Re: Free x86 C compiler wanted

Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@aol.com> wrote:
> Right, John. AFAIR COM programs are restricted to the small memory
> model, where everything resides in a single 64K segment. The segment
> registers usually are left unchanged during execution, just as in the 32
> bit flat model.


The memory model of typical DOS ".COM" programs is the "tiny" memory
model. In small model, you have a text segment and a separate segment
combining data and stack. In tiny model, text, data, and stack share
the same 16-bit address space.


In small model, program data typically start at DS:0 while in tiny
model, the loader has to arrange the data in such a way that they do
not overlap with the code.


To the original poster: old Turbo C compilers (1.x, 2.x) have an
option for generating tiny model output. You could once get these old
compilers from Borland at no cost, but I do not know whether this is
still the case.


Another option would be Bruce Evans' BCC (not to be mixed up with
Borland C). You can easily find it using Google. It is open source and
freely available, for example from the FreeBSD ports repository
(freebsd.org/ports/lang.html, search for bcc).
--
Nils M Holm <nmh@t3x.org> -- http://t3x.org/nmh/

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