> You most likely wouldn't be able to do a port of ELKS to a generic Z80 (or
> other 8-bit) machine. You'd have to port to a specific platform, and the
> hardware constraints of the platform would determine much of how the port
> worked. For example: a stock BBC Master has up to 16 banks of 16kB, all mapped
> in to &8000. Then it has two 20kB banks that map in to &3000. Then there's
> another, smaller bank that maps in to &8000 over the top of the 16kB blocks
> that the kernel uses for private workspace. 0 to &3000 contains unmappable
> RAM, &C000 to &F000 contains the kernel, &F000 up contains I/O ports and
> kernel entry points.
This reminds me of something I was going to suggest anyway. The way CP/M
gets around the problem you just mentioned is by using a seperate "BIOS"
file for each machine, that indicates what hardware addresses are used for
what, at least as I understand it, and yet the core of the OS is the same.
If this were done with ELKS on the 8086, this might prove useful when
someone wanted to move the OS to a machine that's not 100% IBM compatable.
I don't really know how much more difficult this would be, but it might be
worth thinking about. Any thought??
Dan
