{"id":20938,"date":"2022-12-05T10:42:28","date_gmt":"2022-12-05T10:42:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/05\/brand-new-linux-drm-display-driver-for-1992s-atari-falcon-the-register\/"},"modified":"2022-12-05T10:42:28","modified_gmt":"2022-12-05T10:42:28","slug":"brand-new-linux-drm-display-driver-for-1992s-atari-falcon-the-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/05\/brand-new-linux-drm-display-driver-for-1992s-atari-falcon-the-register\/","title":{"rendered":"Brand new Linux DRM display driver \u2013 for 1992’s Atari Falcon \u2022 The Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Feature<\/span> A patch to add a new display driver for Linux is being reviewed. What’s unusual is that it’s for a machine released 30 years ago.<\/p>\n

In the words of developer Geert Uytterhoeven<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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This RFC patch series adds a DRM driver for the good old Atari ST\/TT\/Falcon hardware.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Uytterhoeven is the maintainer of Linux\/m68k<\/a>, the Motorola port of the Linux kernel, and one of the interesting things about the new driver<\/a> is that he developed it entirely<\/a> on emulated hardware, using an interesting virtual machine called ARAnyM<\/a> by Czech developer Petr Stehl\u00edk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even more unexpected is that this isn’t the only 680×0 VM for Linux kernel developers. QEMU 6.0<\/a> also has a new target, known as m68k<\/a>, implemented by Laurent Vivier<\/a>. This is for a nonexistent Virtual M68k Machine<\/em>. The new QEMU machine type uses some technology from the Goldfish emulator used in Android development:<\/p>\n

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The most powerful m68k machine emulated by QEMU is a Quadra 800<\/a>, but this machine is very limited: only 1 GiB of memory and only some specific interfaces, with no DMA.<\/p>\n

The Virtual M68k Machine is based on Goldfish interfaces defined by Google for Android simulator. It uses Goldfish-rtc (timer and RTC), Goldfish-pic (PIC) and Goldfish-tty (for early tty).<\/p>\n

The machine is created with 128 virtio-mmio buses, and they can be used to add serial console, GPU, disk, NIC, HID, hwrng, 9PFS\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This description is taken from Vivier’s patch<\/a>, which adds support for the machine to the Linux kernel.<\/p>\n

The TT and Falcon were the final two models in the Atari ST family, collectively affectionately known as the “Jackintosh”<\/a> after Jack Tramiel, the late founder of Commodore<\/a>. The TT 030<\/a> ($2995 in 1990) was Atari’s stab at the professional three-box desktop workstation market, with a 32MHz 68030, on-board SCSI, one VME-bus expansion slot and the option of Atari System V Unix<\/a>. Following the TT’s lack of commercial success, Atari did a cost-reduced single-box version, the Falcon 030. Launched in 1992 at $999, the Falcon lost the VME slot but added an IDE controller and a Motorola 56000 digital signal processor as standard, making it popular with musicians, as Sound On Sound described<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Falcon was not a big hit and was discontinued in 1993 along with the TT, but it generated enough interest that Atari worked on a 68040-based successor<\/a>. C-Lab, the original authors of what is now Apple’s Logic, bought the line, relaunched it as the Falcon Mk I<\/a>, then did two successor models, the Falcon Mk II<\/a>, and finally the rackmount Falcon Mk X<\/a>. AtariMania<\/a> has a scan of a C-Lab ad<\/a> for the Mk II, and at least one Redditor owns<\/a> one.<\/p>\n

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