[TUHS] PCC for the i386

[Warner Losh]

On Thu, Jul 11, 2019 at 10:31 AM Clem cole <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:

> By the time of 4.2 the switch from the  Ritchie and Johnson compilers at
> UCB had begun.  Remember the primary output of Rms at that point was emacs
> and gcc.
>
> CSRG wanted the different backends for C.   ThAts it.  Besides the vax,
> Rms had done 68000 and 386 back ends then.
>
> With the original system V, all of AT&T, Intel and IBM paid Interactive
> Systems Corp (aka ISC) to port the System V/Vax code to a 386 ps/2 and an
> Intel reference system that used an ISA bus.  This would be eventually
> released in source at the 386 port from AT&T.   As part of the contract
> summit supplied the compiler
>
> I know the AT&T assembler with it’s backwards syntax from Intel was done
> before rms did his.  He was compatible with the summit assembler.  I don’t
> remember who’s 386 backend came out first.  I think is was the summit
> compiler but you needed a system v license which UCB did not have.
>

There's also a fair amount of work at MIT to do Intel code generation for
8086 (small mode) that was extended by Queens College London (I think, I
gotta grab the tapes again) to do large mode. I've run into this looking
for a compiler for the Venix source restoration project I've been tilting
at. I found those based on a cryptic comment I found somewhere online about
the tech behind Venix that wasn't from AT&T. I don't know if ISC started
with them as a base or not, nor really how the MIT compilers came about,
but they claim to be PCC based somehow. Don't know if this helps you on
your quest... BTW, I found these when I found the latest pcc-restoration
sources didn't have a working i86 backend anymore (there was once one for
Minux, but when I built it I couldn't get it to generate sensible code at
all).

Warner


> Clem
>
> Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not
> quite.
>
> On Jul 11, 2019, at 8:50 AM, Jason Stevens <jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com>
> wrote:
>
> That would make sense.   I was able to find some info on PCC2 here
>
> http://doc.cat-v.org/unix/unix-before-berkeley/
>
> I'm guessing along with the adoption of emacs the csrg must have been
> further gnu synergy...  Or maybe PCC2 just wasn't available outside of the
> labs?
>
> Or maybe by '88 gcc was already usurping many of the c compilers of the
> era.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 11, 2019 at 11:37 PM +0800, "Clem cole" <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:
>
> I believe the pcc/386 came out of Steve Johnson team at Summit with the
>> PCC2 work.
>>
>> Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost but not
>> quite.
>>
>> On Jul 11, 2019, at 7:53 AM, Jason Stevens <
>> jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com> wrote:
>>
>> Does anyone know where the 386 port from PCC came from?
>>
>>
>>
>> While trying to build a Tahoe userland for the i386, it seems that
>> everything was built with GCC…
>>
>> Was there a PCC for the i386 around ’88-90?  It seems after the rapid
>> demise of the Tahoe/Harris
>>
>> HCX-9 that the non Vax/HCX-9 platforms had moved to GCC?
>>
>>
>>
>> Also anyone know any good test software for LIBC?  I’ve been tracing
>> through some
>>
>> strange issues rebuilding LIBC from Tahoe, where I had to include some
>> bits from
>>
>> Reno to get diropen to actually work.  I would imagine there ought to
>> have been some
>>
>> platform exercise code to make sure things were actually working instead
>> of say
>>
>> building as much as you can, and playing rogue for a few hours to make
>> sure
>>
>> its stable enough.
>>
>>
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