[ECOS] Re: eCos on 80186?

[Grant Edwards <grante at visi dot 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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