[Coco] The torch is past, the spirit lives on... :-) (OLPC, simon6809, and Dunfield tools)

[John W. Linville]

Inspired by the Fest, I got my Dunfield (http://www.dunfield.com/) 6809
compiler's runtime library retargetted to support the simon6809 board
(http://five.pairlist.net/pipermail/coco/2008-March/035370.html).
It really wasn't too hard -- Dave's toolchain is actually quite
nice to use.  His compiler is a little quirky, but quite capable.
It's only major drawback is that it is DOS-based, but it seems to work
just fine in DOSBox.  I guess that is close enough to Linux friendly
for me, all things considered. :-)

I also brought my son's XO laptop from the OLPC project
(http://www.laptop.org) to the Fest.  It's focus on child friendliness,
it's abundance of available programming activities, and its overall
"cuteness" gives it a personality that reminds me of the CoCo --
although it lacks a cartridge port...hmmm...

Then it struck me -- since the XO runs Linux and I was doing my
simon6809 stuff on Linux (including DOSBox for the Dunfield tools),
I should combine the two.  For me, this comes awfully close to
recapturing some of the CoCo spirit that most modern computers lack.
So, I took a picture:

	http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/linville/coco-6809/xo-and-simon6809.jpg

I'm posting it here mostly to make Boisy jealous for missing the
Fest...

If anyone else acquired a simon6809 kit and wants to use the Dunfield
tools with it, let me know.  I'll be happy to tell you how to make
the appropriate modifications. [1]

Happy hacking!

John

[1] In the back of my mind I recall that Dunfield allowed distributing
modified versions of their runtime files under some conditions.
However, I don't remember the details and can't find any online
reference to confirm that.  I know Dave Dunfield used to be on this
list, so maybe he can clear things up for me?  I recall that he seemed
like a clueful guy. :-)
-- 
John W. Linville
linville at tuxdriver.com