Back to home page

DOS ain't dead

Forum index page

Log in | Register

Search:  
Back to the forum
Board view  Mix view

ARM version of MSDOS (Announce)

posted by kerravon, Ligao, Free World North, 20.11.2024, 04:13

> Not sure if that one uses Secure Boot (and presumably you aren't interested
> in modern Mac laptops which also use ARM64). Windows ARM64 and Snapdragon
> are still sold, but newer Lenovo Yogas seem to only use x64.
So - here's the direction I went.

I wasn't able to buy a new Windows ARM laptop in the Philippines.
Or even purchase one from Amazon and get it shipped. But I did
manage to find one - an older model I think - from ebay, which
shipped here.

And so it turns out that Windows 11 for ARM supports both 32-bit
ARM and 64-bit ARM, and just like x86/x64 has an msvcrt.dll for
both environments.

Not only that, but Visual Studio is able to target both ARM32
and ARM64 from any environment. The command prompt for ARM32
doesn't come up automatically though, so you have to copy an
existing shortcut. But all the material is included.

In both cases I was able to replace the Visual Studio C library
with PDPCLIB and stand up Win32 ARM32 and Win64 ARM64 mini-clones
that operate under UEFI, Linux or Android (via PdAndro).

And for ARM32 I was eventually able to modify my fork of gcc 3.2.3
to produce Win32 ARM32 compatible code, so I have an entire
toolchain for ARM32 (but not ARM64 which relies on Visual
Studio still).

For good measure I bought Visual Studio Professional.

So from my Zhaoxin Windows 10 I am able to build a Win64 ARM64
mini-clone.

I bought a Macbook M1 and Oracle Virtualbox can run on that,
and gives me an ARM64 UEFI environment, so that I can run my
Windows mini-clone.

I then fleshed out my mainframe (S/370, z/Arch) emulator so
that it was capable of running z/PDOS-generic.

So that is basically the one application that I run under
my Win64 ARM64 mini-clone.

The thing about mainframes is that they are too expensive
to buy, that you basically have to run under emulation anyway.

z/PDOS-generic is still being debugged, but it is expected to
provide a full toolchain. There has been a lot of work recently
by the creator of Linux Bigfoot to get binutils to support
mainframe hlasm.

So - this setup gives a mainframe on an ARM64 Macbook.

This is a physically more reliable machine than my Pinebook Pro.

And if I power my Macbook down, I can charge it using a cheap
powerbank.

And I can charge my cheap powerbank using a portable solar.

So. I have a mainframe that is (or can be) powered by the Sun.

And I am expected to have a complete toolchain that allows me
to reconstruct anything I want in pure C90.

And for those operating on a budget, you can do the same thing
using a smartphone or tablet with an external keyboard.

A mainframe emulator seems to be a lot less complicated than
an x86 emulator.

My mainframe emulator is only suitable for running z/PDOS-generic,
because it replaces the pseudo-bios too.

I'm still waiting for the bugs to be fixed so that I can see
how long it takes my Mac M1 to get gcc 3.2.3 to rebuild itself
at full optimization under an emulator. Normally it takes me
a couple of hours under Hercules on an x86. But now I am
switching emulator and processor.

I don't have the ability to use clang to replace Visual Studio
as the compiler to produce my Win64 ARM64 software, as I don't
seem to have the ability to switch off "pie".

But given time, I should be able to stand up a replacement
ARM64 compiler, using my mini mainframe.

Note that I consider z/PDOS-generic to be what MSDOS would
be if it had been ported to the mainframe. Or similar, anyway.

Regardless, I am basically happy that I have found alternative
hardware - but still in laptop form - so I am not beholden to
the x86 processor - but also I am not beholden to the Apple
software infrastructure. It's merely a means to an end.

BFN. Paul.

Post reply
 

Complete thread:

Back to the forum
Board view  Mix view
22049 Postings in 2034 Threads, 396 registered users, 113 users online (0 registered, 113 guests)
DOS ain't dead | Admin contact
RSS Feed
powered by my little forum