Date:	Fri, 18 Apr 1997 15:17:45 -0400 (EDT)
From:	Pierre Phaneuf <pp AT 55-174 DOT hy DOT cgocable DOT ca>
Reply-To:	pierre AT tycho DOT com
cc:	opendos-developer AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: Usage of directory entries
In-Reply-To:	<Pine.BSI.3.96.970418152338.22800D-100000@hoth.amu.edu.pl>
Message-ID:	<Pine.LNX.3.95.970418151414.27261E-100000@55-174.hy.cgocable.ca>
MIME-Version:	1.0

On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Mark Habersack wrote:

> > 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
> But ELF is hardly documented. Sure, we can use BFD library, but no BFD
> maintainer works on/with DOS!

Have you seen the doc on COFF? Hardly more documented than ELF... We could
learn a few things by looking at libelf.so sources, 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
> I heard also about LCC and BCC - has anyone used them?

Heard about LCC but didn't use it. Isn't BCC the Borland C Compiler? ;-)
(if not, didn't hear about it)

> > 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.
> But what about all those XT/AT network terminals in use?

Yes, you're right... But I do think it should split off into OpenDOS/16
and OpenDOS/32, with of course as much shared code between them, but with
OpenDOS/16 working on a XT and OpenDOS/32 pushing a i386 as close to the
edge as possible! 

Pierre Phaneuf

- Raw text -