[TUHS] Re: Porting Unix v6 to i386

[Szigeti Szabolcs]

Hi folks!

I've just joined your mailing list, and while looking at the archives, i saw
this discussion on porting V6 to Intel.
Well, back in '92, in a university scinence students' competition, I ported
v6 to intel286 in protected mode. (I got second place, the winner was a 3D
animation prog, which is more spectacular, than a # prompt :-)

I used Borland C to compile, with some extra mungling the assembly code ( i
can't remember why).

The hard part was to understand the protected mode, and to write the low
level stuff. Other things, like filesystem, etc. compiled with hardly any
modification. (Had to change =+ to =+, introduce long insted of int[2],
etc.). It has floppy, ide, kbd, parallel, serial and vga drivers.

It got to full multiuser operation, but there are bugs and stupid codings
certainly. The C compiler, nroff, and some other parts were not ported.
(Yes, I used Borland C to compile the programs, and a tool to convert it to
a.out :-)

I don't know if i can now legally give out parts of the original code, if
anyone wants to experiment with it (some parts are pretty ugly, because i
intedned to rewrite it, but never did, and the parts of the comments are in
Hungarian), drop me an email (though i'm now doing my MBA thesis, so might
not answer immediatey). If there is interest, I can summarize my
experiences.

I've not looked it since several years, so i might not remember every
detail, but there are some interesting point, and it was great fun to do.

Regards,

    Szabolcs Szigeti