Mail Archives: opendos/1997/04/17/09:20:57
On Thu, 17 Apr 1997, Mark Habersack wrote:
> > Agreed. FAT32 isn't much of interest. For the tools, we'd need dynamically
> > linkable libraries...
> True. We only need to decide on the DLL format we chose.
Gone as we are to using Linux code, how 'bout ELF? Maybe COFF, but I don't
like this format much... Except for DJGPP, I think it is mostly used in
commercial Unices... Not sure about that. ELF should be fine. But if I
remember right, things like DLLs need protected mode to be done in an
efficient manner...
> The reason I'm writing it in asm is easy: I don't want to use any commercial
> 16-bit compilers. NASM is free, and available for everyone. I cannot use
> DJGPP 'coz it's i386+ bound and besides it works in protected mode which is a
> great pain in fast access to hard disk (and I need direct access to disk
> structures). BTW. I was thinking whether I can program the driver using i386+
> instructions? After all DOS is an 8086+ OS and not i386+! What do you think?
FreeDOS takes great pains in being a 8086+ OS and uses a free C compiler
that actually comes with the OS... Maybe look that way? Heard the language
is rather minimal (I think it is called Micro-C), has been described like
a "structured assembler"... (though I think C is just that! ;-) ) Does
16-bit real mode... But isn't OpenDOS going to be modern and everything?
The initial version being 16-bit because NW-DOS 7 was, but boldly going
where no DOS has gone before? So probably 386 instructions are ok.
> > Get the Linux latest sources... The 2.1.something...
> Got sources for 2.0.0 - has anything important changed in ext2fs and VFAT
> drivers?
Hmm... I think not, maybe some minimal debugging, since ext2fs and VFAT
modules are quite tested and solid. Most of the new things are in the
networking department (adding native NetBEUI, improving IPX support).
Pierre Phaneuf
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