DOS ain't dead - MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64 (WIP)

MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64 (WIP) (Announce)

posted by Rugxulo , Usono, 05.07.2010, 16:05

> I just like C-86, because it's very small (e.g., <30 Kbytes for the
> assembler), produces small code, and it's a challenge to work around its
> limitations. Like with DOS in general. ;-)

C in general seems to be a challenge to do what you want. (Well, for me anyways.) Re: working around limitations, that could especially apply to many subset C compilers: Small C, Micro C, Desmet C, DJ's heavily-incomplete 16-bit GCC hack, Dev86DOS, etc.

BTW, 30 kb isn't that surprising for an assembler. One guy ported/heavily hacked one from Minix to DOS. Admittedly, only 8086 flat binary support, but it can assemble itself, and it's only 7 kb. (Other assemblers are small too, esp. those written in themselves, but it all depends on what instructions and output format you want because that affects the overall size and complexity, e.g. OBJ/OMF.)

> Thanks, but I was already aware of Cabezon. I've already played with its
> RTL.

Well, like many tiny subset Pascals, it chokes on some really basic stuff (eoln, I think) which makes it kinda useless for obvious things. Still cool but not really worth playing too heavily with.

BTW, just for completeness, I can't find P32 anywhere except one place: here, which I think is where I found Cabezon.

> LSI C-86 is a relatively good compiler, the code it produces is
> not far behind the one produced by Turbo C 2.0. But its library
> functions have poor code, you may anytime disassemble and look
> for yourself.

We had a long thread a while back about various DOS compilers. IIRC, Japheth said MS VC 1.52 was the best for 16-bit DOS (esp. C++ ???). Some people still rave about BC 3.1 as the best. Others (Tom Ehlert?) say OpenWatcom produces tiny and fast code. I don't have any experience with Digital Mars, but from what I've heard he does many things quite well also (esp. for C++).

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Complete thread:

MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64 (WIP) - rr, 30.06.2010, 22:23 (Announce)
- MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64 (WIP) - Rugxulo, 01.07.2010, 10:18
  - MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64 (WIP) - rr, 04.07.2010, 22:21
    - MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64 (WIP) - Khusraw, 04.07.2010, 22:27
    - MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64 (WIP) - Rugxulo, 05.07.2010, 16:05
- MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64 (WIP) - bretjohn, 01.07.2010, 18:09
  - MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64 (WIP) - Rugxulo, 03.07.2010, 17:43
    - MS-DOS Player for Win32-x64 (WIP) - Rugxulo, 03.07.2010, 20:29