> I ponder about writing a "i386 16bit realmode" gcc backend as my master > thesis - which would be usefull for generating 16-bit bios code needed > by the virtual machine developed at my university.
I do not know the virtual machine at your university, but there is two different project you may have: - writing a 16 bit realmode compiler (i.e. ia16 instruction set) - writing a i386 in real mode compiler If you plan to be able to use registers eax,ebx,ecx,edx... which exists as standard in real/virtual mode on a i386, and also accept to use the SIB32 addressing modes i.e. accept "mov $2,(%esp)" when the 16 upper bits are null, then you would better directly use GCC to produce realmode code, and see my bootloader based on that (http://gujin.sf.net). If you also need to run on 80286 and lower processor, then you need to rewrite the GCC backend and scan GCC archives to find the different starting points available. Etienne. D�couvrez le nouveau Yahoo! Mail : 250 Mo d'espace de stockage pour vos mails ! Cr�ez votre Yahoo! Mail sur http://fr.mail.yahoo.com/
