Re: [B2-devel] B2+SS=?

[<gb...@di...>]

Hi,

> Because of the stagnant state of BeOS/ppc, the superiority of open sourced
> software, and the success of Basilisk II, Marc Hellwig and I (actually just
> me because Marc left the decision to me) have decided to make SheepShaver
> open source, too.

Great!

>  1. The most important issue to be resolved is of course: how should this
>     combined emulator be named? :-)

- PDM Emulator
Piltdown Man was the first PowerMac prototype which had a Centris case
<http://www.applefritter.com/>

Or "Portable and Definitive Macintosh Emulator" ;-)

>  2. SheepShaver only has native PowerPC support. There is no PowerPC emulation
>     for other systems yet (I've started with a simple interpreter but this
>     would need a lot more work to be usable, let alone efficient enough).

Talking about PPC Emulation, I realized when I finally set up a PPC
cross-compilation system that PSIM was only twice as slow as UAE on the
benchtest program that comes with PSIM. Taking into account the fact
that PSIM emulates a complete MMU, that's not so bad, imho.

There are other alternatives but I don't know their current status
- Lauri's interpreter (most recent ;-)
- Bill Huey's JIT Compiler
- Bill Meyer's interpretive core (defintively stalled)

> In any case, I would like to have at least one more stable release of
> Basilisk II (with JIT) before starting with this (probably not this year
> any more).

Bernie Meyer has just released a new version of his JIT Compiler. That's
really impressive but changes were so radical that this will take more
time than I expected, and I am running into three very busy weeks :-/

BTW Christian, a PPC Emulation is a great project and I am willing to
contribute. It happens that I am in final year (in computer science) now
and I have a 4-month training period (internship) to carry out in
February. Pure dream: what if a great company committed to Open Source
Software gives me a chance to participate to such a project and others ?
;-)

Bye,
Gwenole.