Date:	Fri, 2 Dec 1994 11:14:35 -0500
From:	Eric William Hey <ewhey AT math DOT uwaterloo DOT ca>
Subject:	Embedded 486 Development
To:	DJGPP users list <djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu>

Hi, 
I'm in a team that is currently developing a microkernal development 
oriented educational course.  

I'm investigating using GCC to develop the kernals in a UNIX to 486 cross 
compilation environment.  So we need a linker with libraries that don't 
expect MS-DOS, but only a small subset of functions that we include.

I'm not much of a compiler programmer, I am an assembly programmer and a C 
programmer.  I only have a vague knowledge of how a C compiler turns C 
code into linked machine code.  Someone with this knowledge would be an 
invaluable contact for me.

At this time the embedded style system has a bootstrap, a system 
initialization routine(sets up 32-bit protected mode), and a 
bootloader(to bring raw binaries into RAM).  
  
Therefore we need a compiler environment that will compile C code for an 
80486 processor that doesn't assume that there is much of an underlying 
operating system.  There will only be general libraries for serial, 
video, and keyboard.

We are considering modifying a package embedded c compiler, but I believe 
that there is no reason why the project can't become free material for 
everyone's benefit.
This project will become available under GNU when completed.  It will 
include everything I've discussed with source code, and some very 
comprehensive guides for individuals to program their own operating systems.

Any ideas, suggestions, discussions?

In particular where can I go to get this into the GNU world?  One might 
say this is a project to port GCC to embedded 80486 systems.

Thanks very much...

________________________
Eric Hey
ewhey AT math DOT uwaterloo DOT ca
________________________

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