Please refer to this page for all your Atari on coldfire needs!

Current Projects:
Atari Coldfire Project: Progress: Not stalled but slow with 2 people working.
Didier Mequignon's Efforts: Progress:
Currently Didier has TOS v4.04 running on the Coldfire board. He is using this test to mainly test his code for the CTPCI but this has huge huge huge benefit for those looking to move to Coldfire. There's no disk support on the coldfire evaluation board so right now only TFTP to a ramdisk. Check out the pictures of TOS running in high rez and high color native with no drivers except in TOS itself!

Discussion of options (Hardware):
The ACP is a project to create a wholly new motherboard based on the Coldfire processor. Creating an entire motherboard is a difficult and slow process but will result in the best possible product. Users who wish to use coldfire should pledge their support to this project as ultimately projects like these will keep TOS and Atari moving forward. Since the project has few volunteers, progress is slow (but not stalled).

Another option, that I chose to chase is using preexisting Coldfire boards and adapting them for our needs. One thing I found was the Coldfire evaluation board, direct from Freescale. This board is low cost and comes in Mini ITX form factor, meaning it could be cased in a standard mini PC case. A gracious donation from Freescale resulted in 5 of the LITE version of this board being distributed to the community. Didier has one of these, plus several other people whom I've not heard anything from yet :-/. The LITE version of the board can be had for $350 and in the end will be possible to setup a full Coldfire system for $350 + a couple PCI cards and disk drive. The much much more attractive option however is the M5485EVB. This is a faster Coldfire processor and the associated evaluation board has more features like 128MB of RAM instead of 64MB. It also has disk, USB host support, PS2 support for keyboard and mouse, etc. It's very much so like a full fledged computer - except powered by a Coldfire chip. This board is available for $850. Building on this, you could have a top of the line coldfire atari system for $1000 or so! Think about the possibilities eh?

System Options:
ACP - Ideal - Longest to implement, well over $1000

M5485EVB - Next most idea, comes with 2 PCI slots and a host of options. Can be a full computer system almost out of the box. $850 + accessories

M5484LITE - The current donated hardware that is being developed first. Because this is not a full computer system, the current idea is this: Use M5484LITE + Mini ITX case. Then use a PCI riser card to get 2 PCI slots from the one slot. Then use 1 USB 2.0 card and 1 PCI video card. The video is done, but the USB would need a lot of work. Once USB drivers are done for mass storage (disk), HID (keyboard and mouse), and net (ethernet networking), the system will then be primarily expandable through USB. This will result in an ultra cheap deployment but some slowness due to the USB for sure. Drawbacks are NO RAM upgradability. THOUGH the SOM is upgradable which means you will be able to upgrade RAM and CPU simultaneously.

Once we have a working TOS system, I could easily buy all the prerequisite component, assemble a full working coldfire system and distribute it to waiting users for only a small price on time. If we did a preorder, we might be able to get volume discounts!

Discussion of options (Software):
When it comes to running Atari on Coldfire there are some things to understand about the Coldfire architecture itself. Coldfire is a SUBSET of 680x0 and this has several important implications. The primary one being that in order to run our normal 680x0 code on the Coldfire, the missing instructions will need to be emulated. This causes a speed penalty, but this method gets us up and running immediatately. The way to do this is with something called CF68Klib and Didier is doing this with his TOS port. To run TOS on the coldfire, it's most definitely the case that CF68Klib will always be necessary.

BUT we don't need to depend on TOS. We have a completely open source TOS system from the ground up that can be recompiled for Coldfire native eliminating the need for CF68Klib. This will be the natural progression and will make things much faster. If we're lucky we might be able to boot up this system, and use CF68Klib simultaneously to run non-coldfire applications. Imagine you might be someday running your coldfire mint system at full speed and still be able to run ancient closed source applications that nobody was able to recompile! I don't know how easily possible this is, but I know this is possible. Look at Mac OSX and Rosetta! Same concept.

Current Progress:
ACP - In development, status unknown
M5484LITE - In development, TOS runs, high resolution video, no disk support, no networking, no USB, no freemint, no audio, M5484LITE has limited unupgradable RAM at 64MB.
M5485EVB - Not in development. I cannot afford the $850 to purchase it right now. There's not much point in spending the money anyway, since we need to get M5484LITE working first for the large amount of users with light finances.

My Status: I'm currently working on acquiring an ATI video card so that I can test out Didier's TOS. Once I get it running, I can figure out if his board is damaged and that's why his CF slot doesn't work. Once I get my ethernat I can start learning about USB and work on USB for the coldfire. Once we have disk and keyboard and mouse, I can focus on starting to run freemint and perhaps getting Emutos build natively for Coldfire. All takes too long I know, but hopefully soon.