🚀 go-pugleaf

Hello all,

In Info-Atari16 Digest #16, cca.ucsf.edu!wet!nut@cgl.ucsf.edu  (adam tilghman)
writes:

>  After reading several descriptions of TOS 1.6, it sounds like it would not
>be an impossibility to drop a 68030 into a 1.6-equipped machine.  Will Atari
>market 1.6 to us 1.0-1.4 peoples for that purpose?  I like my Mega and do
>not plan on upgrading to an STe (for the same reasons that I sold my 1040).
>I realise that this is not exactly an easy question for those Atari
>employees on the net, as it is more a legal issue than a technical one =:(

   Sorry, but this technically impossible.  The 1.6 version is bigger than the
available ROM space in a regular ST/Mega, and is installed at a different
location in the CPU address space.

   Also, I doubt that 1.6 checks for CPUs other than a 68000.  TOS 3.0, on the
other hand, does just what you want.  3.0 is the TOS that comes with the TT.
It won't work in STs for the same reasons.

   The only way you still can achieve your goal of having an '020 or '030 in
your machine is to take TOS 1.4, disassemble it, fix the '020/'030 problems
and reassemble it.  This works just fine, but it is a bit of work.  As a side
effect, GEM is 9 % faster using an 68000 (haven't measured other performances
yet), and the ROM code size is decreased by several KB, giving you space to add
some extra goodies on your own.  While you're at it, you can fix all of those
(known) bugs that still lurk in there.  Of course, programs that illegaly use
hardcoded ROM addresses will fail, but I haven't found such a program yet, at
least not one that I'd miss.

   In Germany, this is entirely legal, as long as you don't distribute such
a TOS to others (without written permission from Atari, which is probably
hard to get :-)  Me, all I need is an affordable 68030 board, like the one
recently discussed here (if I remember correctly, Dave Small was one of the
developers, but he has been silent on that topic for some while).

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