Meilenstein in der FreeMint Entwicklung für die FireBee erreicht

[ragnar76]

so, wieder da.

The past month was characterized by a variety of work on all fronts of the project. Much of this work has been for end-users but rather uninteresting and worked in secret. Nevertheless, it is time to deliver a bigger status update and publish the milestones reached.

The New FireBee Logo

The most important recent event of recent weeks was the final decision on the FireBee logo. After a very lengthy process, the team was finally able to agree on the final appearance, so we can officially present it.

[Logo Picture]

The new FireBee logo is not only our future case decoration, also serves as a brand recognition for the FireBee. We hope it will serve as sign the Atari has not just merely survived, but has continued to evolve with modern technology.


We want to warmly thank all who have supported us with proposals, designs and inspirations.

The new FireBee logo is a available for download as a vector graphic.

[Download Link]

Welcome to the Team

Another imporant item is that we would like to welcome and introduce new members to the team.

Geir Øyvind Vælidalo - he was a supporter from the beginning of the project. Since he received his FireBee, he decided to join as a developer and porting to TTF GDOS for FireTOS.

Jean-Pierre Feicht - a relatively unknown face and late arrival - but just at the right time - responded to a public appeal in 2010. Jean-Pierre is an independent media designer and took over as the artist of the promotional artwork and design of our new FireBee Logos. Currently, he is responsible for the implementation of firebee.org product page and will now also take on a further part of the resulting design tasks.

Marc-Anton Kehr - thanks to his work with Easy-MiNT, he will be know by most Atari users. First, a new Easy-MiNT version will be prepared for use with the FireBee. He has also afreed to particiate on the long overdue implmentation of the firebee.org product page and some of the technical details.

Ole Loots - actually an "external" developer who cares about the port of Netsurf browser. After delivery and the adaptation of his FireBee Netsurf, it made sense to expand to technical cooperation of OS developers and application programmers. Therefore, the two projects and ACP Netsurf port together are now a little closer. m0n0 now is advisor to the ACP, however, he has also been a very helpful in some important ways beyond the browser.

Technical progress

There has been a lot of work on FireTOS. Since the last news we have received four new updates. FireTOS now offers an improved basic USB support directly in the TOS, which makes use of mass storage devices by hot plug possible. Booting with USB devices is no longer necessary. Bugs caused by GCC problems in implementation of lwip
be eliminated. (Now these nasty little bugs have now taken root in the AC'97 initialization).

A very large piece of the progress was with the XHDI support. Random FireTOS crashes and incomprehensible loss of data under MiNT NEWFATFS have kept our developers busy for 15 days. After eliminating this problem, the XHDMI implementation can now be optimized.

FreeMiNT has been improved to work with the FireBee. This includes, among other things, the optimization for XaAES on V4e processors. This development took more than a year to complete. The 100% optimized version of the ColdFire XaAES kernel modules also brings a great advantage for other processors. Where some parts of XaAES written for pure 68000 processors, all parts of XaAES can be compiled and optimized for each processor type (eg 68030).

Internally, of course, there have been many other issues and developments in the pipline.  For example, the flash layout, more GCC 4 Bugs, DVI + VGA resolutions and the sync polarity, BDOS and IDE issues, the possible offering CodeHeads GDOS+ as open source, the use of fVDI or oVDI (largely unknown), the possible implementation of a parallel port, debugging HDDriver, preparing a public program compatability list, the long overdue update of the websites, enhanced capabilities of the PIC icrocontroller, etc.

In closing, we still have a very positive message. In the very far-reaching environment of the ACP, all programs of Sven Kopac, whose sources are still available under a GPL / Artistic License provided and made accessible. The binaries are now freeware. This includes for example Emailer, PPP-Connect (with CAB.OVL), Income, Alice, 2nd Chance. "

Wir haben jetzt einen wichtigen Meilenstein in der Entwicklung von FreeMiNT für die ColdFire CPU erreicht.

