[NTLK] MPW simulator to run ARM6asm etc.

Matthias Melcher mm at matthiasm.com
Sun Sep 1 10:55:58 EDT 2013


On 01.09.2013, at 16:27, Frank Lowney <frank.lowney at me.com> wrote:
> Could this sort of thing  not be done in Sheepshaver  on a modern Mac?  I have Sheepshaver running on my Intel Mac so that I can work on old Hypercard stacks in MacOS 9.
> See: http://www.emaculation.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=20
> Apparently it has been largely or completely re-done so is much better than it was before.


Hi Frank, hi all,

First of, the MPW simulator is done. It's working well enough to run all the MPW Tools that we need to compile a ROM Extension, or to cimple and link native C code. We are currently trying to tie the tools together so that MPW plus NEWT/0 can recompile pretty much all sorts of code and generate packages.

To answer your question: yes, Sheepshaver and Basilisk are fantastic pieces of software that can run these tools as well. However, they are part of an entire environment that has little access to the world outside. To be able to use MPW in SheepShaver, a developer needs to understand MacOS and all the weirdness of MPW.

With the simulator, the MPW tools behave just as if they were OS X or Linux or MSWindows tools. We can make them part of our modern powerful build environments that use real-time syntax checking and all those nifty features that were invented in the last 20 years, and still produce 100% compatible NewtonOS software.

For example, Paul was able to recreate the Einstein ROM Extension without starting MacOS, Echart was able to compile Blunt2, and I was able to recompile parts of the Newton ROM using my own source code. I could have never done that on MacOS.


What's next:

Well, I am currently working on a way to create C-like code from existing ROM code, replace buggy parts (Y10K, etc.), add new features, and recompile everything into a working ROM again. With the "new" old tools, this works very well so far. I managed to remove a function from the ROM, rewrite it in C++, compile it, and re-implant it into the ROM. That way, I have just recreated 0.001% of the ROM that are now copyright free. Only 99.999% or so left ;-)

I will give more details on that during this week.


 - Matthias


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