Re: [B2-devel] 3 questions

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

Hi,

> I'm following this list and I've seen some emails mentioning further
> development of B2 to run OS 8.6 and 9.x - is this for the X86 platform? 
> if
> so, whats it current status?

This is not B2 but SheepShaver, though it now shares around 80% of B2 
sources, IIRC. SheepShaver is a runtime environment to run MacOS on PPC 
machines. If it can be extended to work with my (ROM, OS) couples then 
it will likely be extended with a software PowerPC emulator for 
non-native ports.

I am currently reworking the rom_patches so that they could be more 
generic and hopefully work with my NewWorld ROMs (MacOS 8.6+). I have 
just had a hacking party with NOP'ing instructions that check the 
performance monitor and other (unknown to me) SPRs, namely 944 and 951. 
I am almost finished with patch_nanokernel_boot() now.

> Another question - is there an open source or commercial Mac emulator 
> that
> emulates PowerPC chip and can run OS 9 that you know of?

I don't know of any that is available yet. Samuel from the Mac-on-Linux 
project also plans to add a PPC emulator. But I'd prefer contributing to 
SheepShaver since it has a higher-level and more challenging emulation 
engine.

> Last question (this one for Gwenole) - any chance that the JIT 
> modifications
> will be soon rolled into the main B2 tree?

Ah yes, I forgot to check for something about that today. I am willing 
to include the JIT compiler to B2 1.0 since it is stable enough for me. 
Besides, the JIT core is already used in "production", as far as AmigaXL 
(and Amithlon) is concerned. Indeed, I merged with their latest publicly 
available code. Besides, there will probably be more people testing it 
that way.

Bye,
Gwenole.