Vincent hat alle Assembler Anweisungen für die ColdFire CPU in den Kernel, das XaAES und die wichtigsten Module reingepatcht. Dafür mussten an 337 Stellen der Quelltext verändert werden. Einige Änderungen waren recht einfach, andere waren etwas kniffeliger.

Als Ergebnis ist der aktuelle mintv4e.prg Kernel voll FireTOS und seine 68060-Emulation optimiert ist. Er verwendet keine emulierten user instructions mehr.

Die nächste Aufgabe wird sein, eine "CPU-Emulations-Erkennung" hinzuzufügen. Wenn eine 680x0 emulierten CPU erkannt wird (wie das FireTOS z.B.), wird wie bisher verfahren. Wenn eine reine ColdFire CPU erkannt wird (wie z.B. EmuTOS für ColdFire), wird die ColdFire CPU supervisor instructions verwenden (hauptsächlich zur trap / rte behandlung und dem Cache-Management).

Wir erwarten das FreeMiNT innerhalb von ein paar wochen auf EmuTOS laufen wird.

Um einige dinge aufzuräumen, würde wir die MMU unterstützung vorrübergehend im mint44e.prg deaktivieren bis jemand eine passende Unterstützung dafür schreibt. Derzeit denkt FreeMiNT dass die MMU-Unterstützt wird, was aber nicht der Fall ist. Eingebunden wird die MMU über eine #ifdef M68000 Anweisung was natürlich nicht optimal ist.

Um einige dinge im Quelltext aufzuräumen wurde die MMU unterstützung vorrübergehend abgeschaltet bis jemand etwas passendes programmiert.

So, jetzt du. Vor allem würde ich gerne das neue Logo sehen  

Edit:
Vincent selber hat noch was am Text gedreht. Die MMU unterstützung hat er schon rausgenommen und hat angefangen den Code aufzuräumen

[ragnar76]

Soooo.... ich hab mit Vincent gemailt und ihm mitgeteilt was wir vorhaben. hier die Mail von ihm.

Once again, I'm very affected by your initiative. This is very nice from you and the German Atari community to give me feedback in such a positive way.

I thought to your proposition quite a while, then I did what I had in mind for a long time: I setup a Paypal account, and I added a Donate button on my website:
http://vincent.riviere.free.fr/soft/m68k-atari-mint/

So if people want to support my work with some present, the easiest way is to make a Paypal donation. No need to send a lot of money: even a few euros will make me happy, to see that people really enjoy "my" software.
Of course real world presents would be nicer, but the Paypal solution is the more realistic and long-term approach.

Also, very important : donations are not a contract. If someones makes a donation to me, I don't promise anything. I will not engage to develop a new feature, make more updates, etc. The donation will just improve my mood and increase my will to continue updating my software.
My cross-tools are Free Software, and they will remain. The donations will never become mandatory.

About the atari-home.de community, I would be glad to answer something if you point me to the right thread. Unfortunately I can't understand German, so I could more or less understand what it is about by using a web translator. Then surely, I could answer something in English.

Thanks again for your consideration.

Also, wer ein paart Groschen über hat kann die an ihn schicken. Ich werd's machen, muss mir nur jemandem mit einem paypal konto suchen 

[Nervengift]

Moin, moin,

ich wäre auch auf jeden Fall dabei, aber einen PayPal-Account habe ich auch nicht. Ich frage deswegen mal meine Schwester, die müßte einen haben. ;-)

Andreas

[guest3164]

Hello, atari-home.de community 

Sorry for writing in English, but really I can't understand German.

Bernd told me about your project of giving me "a little present for the work I have done so far". This is really nice from you, that makes me happy.
As quoted above, I have just setup a Paypal Donate button on my website. I had that idea for a long time, so it was the opportunity to do it. Of course Paypal donations are not as nice as real presents, but I believe this is the most wide solution. Maybe that will give ideas to worldwide enthusiasts
Be sure that donations will improve my mood... but that's all what I promise 

And very, very important: don't forget other people!
A lot of people have worked on the Atari stuff lately: the ACP projet, operating systems, MiNT stuff, compilers... So if things are going forward, this is thanks to the efforts of everyone. Don't forget.

Once again, thanks for your support.