Re: [Tack-devel] [Spam] MINIX 1.5 and ACK

[Christian G. <ch...@gr...>]

I've looked at your github page.

I'm not hooked on exactly Minix version 1.5. Because I'd like to have 
TCP/IP as well. Is there a version (Minix 2.0?) which supports IP and 
still works on systems with 64K segments?

And I'd like to have it self-hosting. So finding the ACKPACK sources 
would be good. I'm expecting work to be done there for Z8000.

regards,
chris


On 3/31/19 1:44 PM, David Given wrote:
> This is the Z8000 code generator and assembler in the current version 
> of the ACK.
>
> Bear in mind that ACKPACK probably /didn't/ have the Z8000 code 
> generator integrated into it, given that there doesn't appear to have 
> been a Minix port for it and the compiler support looks fairly 
> unfinished. So there's definitely work to do.
>
> Incidentally, re Minix: I also have this: 
> https://github.com/davidgiven/minix2 It's a Minix 1.7 and 2.0 
> distribution wrapped in some useful scripts for easy development on 
> Linux --- a single script will build a bootable image from source, 
> start it in qemu to do builds, unpack it again afterwards, etc. It 
> doesn't have Minix 1.5 or 1.2 in it because I haven't figured out how 
> to boot them in qemu yet. It's got all the source /except/ the ACKPACK 
> compiler, which wasn't in the standard distributions. It'd be awesome 
> to get source for everything.
>
> On Sun, 31 Mar 2019 at 00:36 Christian Groessler <ch...@gr... 
> <mailto:ch...@gr...>> wrote:
>
>     Hi,
>
>     On 3/22/19 9:26 PM, David Given wrote:
>>     I had a play with the code. The Z8000 code generator builds and
>>     runs and generates code, but of course I have no idea whether it
>>     generates working code. The assembler does not; in common with a
>>     lot of the very old architectures it's runs in assembler/linker
>>     mode, where it generates non-relocatable binaries rather than .o
>>     files which can be linked together. This would need fixing. (I've
>>     done it before and it's not a lot of work.)
>
>
>     You "played" with which code exactly?
>
>
>>     Of course, it still needs a plat with a syscall library, startup
>>     code etc before it'll do anything useful.
>
>
>     I'm aware of that, but that I'm considering to be part of porting
>     Minix to the M20.
>
>
>>     What OS does the M20 run?
>
>
>     It typically runs "PCOS", a proprietary Olivetti OS. There's also
>     CP/M-8000 available for it.
>
>     For PCOS, there is a rather old gcc version available at
>     ftp://ftp.groessler.org/pub/chris/olivetti_m20/misc/z8kgcc/ . CP/M
>     comes with it's own C compiler.
>
>
>     But for porting Minix 1.5 to the M20 I'd like to use (ideally) the
>     same ACK compiler version which was used for the other versions
>     (8086 PC, M68K Atari, Amiga).
>
>
>     regards,
>     chris
>
>
>
>>
>>     On Fri, 22 Mar 2019, 18:54 Christian Groessler,
>>     <ch...@gr... <mailto:ch...@gr...>> wrote:
>>
>>         Not in the way the 8086 did with its segment registers.
>>
>>         But the CPU has output pins which indicate if a memory access
>>         is an instruction fetch or data access. And the M20
>>         implements (at least) one segment where this is used. So
>>         address X points to different physical memory, depending on
>>         whether it's an instruction or data access.
>>
>>         regards,
>>         chris
>>
>>
>>         On 3/22/19 5:48 PM, David Given wrote:
>>>         Did the Z8000 do split I/D? The 8086 cheated because both
>>>         code /and/ data got different 64kB address spaces, so you
>>>         could have 64kB of code and still have 64kB of data. I don't
>>>         think you could fit the compiler into a single 64kB space.
>>>
>>>         There is a Z8000 code generator in the ACK but it's based on
>>>         the old _old_ code generator model and was last touched in
>>>         the 1990s, so I don't know whether it works or what the code
>>>         quality is like. Plus, of course, then you need to make it fit.
>>>
>>>
>>>         On Fri, 22 Mar 2019 at 14:05 Christian Groessler
>>>         <ch...@gr... <mailto:ch...@gr...>> wrote:
>>>
>>>             Hi,
>>>
>>>             On 3/11/19 8:13 AM, Jacobs, C.J.H. via Tack-devel wrote:
>>>             > Good question! I survived, and I produced those
>>>             binaries back then. But this was a very long time ago,
>>>             > and my memory has never been any good... nor are my
>>>             archiving skills... When I find some time, I’ll
>>>             > see if I can do some digging. From what I remember,
>>>             the only real problem was getting the compiler front-end
>>>             > to fit in 64K instruction space and 64K data space.
>>>             For that, we took out the C preprocessor (which was/is
>>>             built-in
>>>             > into the C frontend) and made it a separate pass, and
>>>             we also took out the floating-point library. Other than
>>>             that,
>>>             > I don’t remember exactly, but I think it was just a
>>>             little bit of tweaking.
>>>
>>>
>>>             It would be great if you would find this version.
>>>
>>>             I'm toying with the idea to port Minix 1.5 to the
>>>             Olivetti M20, a Z8000
>>>             based computer. The Z8000 has 64K segments as well.
>>>
>>>             regards,
>>>             chris
>>>
>>>
>>>
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