Brian D Chase wrote:
> I don't want to seem overly abrasive here... but in my totally speculative
> opinion... THERE'S NO WAY IN [HECK] you could do that in 2K of memory!
You'd be surprised--16-bit Intel assembler is pretty compact.
> if you're using lots of self-modifying code, I don't think it's possible.
Self-modifying code probably wouldn't help. Self-modifying code is usually
used either to workaround a limitation of a processor or to improve
performance.
> There's a certain theoretical limit of the functionality that can be
> implemented in a given amount of space, and I think that what it takes to
> run SLIP/IP/ICMP/UDP exceeds what can be done in 2K.
It's quite possible. Running TCP would be a bit more difficult, esp.
if you wanted to implement a sliding-window protocol.
I would find it very difficult to do with 36 bytes of memory. I won't
even begin to discuss the joys I had trying to process IP packets in
BASIC where BASIC has a maximum string length of 255 bytes.
Take a look at netbooting code. It implements 802 encapsulation, a network
adapter device driver, IP, UDP, TFTP, BOOTP/DHCP protocol modules, and a
kernel loader all in around 8K of memory on a PROM.
