19 Feb
2002
19 Feb
'02
8:06 a.m.
In article by Rhys Weatherley:
On a lark, I downloaded the v7 sources and started to
"upgrade" them so the userland can build and run on top
of modern OS kernels such as Linux. The bulk of libc
is the same (warts and all), with the "sys" layer replaced
with modern syscalls.
Perhaps it is a bit "sacrilegious", but I believe it makes
the code more accessible for experimentation, and it
should solve the "how do we get a PDP-11 compiler"
problem: we use the original hosted on top of a modern
kernel as a cross-compiler.
Hi Rhys, just looked at your page. I liked the comment:
Using these libraries, it is possible to port and run the old v7 command-line
utilities. Eventually, it should be possible to run the original PDP-11
toolchain as a cross-compiler and hence be able to build an original v7
system without needing to use a PDP-11 emulator to run the old binaries.
Strangely enough, I took a slightly different tack than you did to obtain
the same result. Have a look at Apout at
ftp://minnie.tuhs.org/pub/PDP-11/Sims/Apout/README
8-)
Warren