ia16 gcc port - handy for SeaBIOS?

[Rudolf Marek]

Hi all,

Perhaps you already noticed. There are efforts to resurrect true 16-bit only x86
GCC port [1][2]. I added it coreboot cross toolchain script.

https://review.coreboot.org/#/c/19711/

You can compile it ./buildgcc  -j4 -p ia16-elf

So far, I only tried to compile some simple programs, but I believe it could be
handy for SeaBIOS 16-bit code, which could be true 16-bit.

Or, if someone ever does SeaBIOS port to xi8088 board [3] which uses 8088 or NEC v20

Thanks
Rudolf

[1] https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2017-04/msg00082.html
[2] https://sourceware.org/ml/binutils/2017-04/msg00012.html
[3] http://www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-projects/xi-8088

[Gerd Hoffmann]

On Di, 2017-05-16 at 15:39 +0200, Rudolf Marek wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Perhaps you already noticed. There are efforts to resurrect true 16-bit only x86
> GCC port [1][2]. I added it coreboot cross toolchain script.
>
> https://review.coreboot.org/#/c/19711/
>
> You can compile it ./buildgcc  -j4 -p ia16-elf
>
> So far, I only tried to compile some simple programs, but I believe it could be
> handy for SeaBIOS 16-bit code, which could be true 16-bit.

Sounds interesting, especially for vgabios where we have lots of
workarounds for 16bit emulators handling 32bit instructions not
correctly.

But I guess I would just wait and see for now, until this is merged and
present in gcc/binutils releases.

cheers,
  Gerd