[Sdcc-user] Re: [TINI] Any one used sdcc (small device c compiler) for tini?

[Karl B. <ka...@tu...>]

Hi All,

You can use SDCC for TINI development, I've played around with it,
and Kevin Vigor is the one who has done most of the SDCC code
updates to support the DS80C390.

There are probably just a few other people who have experience with
DS80C390 and SDCC.  What Kevin and I have found is that SDCC has
some shortcomings in the area of developing large C programs.
Kevin was working on a fix for these, but it turned into a rather
large re-work of the code generator, which he has not finished.

The shortcomings are in the area of stack and memory allocation.
The current version will use(overflow) temporary/stack
variables into the 8051's small local memory.  As a program gets
bigger, it eventually overruns its this limited internal RAM.
Preferably, a large model would exist which would use external
ram exclusively.

The existing SDCC generates code for the DS80C390, but it is
relatively untested.  And when you add in the problem of overflowing
the local RAM as a program gets bigger, this limits the size of
the program you can develop.

SDCC has command line switches to generate code which works
with the mode2 24-bit flat addressing of the DS80C390.  But you
can also run standard 8051 code on the TINI in compatibility mode 0.
TINI can be used as a very nice general 8051 development platform,
and in fact other compilers could be used in the standard mode 0.
(Although someone else had reported on the TINI list some time ago
about some incompatibilities with some C compilers code and some
technical aspect of the DS80C390, I forget the details, I didn't run
into any of these specific problems with SDCC.)

So you can use SDCC for development on TINI,
but be prepared to spend a lot of time looking at disassembly
listings and tracking down bugs/shortcomings in the code and
possibly becoming a developer of SDCC for this purpose.  It
certainly can add up to a large investment in time.  I've got
a few odd examples and notes on my www.turbobit.com web site
for anyone crazy enough to attempt this.

Cheers,

Karl.

-------------------------
At 12:40 PM 7/29/00 -0500, you wrote:
>
>
>Johan Knol wrote:
>
>> I read that sdcc (http://sdcc.sourceforge.net/) now has limited support for
>> the DS80C390, they even mention TINI!
>> Does this mean I can use TINI as a single-board-computer without all the
>> java-stuff but with sdcc as my devellopment platform?
>
>This probably sounds like hair splitting but ...
>
>TINI is not a 72 pin simm. That's a "TINI board model 390" TINI is a
development
>platform that includes hardware and software and is aimed at creating
>network-enabled embedded devices.
>
>There is a guy on the list that has been working with SDCC and I think he's
made
>a fair amount of progress getting 390 support. You can certainly use this with
>the "TINI board model 390" to do your own non-TINI thing and replace our
>firmware.
>
>Hope it helps,
>Don
>
>
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