Can M$-VC compile BIOS C-code?

[Dave]

Sorry if I am repeating myself here. I am re-posting this to the list
because I am not sure it made it out there the first time I posted it. It
seems that there was not much activity here for a few weeks. I am not sure
if the list was down or everyone was just too busy with real life :)

I am thinking about trying to flesh out some of my BIOS/BootProm ideas. I
would like to do so in C using Micro$ofts Visual Studio (mainly because I
have it and am familiar with it). 

Can M$-VC 5.0 (or M$-VC 6.0) be used to develop PROM based x86 code?

I have been told that it can. Something about setting some switches in the
compiler. But I need to know more about _how_ it is done. There are lots of
details that I need to know about. Like setting program/data address
origins, creating the binary file and converting it to HEX or another
format that can be burned into PROM. 

If you have experience doing embedded or BIOS work on x86 systems using the
Micro$oft development environment I would really appreciate some pointers.

TIA,
Dave

[Stefan Reinauer]

On Sun, 7 Mar 1999, Dave wrote:
> I am thinking about trying to flesh out some of my BIOS/BootProm ideas. I
> would like to do so in C using Micro$ofts Visual Studio (mainly because I
> have it and am familiar with it).
>
> Can M$-VC 5.0 (or M$-VC 6.0) be used to develop PROM based x86 code?

Currently I'd say it can't. The Makefiles are quite Unix/GNU specific. 
You need gcc and nasm installed on a Linux/Unix box to compile the
sources.
> I have been told that it can. Something about setting some switches in the
> compiler. But I need to know more about _how_ it is done. There are lots of
> details that I need to know about. Like setting program/data address
> origins, creating the binary file and converting it to HEX or another
> format that can be burned into PROM. 
> Theoretically I think it's possible. I don't have a VC licence nor VC
> installed on any of my boxes, so I can't tell you how to do this. If
> anyone is willing to fiddle around with this, it would of course be nice.
> Is VC producing better code than i.e. egcs or gcc?
> If you have experience doing embedded or BIOS work on x86 systems using the
> Micro$oft development environment I would really appreciate some pointers.
> Until now, we used a Linux development environment because it's really
> cheap.. I think we could try to go both ways simultaneously, though.

Regards,
   Stefan

-- 
SuSE GmbH                                       Can you afford *NOT*
Schanz�ckerstr. 10                                     to use Linux?
D-90443 N�rnberg                 	
Germany                         			AlphaPowered

[Tim Small]

Stefan Reinauer wrote:
> > Can M$-VC 5.0 (or M$-VC 6.0) be used to develop PROM based x86 code?
>
> Currently I'd say it can't. The Makefiles are quite Unix/GNU specific.
> You need gcc and nasm installed on a Linux/Unix box to compile the
> sources.

You could probably get everything going under win32, with Cygnus Cygwin, or
Mingw32, if you were really masochistic, you might even be able to get it driven
by devstudio ;-).

http://agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de/~janjaap/mingw32/index.html
http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/

Tim.

[Stefan Reinauer]

On Thu, 18 Mar 1999, Tim Small wrote:
> You could probably get everything going under win32, with Cygnus Cygwin, or
> Mingw32, if you were really masochistic, you might even be able to get it driven
> by devstudio ;-).
>
> http://agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de/~janjaap/mingw32/index.html
> http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/

This might help to get development on a window system started. But it's
very likely the same code that comes out at last. It would be more
interesting to know if the VC code is actually better than the gcc code.

I don't think it's a good idea to do development under windows since at
least the first releases of OpenBIOS are not and won't be able to boot a
windows system. But that's of course only my personal opinion...

Regards,
  Stefan Reinauer.

-- 
SuSE GmbH                                       Can you afford *NOT*
Schanzäckerstr. 10                                     to use Linux?
D-90443 Nürnberg                 	
Germany                         			AlphaPowered

[James Oakley]

Stefan Reinauer wrote:
> This might help to get development on a window system started. But it's
> very likely the same code that comes out at last. It would be more
> interesting to know if the VC code is actually better than the gcc code.

I've tested this here at work, Cygwin is MUCH better than VC, however,
there might be some mucking around you can do with VC to get good code,
though somehow I doubt it. Anybody who wants to work on OpenBIOS in
Windows will have a much easier time with Cygwin.


-- 
James Oakley
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