On 12/26/07, Dieter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 16 bit eh? I don't know about gcc and 16 bit, gcc wasn't around back in > the PDP-11 days. I'd think gcc would have some sort of arch config file > where you specify how many bits pointers have? For integers you can use > int8_t, uint16_t and such.
"16-bit" means "x86 real-mode," where the addressing is 16-bit, as in 8088. Although, you can still generate instructions that manipulate 32-bit data, because the 386 32-bit prefixes work in real mode. > Does it *have* to be 16 bit? It has to be x86 real-mode because that's what the BIOS assumes it to be when it calls it. In theory, we can switch to 32-bit mode (x86 protected mode), but that involves setting up our own interrupt vector table and all sorts of other weird stuff. Lots of extra code for no benefit. It's simpler and easier to just target x86 real mode. My opinion is that the amount of code we need, at least to start with, is so small that we won't have a maintainability issue. When we start adding VESA extensions, then we should use C. -- Timothy Normand Miller http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~millerti Open Graphics Project _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
