30 Jan
2002
30 Jan
'02
7 p.m.
On Wednesday 30 January 2002 10:18, P.A.Osborne wrote:
On Tue, Jan 29, 2002 at 05:57:58PM -0800, Aaron J.
Grier wrote:
Well that is what I intended, certainly as a starting
reference
for floppy, console drivers etc - IDE can wait till later.
Initially I would like to get v6 or 7 (probably 6 as the Lions
commentary is available) booting a kernel.
Anyhow I have started gathering the tools (Watcom C compiler now
open source and free! www.openwatcom.org) nasm etc etc so I
should now have enough bits and bobs to compile 16 bit code - as
gcc doesnt.
Of course if someone wants to rewrite the version of cc that comes
with V6 so it generates x86 binaries rather than pdp binaries, that
would be the utimate aim I guess. That way you could run V6 on a
PC and get it to compile its own kernel....
Getting the ported kernel compiled while running itself will not be a
serious problem independent from the compiler as long as it's source
code is available and it is written for the machine to compile on.
Porting a compiler from one operating system to another is a fool
compared with porting an operating system from one machine to
another. Give me the port of Unix and I'll give you the ported x86 C
compiler... ;-)
Having had a rummage and a chat with acolleague here at
UKC - it seems that V6 will be easier than V7, partially because
of the Lions commentary - but mainly because 286 protected mode
gives a very similar handling on memory management as the PDP did.
Yes, and I think that v7 was a further development from v6.
Developing something further is always more fun and by this more easy
than developing something back.
Sven