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Re: eCos on 80186?
- From: Grant Edwards <grante at visi dot com>
- To: osrookie <osrookie95 at yahoo dot com>
- Cc: ecos-discuss at sources dot redhat dot com
- Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 10:35:27 -0500
- Subject: [ECOS] Re: eCos on 80186?
- References: <20040623152414.22317.qmail@web90007.mail.scd.yahoo.com>
On Wed, Jun 23, 2004 at 08:24:14AM -0700, osrookie wrote:
> I've seen that eCos relies heavily on gcc,
True.
> which is strictly a 32-bit compiler.
Not true.
There are gcc back-ends for a number of 8 and 16 bit
architectures (68HC12, AVR, H8, etc.)
That said, I don't recall there being an 8086 backend.
What GCC doesn't support is Intel's messed-up far/near/huge
pointer scheme where pointers to one data type might be a
different size than pointers to another data type. That means
that only 2 of the 4 8086 memory models could be supported (all
16-bit pointers or all 32-bit pointers). It would not be a
simple thing to support a memory model with 16-bit data
pointers and 32-bit function pointers.
> The options were to either port gcc to 16-bit
You mean port it to the 8086.
> or to port eCos to a different 16-bit compiler. Could any
> experts out there give a ballpark estimate of what it would
> take to get either of these done? Are there other easier
> options?
>
> I'm guessing that porting eCos to a different compiler would
> be the easier route - any open-source 16-bit compilers out
> there that you recommend?
At one point in time, there was somebody who claimed to have
ported eCos to another 32-bit compiler, but I don't know if
the work was ever made public...
--
Grant Edwards
grante@visi.com
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