didn't get too far. I would certainly agree that such an effort would be possible, however, I think that such a project would face many uphill battles before having anything like a usable product.

The tarball I grabbed from their page has file modification dates more than a year old. I think I might have been subscribed to a mailing-list of theirs at one point, even . . . I think that you need a few really talented people at the core to pull off the bootstrap of any ambitous project, and either openbios didn't have talended enough people or not enough talented people. (Though there seem to have been plenty of people to propose logos for the project).

but then... why hasn't someone written an open source bios?

I wouldn't go about holding your breath. . . The last project that I know about trying to do this didn't get too far. I would certainly agree that such an effort would be possible, however, I think that such a project would face many uphill battles before having anything like a usable product.

The tarball I grabbed from their page has file modification dates more than a year old. I think I might have been subscribed to a mailing-list of theirs at one point, even . . . I think that you need a few really talented people at the core to pull off the bootstrap of any ambitous project, and either openbios didn't have talended enough people or not enough talented people. (Though there seem to have been plenty of people to propose logos for the project).

Here's a link for people interested in developing a GPL'd bios:
www.freiburg.linux.de/openbios/

• BIOS setup (including remote administration)
• networked system updates
• backup and restore software
• a clueful bootmanager
• tools for doing flash-updates on PCI-cards etc. (i.e. something like /dev/bios)
• desaster recovery tools as boot-sector restorage and debugfs
• networked access control

There actually is the OpenBIOS project (www.openbios.org, but that's never been up that I've seen; try http://www.freiburg.linux.de/OpenBIOS/), but I don't think that what you're talking about is something that would be done in BIOS on x86 hardware. AFAIK, the BIOS boots, starts the boot loader, provides some disk reading functions and the like to the boot-loader, which loads the kernel image, which uncompresses itself, bootstaps, and then, as its first act as a running kernel, switches to Protected mode, and makes the bios irrelevant (ie: never used for anything). This would probably have to be done via a (privileged) system call on Linux. I do agree, though, that this would be a very nice feature for Linux to have... another application would be to snapshot the system, and reload that snapshot at a later date to exactly recreate the system as it was then -- though there are several other technical hurdles to making this possible.

• Full kernel support for all MB features: One might think that should be a matter of course by now.
• A BIOS flashing utility for Linux: How many people still keep a small DOS part. for this very purpose? (Yes, I kown about the /dev/bios patch, but that alone won't cut it.)
• LILO integrated into the BIOS: Well, that would be cool, wouldn't it?
• BIOS setup utilities for Linux: Batch installing 1000 PC's including BIOS settings with a Linux boot-disk could really make a difference for OEMs.
• An Open Source BIOS: The logical final goal, see also The Open BIOS Project.

• Full kernel support for all MB features: One might think that should be a matter of course by now.
• A BIOS flashing utility for Linux: How many people still keep a small DOS part. for this very purpose? (Yes, I kown about the /dev/bios patch, but that alone won't cut it.)
• LILO integrated into the BIOS: Well, that would be cool, wouldn't it?
• BIOS setup utilities for Linux: Batch installing 1000 PC's including BIOS settings with a Linux boot-disk could really make a difference for OEMs.
• An Open Source BIOS: The logical final goal, see also The Open BIOS Project.

--

They seem to be moving from
http://www.freiburg.linux.de/OpenBIOS/ to
http://openbios.org/.

I designed a large disparate Sun/Solaris network that uses Networked Terminal Servers and serial consoles to achieve just what you're trying to do. As you know, people suggesting Keyboard/Monitor switches or simply setting "Serial on console port" have not ever really managed a large network :-). I have thought a lot about this kind of support in Linux.

I think all you need is BIOS support for a serial console. The OpenBIOS project is at http://www.freiburg.linux.de/openbios/ (I don't know whether this is the canonical home page, but that was what google took me to :)).

Then, add support for recognising the "break" signal with the Linux "serial on console port" option, and getting it to always bring it down to your OpenBIOS 'OpenBoot' prompt, if linux detected an OpenBIOS PROM. Assuming that that code never breaks :) then you have the same level support as the Suns.

It is important to note that whilst it seems to be like old faithful, the break signal/stop-a is maskable - run "kbd -a disable" on Solaris 2.x to see this! (I don't know whether this sets some hardware options, or whether it just turns off recognition of it). Enterprise Servers (250 - 10000) have a keyswitch with a "lock" position which does the same thing, which of course is a much better solution.

A word of caution, however - if you are using this in a data centre or equivalent, with a multiplexor or Network Terminal Server, if they fail, their dying gasps tend to look like "break" signals and bring all the connected servers to their OpenBoot prompts. Not good.

Amiga Linux[1] has existed for many years. It was the first port of Linux to non-x86 hardware, and was done by Amiga people who wanted a better[2] OS.

You talk about the essence of the Amiga coming from it's wonderful multimedia hardware and the people around it, and I agree. My first two computers were Amigas and I loved them. However, time has moved on. After Commodore's bankruptcy the Amiga community has been scattered to the winds, leaving only a tiny hard core, and the hardware and OS that made the Amiga amazing in 1989 are now obsolete.

I don't see any reason why we old Amigans should get excited about this, or even any reason to call the new machine an Amiga: it will be entirely different hardware running an entirely different OS. It will presumably have an Amiga-like GUI but such things are already available[3]. If it runs old Amiga binaries it will in effect be running an Amiga emulator but such things are already available [4]

The Amiga was a wonderful machine in its day but I'm afraid it's time to let it die...

[1] see http://lxr.linux.no/source/arch/ m68k/amiga/?a=m68k and http://www.linux-m68k.org/faq/history.ht ml. Although the amiga version wasn't reintegrated into the linux source 'till 2.0 it did exist as a separate project.

[2] for their definition of better, which is not necessarily yours.

[3] http://www.lysator.liu.se/~marcus/amiw m.html

[4] UAE is written in C and runs under many platforms and OSes.
Fellow is written in x86 assembler and runs only in MS-DOS but is damn fast.
I recommend having a look at one of these. Certainly brought back memories for me

however they have started a contest to find a new slogan. submit here!

How's that for a compromise? ;-)

Posted by [rtfm]:

More Linux jobs are under http://www.linux.de/business/jobs/ (at least for Germany).

• Gtk--
• VDK
• wxWindows/GTK

Gtk-- (which I work on) is currently in beta after a rather long infancy period. We intend to release a 1.0 cut with the next month.

GL support for Gtk is very good. You can render direcly in a window or in a pixmap. See GtkGLArea for more details.

There is even a GL widget in the Gtk-- project. It will be a week or two before it is up to date with the gtk+ 1.2 (basically because it has the largest number of dependencies). If you are interested drop by the GtkGLArea-- website.

--Karl
Gtk-- Contributor