From fnaumann@mail.cs.uni-magdeburg.de Wed Dec 10 20:35:20 2003 Subject: [MiNT] This fight From: Mark Duckworth To: mint@fishpool.com Content-Type: text/plain Message-Id: <1071083501.13241.12.camel@pikachu.atari-source.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.4.5 Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 14:11:41 -0500 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Delivered-To: mint@fishpool.com Delivered-To: mint@lists.fishpool.fi X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: mint-bounce@lists.fishpool.fi Errors-to: mint-bounce@lists.fishpool.fi X-original-sender: mduckworth@atari-source.com Precedence: bulk List-help: List-unsubscribe: List-ID: X-List-ID: If I may throw my hand in here, First of all perhaps I am biased, my personal opinion is that Aranym is the single most worthy "emulator" (It's a virtual machine, people!) in existence. Ever take a look at the pc world? Fact is many organizations use virtual machines on IBM mainframes, using vmware or ibm's proprietary. They also use vmware to do multiplatform development from one workstation. VM's are a concept that's here to stay and Aranym is one good damn implementation of one if I do say so myself. I dare to say VMs are a big part of the future of computing in general. Now, as far as this discussion goes. Let's take a look at some other platforms. The PC has ACPI and APM (mostly just APM) support for handling power and sleep and so forth. The mac has had built in support for such things from nearly day one. The Atari in general has lagged, never having any sort of soft power or power management features whatsoever. Thus, now when such things get implemented there's liable to be a lot of work to do, and possibly duplicated work. The fact is, the natfeats idea is a clever idea that MiNT should support. Future hardware might have a natfeat driver that runs (like the ACP machine). If more than one Atari emu support natfeats AND it's possible to develop natfeats type drivers for other actual atari hardware, it should be implemented into the mint kernel and that's that. You guys get so huffy having philosophical discussions but what you don't realize is that anyone who loves or cares about atari will be buying a clone regardless of whether or not they have aranym for free. The allure of seeing just what the "Real thing" is like is too strong. Same with Milan still having his Mega STe. But aranym makes SOOO many things so much easier. Look at my falcon hw probs. Gaim rpms would not have been possible without aranym because in order to compile an rpm it has to make it through the build process without you hitting make 4 times to get past internal compiler errors. No blame assigned, just saying hardware is getting old, atari hardware has always been dodgy, isn't it nice to have something else? Aranym is very very viable so the MiNT kernel should cater to it at least a tiny bit. Look at linux. Hardware mfr's came in an implemented acpi. Linux kernel developers didn't say "ah fuck you, we already use apm" no they implement ACPI. Natfeats is just another way. And there's probably less than 100 people in the world that truly care about this Atari stuff! So why not? Calm down people... you'll lose your hair! On a side note, when people get so defensive and so agressive about something, it's usually because they are threatened. In this case they are threatened by just how viable aranym really is.... It's scary but true. Look at me, I think I am like other atari lovers. I love aranym and I will use it. But I still have my falcon, I will stil get nature gfx card, and I will still get the ACP machine when finished. Think of aranym as a way to show people what they could have had with a CT60 but ignored when they didn't sign up. Personally if I went from a MSTe to a well-setup aranym I'd kick my own butt for not signing up on the ct60 list! Meh! Mark http://portal.atari-source.com