Re: ELKS CVS imported into Git with all history

Kirn Gill
2012-02-08T02:56:16Z

On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 16:38, Jody Bruchon <jody@jodybruchon.com> wrote:
> Additionally, I'd like to assemble a list of open-source compilers that can
> build for 8086 and either are targeted to other 16-bit CPUs or can be
> relatively easily retargeted (I use that term loosely with compilers. If
> anyone has suggestions for alternative compilers, please email me with them,
> and I'll build a list and examine the merits of each against the others. The
> only ones I know of are tcc (by Fabrice Bellard), SDCC (targets Z80 but
> maybe we can retarget it)...and the venerable Bruce's C Compiler (bcc) which
> we already use. I dug up the original (non-Dev86) source for it and the 6809
> target parts are in that version, so maybe I can figure out how to retarget
> it if I can dig up a 6809 emulator somewhere.
>
> Jody Bruchon
>
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-8086" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at Â http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

I think that, going forward, we should consider adding support for
more modern 32-bit architectures into ELKS. After all, the "E" is
"Embeddable", and a lot of embedded systems today are based on
low-cost 386 clones and ARM chips, with the occasional MIPS system
here and there. System memory is usually within a range between a few
hundred KiB to a few MiB. Think of JavaCards, systems where .NET Micro
Edition or J2ME would be used, that sort of thing. After all, the
"CPU" targets in ELKS already stand at "8086", "80286", "80386", and
"80486" - someone already had some plans in this direction - and code
that's flexible enough to support all the main features of each would
probably be highly portable to nearly any 16-bit or 32-bit system.

As for interesting 16-bit systems, I think the 65C816 and the 80286
(in protected mode) are worth checking out. 286 PM increases the
segmentation to 4KiB offsets, identical to the 6809 and the 65C816.
However, the 6809's only has 20-bit addressing overall, whereas the
65C816 and the 286 have 24-bit addressing - having 16MiB of RAM to
play with isn't bad, either. This makes the PC/AT and the Apple IIgs
as first-to-mind targets.
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-8086" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html