Hi,

There is a working TOS for the jaguar, it would be nicer to have a MINT port for the JAGUAR, together with the jaguar CF cartridge as storage medium it would be something nice. MINT on the jaguar could bring networking/internet closer to the console.

Would it be hard to adapt MINT to the jag?

TXG/MNX

I don't know if it was hard to port, because i have never used MINT and i know anything except the TOS.

For networking, we need in all kind of case to rewrite the low level driver, so personnaly i think if i had to write a driver, that's a special Jaguar and not for Mint, for using all Jag Power !!!

And doing the MINT port, need a lot of time, for me i have too much projects at this time for doing this kind of things (Some must be finished for the Atari Connexion) and i think that will not help some developpers for doing nice games


GT

Hello,

I agree with GT, a MINT port would probably require too much time regarding the benefits we could take from it after: it won't ease game creations in any means. However, I agree it would be fun to see this. By the way, do you have a link to the TOS port?

Seb

For what i know, there should be two different ways of porting to MiNT to Jaguar.
First would be to simply recompile the kernel in its 68000 version, it would be slow, wouldn't take any advantage of Tom and Jerry and so on.

Second one would be to redo a lot of its code to take advantage of the special chips of the Jag, this would take an awful amount of time and even if it will lead to a faster OS, i'm not sure of its true advantages to game development as my Jagware colleague mentioned it just before.

Despite all of this, i didn't mean it would not be interesting, especially thinking of the PS2 keyboard and mouse connector of the Jag CF, it would make a great "computer".

The link for TOS on jag here.

Porting MINT could be easier... look at this.
This document explains how-to port int to another platform with the minimal of patches. You find the info at the end of the document....

But for doing what ? That's the real question !!

All technical things must be rewritten at low level, even a single text output, we need to rewrite a lot of things for just ?


GT

Hi,

because MiNT is mainly a replacement for GEMDOS, you need also a BIOS/XBIOS (hardware driver) to run MiNT. A MiNT on my TT runs on top of TOS and uses the BIOS and XBIOS of TOS. So you have to start with a port of TOS. You can start with EmuTOS which is a free replacment for TOS. But if you want to run GEM on top of MiNT, you need also a AES replacement like N.AES, XAAES or MyAES and video drivers for the jaguar video system.

I think, a port of MiNT is not difficult. I think, most of the work is writing a BIOS and XBIOS for the jaguar hardware. But because of not much RAM i see not much sense in use a multitasking TOS like MiNT. It is only usefull, if you want to use the driver system and(or networking (xif, xdd, xfs)

Best Regards
Michael Bernstein

BIOS and XBIOS can be rewritten for the Jaguar, under JagCF system, we got additionnal memory ram, mouse and keyboard support, so we can rewrit it without a lot of problems, for AES and VDI that will be a little be harder but i think it's possible.

GT

Hi,



Yes, i dont expect much problems in write a BIOS and XBOS for the jaguar. The point is, that there is not really a choice of porting TOS or MiNT. To run MiNT, a TOS with BIOS and a few GEMDOS functions to process the auto folder is needed. MiNT is nearly hardware independat. There is no need in MiNT to take care of the jaguar hardware. This should be done in the hardware drivers which are part of the BIOS and XBIOS in a TOS port.

I expect most of the work in write a BIOS and XBIOS (and vdi drivers which take care of the jaguar hardware capabilities) and not in porting MiNT.



Nice, i can write jaguar software on the jaguar, maybe emulate the jaguar cd, ...

Best regards
Michael

Perhaps porting the TOS on Jaguar can be a good thing, with that we can use all 'properly' written programs. But the Vdi and Aes part will be a little hard, especially if we want to use Jag possibilities.

Perhaps i can use Devpac on my Jaguar in the futur who knows...



GT Devpac

We do have already a TOS for the Jaguar only this version needs to be changed a little bit.

Video mode, now uses 2 screens in st-medium resolution, must be patched to use st-low, st-medium in 1 screen can be done, I have seen high resolution modes done already...

- add JagCF support
- ramdisk support (was already implemented in this TOS)
- serial/midi support

I think when we could run TOS we can use STING/STIK aswell ;-) and CAB/Highwire ....

A port of the TOS for the CF would be great, the CF card would be the hard drive

Hi,



Do you speak about the TOS from Matthias Domin for the TJE card?

Yes, it is a running TOS and only some patches must be modified. But i think, not all BIOS functions are fully functional. The hardware is different. I expect, that some BIOS channels will not work. Maybe some other features had the same problem.



I would suggest to take a different way. The patches of the TOS, Matthias has used, had to be modified for the JagCF card. E.g. the bios functions for access tracks on mass storage are patched for the IDE port on the TJE card and they should also be modified for the CF card. For other bios functions, like serial support new patches are needed. In think, it is more easy to add this modification to the EmuTOS project. The same with the video driver. I expect, replacing the VDI screen driver in EmuTOS is much more easy than assemble the right patches for a TOS from Atari.

I think, we should ask the developers of EmuTOS if we can add another hardware target (Jaguar) and then add changes for the Jaguar hardware to the EmuTOS source tree. EmuTOS is a free (GPL) TOS replacement, based on the sources which ar publiched caldera.

Best regards
Michael

sounds good let us know what the emutosdevekopers gonna do

Any news about that? Making the Jaguar a TOS machine would also be very nice...

It would also be a time consuming project. And in the end, only "clean" TOS/GEM apps would run, anything accessing the hardware directly is out of the question (and that includes 99% of the ST games).

I don't mean it's not interesting (it is), but beside the challenge, I doubt it would be really useful...