Linux Kernel Patches Sent Out For A More Powerful Virtual M68k Machine

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux Kernel Patches Sent Out For A More Powerful Virtual M68k Machine

Right now when it comes to Motorola 68000 "m68k" emulation with Linux the most powerful target is the Quadra 800 that is limited to just 1GB of RAM and specific interfaces. But on the way is the new "Virtual M68k Machine" that is much more powerful...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-Virtual-M68k-Machine

[mangeek]

As silly as it sounds to advocate cutting five year-old video drivers in one project and advocate thirty year-old tech in another, m68k is an excellent arch for onboarding people to fundamentals. This is something that might help foster future hardware and compiler engineers, because m68k is a feeder platform with a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge and documentation.

Also, there are two huge branches of 1980s/90s mainstream desktop computing that can be preserved through maintenance of QEMU's Q800 port. The Amiga and Classic Mac have a ton of abandonware that deserve an eternal functional runtime.

[Chewi]

Oooh this is good news for Gentoo. Several people have asked me to create a new m68k stage3 tarball. I do have a relatively up-to-date m68k system but it was cross-compiled and therefore a little too rough around the edges to be used as a stage3. I've lacked the time to create a proper one so far but one guy who did look into it a few months back found that the limits of what you could emulate were crippling. I thought some tricks like swap over NFS might still make it possible but this news is much better. Sadly I won't be able to break the news to that guy. He died last month.

[thunderbird32]

It would also be interesting to see support, at some point, for Vampire's virtual "68080" core. It's my understanding that the MMU isn't supported currently.