Re: [Bochs-developers] Floppy drive oddity

[Peter \Firefly\ L. <fi...@di...>]

On 12 Aug 2002, William Bradley wrote:

> I'm game if you are. Have a basic knowledge but have not compiled
> anything yet.

I am :)  This is how we create more bochs hackers!

Have you got the sources yet?  untar them somewhere (tar -zxvf
<bochstargzfilename>), type ./configure and then type make.
Don't install anything yet - bochs runs fine from where you compiled it
and it's easier to run it like that when you are developing.

go to the directory you used to run bochs from (the one that has the
=2Ebochsrc file for freedos, I presume) and type something like
<path-to=ADbochs-directory>/bochs.

If you downloaded the tarball in your home directory and also has the
=2Ebochsrc file there, then the command would be:

  bochs-1.4.1/bochs

If you run bochs from where you compiled it, remember that most shells
want a path in front of the file name.  Otherwise they will only look in
the directories mentioned in your PATH variable - and don't put your
current directory there, it's easy to use that as part of a security
exploit.  The shell says: this command here, does it have a slash in it?
If not, I'll search through PATH, otherwise I'll follow the path from the
current directory.  Relative paths work, too: ./bochs


> Promise to RFD recommended. :)

And I promise to make a patch or two to the documentation and try to
improve the user interface a bit.

The current state of affairs is truly amazingly impressive when you think
of it as a feat of engineering - Kevin Lawton did a great job before he
moved on to freemware/plex86 and it's not his fault that Mandrakesoft
stopped funding him.  Really great hacking!

Looked at from the other side, that of a potential user, bochs lacks a lot
:(

At the moment it is only fit for hackers or users who want to put in a lot
of effort and who don't need much from their virtual pc.

Let's try to change that :)


Tell me how the compilation works... :)

Next installment: what does configure actually do?  what about the
config.h file?  How to get IPS values displayed, how to look at logfiles,
and how to compile bochs with optimization on.

[please tell me if you already know any of the above so we can  skip
ahead]

-Peter, currently trying to figure out how all the different "chips" in
the bochs PC communicate and how exceptions and traps are implemented.
Got a couple of pages of a draft documenting/explaining some of these
things... still fleshing them out.