Path: csiph.com!au2pb.net!feeder.erje.net!1.eu.feeder.erje.net!news.swapon.de!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: TheJ Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2 Subject: Re: Porting GSOS to Single board computers Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2015 05:22:33 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Mac GUI Lines: 48 Message-ID: References: <2088642188460528840.984350mjmahon-aol.com@news.giganews.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2015 05:22:33 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: mx02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="ac9e0e4d7dd3957fb97803ee6801bab8"; logging-data="9911"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+OkE34Eaf3fyAklpBS2/W4" User-Agent: Mac GUI Usenet In-Reply-To: <2088642188460528840.984350mjmahon-aol.com@news.giganews.com> Cancel-Lock: sha1:iCU3NnEd454jaXAOwMad0QGOE/I= Xref: csiph.com comp.sys.apple2:25477 What caught my attention is that in the video displaying GS.OS 6.0.2 being built, it is being done in MPW32. As far as I can tell, MPW never supported 65816 assembly. It supported 68K and PowerPC assembly, as well as C, C++ and Pascal. So if it the code isn't 65816 ASM, then it is quite possibly Pascal or C. There ARE files in the video that have "C" and "PASCAL" references in the names. The whole point of my post is: if it is being compiled from a high level language, what's stopping it from being targeted to a different hardware platform? Michael pointed out the sound and graphics would be a problem since the hardware is different. J Michael J. Mahon wrote: > Steve Nickolas wrote: >> On Wed, 5 Aug 2015, TheJ wrote: >> >>> A thought experiment... >>> >>> Now that the full source for GSOS is available, what would the >>> likelyhood of >>> it being ported to a single board computer like the Raspberry Pi be? >>> >>> What would the major sticking points be? >> >> RPi has a completely different CPU arch and I think a good chunk of the >> OS is written in ASM. If you were talking a 65C816-based SBC, it might be >> another story. >> >> -uso. > > But the graphics architecture would remain a big issue, and a 65C816 > doesn't have enough horsepower to emulate the IIgs graphics (not to > mention > the Ensoniq chip). > > Consider that the IIgs is *already* a single-board computer. And also > consider running a good IIgs emulator on the RPi--like Apple Pi. > > Porting a complete GUI OS to a very different architecture when > portability > was never a design consideration is a high difficulty job. >