> 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. Découvrez le nouveau Yahoo! Mail : 250 Mo d'espace de stockage pour vos mails ! Créez votre Yahoo! Mail sur http://fr.mail.yahoo.com/
