Old Motorola 68000 Systems Can Finally Move Away From Linux's Deprecated IDE Code

[cb88]

I see your point, and if someone has enough of an ego to think they're the next Nobel Prize winner, then they deserve to be deflated. As the saying goes, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". So, if someone really thinks they have a perpetual motion machine, you can always tell them "show the math and explain how to replicate the experiment".

The Youtube channel Veritasium covers a lot of subjects of seemingly impossible things. The most recent was about a wind-powered vehicle that could move faster than the wind. It's not breaking the laws of physics and it's not doing anything especially complicated either. Mathematically, it's very simple (Steve Mould does a good job explaining the math in a simple way). But, that's a very easy thing to dismiss, because if you don't think outside the box, you're just going to say "that isn't possible" and move on, which the creators of this project faced multiple times. Granted, I don't like their ego, but, it's easy to have one when you have a working proof-of-concept that nobody believed could work.

Yeah... moving faster than the wind a tiny bit counter intuitive but not terribly so. Unfortunately many people these days are overspecialized and don't know basic things like this.

[oiaohm]

Phoronix: Old Motorola 68000 Systems Can Finally Move Away From Linux's Deprecated IDE Code

Excuse me what do you mean Old Motorola 68000 Systems. This kind of maps the support the wrong way.

https://github.com/douggilliland/Ret...68000/TG68_AMR The reality is we have new 68000 systems being made based on FPGA. The good part is this fpga implementations are in fact instruction to clock identical to a genuine Motorola 68000 system. 68000 due to the high quality FGPA implementation is something you can basically still new hardware to test the functionality of the code base on.

This is a fix up for Retro 68000 systems. Yes Retro include new systems like this FPGA and old true systems with Motorola 68000 chips. Anyone who wants a 68000 system theses days can have one made out of new hardware there are multi-able FPGA options out there.

There has really been a lot of resurgence in retro hardware support in the recent years making system to allow people to run retro software with new hardware mostly all FPGA based hardware but not only this. Yes the FPGA support does mean it possible for a developer wanting to support this hardware to have new hardware to abuse the hell out of in a testing setup, Its a lot simpler to get new hardware to test out Motorola 68000 fixes than support a year 2000 PC GPU.

https://www.militaryaerospace.com/computers/article/16705904/motorola-asic-to-extend-the-life-of-68000based-vme-computers

Yes its a surprise to most people to find out that in 1999 when the asic 68000 were still being made that the plan was at that time to move to a FPGA implementation for the parties that still required it. Yes that plan has complete and its why we have basically 100 percent perfect Motorola 68000 FPGA implmentations some of those implementations were in fact done by Motorola. The reality is a Motorola 68000 system maybe less than a 1 week old of course this would be a Motorola FPGA implementation in a FPGA chip because ASIC 68000 are not made any more.

This is one of the rare ones where the vendor supported the CPU design to migrate over to a FPGA implementations as they ceased ASIC production. Yes FPGA being made socket compatible to existing 68000 chips do exist as well.

[MadeUpName]

I don't get this. The kernel guys want to EOL my 4 year old Celleron HTPC because it doesn't have some CPU extension but an Apple II that definitely doesn't have it is fine?

[schmidtbag]

I don't get this. The kernel guys want to EOL my 4 year old Celleron HTPC because it doesn't have some CPU extension but an Apple II that definitely doesn't have it is fine?

I assume this has something to do with the fact m68k has been long dead whereas x86 continues to evolve. Backward compatibility gets increasingly complicated as newer technology comes about, especially if that newer tech either depends on other tech, or, if developers become too reliant on it.

[milkylainen]

I created a biological neural simulator in my early 20s on a 68000 based Atari 1040ST. I invented four unique software structures - reception, conduction, integration, and transmission - to create dendrites, somas (cell bodies), axons, and synapses for a variety of neurons. And these were true to life neurons with everything from passive, electrically, and chemically gated ion channels to anterograde and retrograde transport mechanisms.

