Apollo fpga 68k compatible accelerator cards

[John_A]

Well, I dont know if this has been posted here before, the search didnt return anything.

Anyway, the topic of configuring a fpga to run 68k mac code has been discussed a couple of times.

I didnt know this, but there is a accelerator card solution for the amiga 500 & 600 that uses a coldfusion fpga. From what Ive seen it looks quite impressive.

http://www.apollo-accelerators.com

In one of the youtube videos, a guy emulates a mac and run system 7 at speeds that probably outclasses every 68k mac by a significant margin.

The mac related stuff starts at 18.54.

 

[Gorgonops]

The Apollo accelerators have been much discussed in several threads. I'm sort of confused what you're talking about when you say "ColdFusion FPGA", however; the Apollos are not based on Coldfire (I presume that is what you meant), they use a proprietary much-more-compatible-with-68k softcore.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, I wouldn't hold your breath for these to be adapted to Macs any time soon. The development team is small, very secretive and hasn't shown a whole lot of interest in targeting anything but Amigas.

 

[johnklos]

I plan to get one. The Amiga 600 is the cutest way to show off what m68k was all about - good old Amiga games, composite video output, 9 pin joystick ports - but it can now also show off the best of the m68k Mac world, too. Since the Apollo has HDMI, it can be connected anywhere now.

ShapeShifter is really a thing to see on an Amiga with an m68060, so this would really be fast.

I'd really be interested if they properly implemented an MMU in the FPGA since I'd love a super fast machine for compiling NetBSD pkgsrc binaries, but that'll have to wait.

With regards to Macs, there really aren't that many Macs that have socketed m68000. But the Apollo folks are now doing a version for the A500, so one for a Mac isn't that unlikely. What'd really take some energy is adapting the Mac ROM to use 32 bit addressing and taking advantage of the memory on an Apollo...

 

[Themk]

I'd love a super fast machine for compiling NetBSD pkgsrc binaries, but that'll have to wait.

John, I use NetBSD extensively on my Quadra, and I can wholeheartedly agree with you! 33MHz 68040 is not as fast as I would like on the compile times. I realize that's just the way it is, and I shouldn't really be complaining, but, accelerated builds would always be a nice thing [] ]'>.