Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 22:37:53 -0800 (PST)
Message-Id: <199711140637.WAA20722@adit.ap.net>
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To: brettk AT compusmart DOT ab DOT ca, djgpp AT delorie DOT com
From: Nate Eldredge <eldredge AT ap DOT net>
Subject: Re: GCC on an 80286
Precedence: bulk

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+.
>
>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.

Nate Eldredge
eldredge AT ap DOT net