I had a similar clash with the "institutionalized" when I was about to pursue a PhD. That was almost 25 years ago.
This was before GPU acceleration was a thing. I saw the potential very early on and wanted to extend into application research for numerical acceleration on future hardware. Was completely downplayed as "We already have large CPUs and servers..."
Luckily the world went that way anyway. I was so pissed about the limited and obtuse world view that I've never set another foot in university again.

[milkylainen]

muncrief
Often when academics, researchers, and scientists make fun of an idea, it either shows a lack of understanding or it shows they don't want to be proven wrong.

Second that. The proven wrong sits so badly with some individuals, they'd rather end the world than be proven wrong.
Ergo, they'll do anything to keep and validate their view, status quo etc.
You'll find them everywhere. Even in medicine, where your life would depend on someone willing to accept that they were wrong and do something about it.

[eltomito]

Shit! And somebody said Linux would deprecate Sandy-Bridge (2012) era hardware because it was TOO OLD! Well, fuck my blitter and move.w #f0c4, a0!

[leech]

Based on the driver name, I assume this is based off an IDE driver written for the Atari Falcon? Humorous that a system as rare as the Falcon should be the basis for supporting machines as common (comparatively) as the Macintosh.

I always thought it was the opposite, that the Falcon driver for MiNT was based upon the libata driver from Linux.

[oiaohm]

I don't get this. The kernel guys want to EOL my 4 year old Celleron HTPC because it doesn't have some CPU extension but an Apple II that definitely doesn't have it is fine?

There is an answer to this and not the Apple II.

I assume this has something to do with the fact m68k has been long dead whereas x86 continues to evolve. Backward compatibility gets increasingly complicated as newer technology comes about, especially if that newer tech either depends on other tech, or, if developers become too reliant on it.

This is a mistake the m86k are still on the market as FPGA chips. 4 year old Celleron where are you going to get that chip new. The reality is m86k has a FPGA form that perform absolutely identical to perfectly functional old m86k.

http://www.apollo-core.com/index.htm?page=features

There are also new 86000 instruction set cpus being made that FPGA base some of these support a 64 bit instruction set. Yes the example here is not Motorola and used to make AMIGA clone machine and used as a upgrade to old AMIGA computers to make them run many times faster than they use to by replacing the old Motorola cpu.

The difference here is the reality is you can get new 86000 instruction set cpus that run in FPGA and the old Celleron chip buying new can be a very hard problem. Please note being FPGA implementation with the 68000 is really simple to upload a different FPGA bytecode to make a version of the 86000 missing instructions so its really easy to replicate old 68000 cpus with modern FPGA chips on brand new hardware.

Its a real big mistake to think that m68k is a dead platform. M68K is a platform alive and evolving as a FPGA implemented CPU. M68K only really stopped developing as a ASIC solution for the past 20 years it has been developing as a FPGA solution.

The problem with supporting old GPU and old CPU is getting new defect free ones to test software against. The reality is 68000 does not have that problem due to all the FPGA implementations that are defect free to test software against. Yes the M68K is not the only cpu alive and well as FPGA implementations that the Linux kernel still supports. Really old and still support by the Linux kernel more often than not is a case that that bit of old hardware can be implemented perfectly in modern day FPGA chips.

Please note a M68k in asic was only a "68,000" transistor solution your a 4 year old Celleron x86 is in your billion of transistor class cpu. So a 4 year old x86 chip is too complex to implement at this stage in a FPGA yes even the biggest FPGA on the market does not have the required space to implement a modern x86 cpu.

Now 16 bit and 32 bit x86 FPGA implementations do exist just nothing that is a 64 chip or with all the 32 bit added instructions that the amd and intel 64 bit cpus added to the 32 bit instruction set.

[gamerk2]

It's worth noting the 68k derived architectures are still used as microcontrollers due to having quite good power/performance for the job they need to do.