Message-Id: <m0xWLZO-000S2AC@inti.gov.ar>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <salvador AT natacha DOT inti DOT gov DOT ar>
From: "Salvador Eduardo Tropea (SET)" <salvador AT inti DOT edu DOT ar>
Organization: INTI
To: Nate Eldredge <eldredge AT ap DOT net>, brettk AT compusmart DOT ab DOT ca
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 16:30:27 +0000
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Subject: Re: GCC on an 80286
CC: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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Nate Eldredge <eldredge AT ap DOT net> wrote:
> At 11:32  11/13/1997 GMT, Brett Kosinski wrote:
> >Hans Ecke <ecke AT coffee DOT geophysik DOT tu-freiberg DOT de> wrote:
> >>Hi all!
> >>
> >>I`m programming in Pascal and C aplications to aid in measuring various
> >>data. I would _really_ like to use GCC and GPC as the development
> >>plattform but I have one big problem : The computers which do the
> >>measurement are mostly 80286. So my question is : is there an
> >>implementation of GCC for the 80286? Crosscompiling? Since there are
> >>people working on Linux for the 8086 it should be possible somehow. The OS
> >>is plain MS-DOS 4.0+.
USE DOS 3.3, have less bugs! 4.0 was a very bad version. 5.0 was rewritted 
because the sources of 4.0 were too bad. Be careful.

> >Don't take this as gospel :) but AFAIK, there is no GCC for anything <
> >80386.  Why?  Because GCC is designed to write code for flat memory
> >protected mode, something only 386+ machines can do.
> You're basically right. GCC is by intention highly portable, but it was
> never intended to be so portable as to produce code for "weird" or "dink"
> machines. The GCC manual sums it up very well:
> 
>    The main goal of GNU CC was to make a good, fast compiler for
> machines in the class that the GNU system aims to run on: 32-bit
> machines that address 8-bit bytes and have several general registers.
> Elegance, theoretical power and simplicity are only secondary.
> 
> (IMHO, the 386 only marginally fits this description due to its
> register-starvedness.) GCC doesn't work on < 32-bit machines. The 286 is a
> glorified 16-bit machine. No go.

That isn't true. There are a port of GCC that compiles code for an 8 bits 
processor (a microcontroler, Cygnus made it and cost a lot of money). The problem 
is that nobody had motivations to write a description machine for 286. That's 
a very complex thing, even more when the processor isn't 32 bits and have 
a CISC architecture.

SET
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