http://www.microapl.co.uk/Porting/Mimic68.html

Doesn't MorphOS already do this?

That company has been around doing this kind of work since 1996, so I would be surprised if they had not already been discussed at length in the past. Perhaps the Mimic68k is a new development for them, but they (or Freescale) have many other tools for 68k to PPC conversion/translation that appear to have been available for a long time.

Interesting reading though. I wonder if any of the tools listed have already been used, or could be used for improving the speed of Trance for MorphOS, or Petunia for OS4?

I am a little surprised that many other companies would still be using any 68k based code today and not have made the migration to a different modern processor already, so the services of this company are probably not needed much anymore.

@XDelusion,

Yeah, it is called Trance, and it is the JIT translation of 68k code to PPC code built into MorphOS.

The Mimic68k might be a little different and could be better or worse than what we already have. I am pretty sure the MorphOS developers are already aware of this company and their products, since they have been around for many years.

> Perhaps the Mimic68k is a new development for them

http://web.archive.org/web/19970412235028/http://www.microapl.co.uk/Porting/Mimic68.html

> I wonder if any of the tools listed have already been used, or could be used
> for improving the speed of Trance for MorphOS, or Petunia for OS4?

Not likely, as their tools seem to be mere interpreters whereas Trance and Petunia are JIT compilers.

> I am a little surprised that many other companies would still be using
> any 68k based code today and not have made the migration to a different
> modern processor already

The m68k architecture is still being used in the embedded space today, even when there won't be any newly developed chips implementing this ISA. For an exhaustive list of m68k chips which are still in production by Freescale today as they're still in demand by customers refer to:

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/taxonomy.jsp?code=68K

> so the services of this company are probably not needed much anymore.

At least the companies still using m68k today will have to switch one day and that's when MicroAPL's services may come in handy for them.

570$ a license (duh its for 5 users if i got it right).
maybe morphos could be marketed as a development kit (which includes not only ide and such but an os as well:)? for that price they could get 2-3 licenses - but as complete systems with hw as well (pmacs or perhaps 2 mini also comes out for that price).
its a nice, really fast, small system with integrated 68kjit, easy to use and has ide's and a lot of tools for 68k - perfect for such jobs, innit?

> 570$ a license

Here http://www.microapl.co.uk/Porting/Mimic68Prices.html reads "$5750".