[LispM-Hackers] Status on x86 bare iron for those who care

[John Morrison]

Hi;

I've got some Good News, and some Bad News (isn't that how these
things always go?).

The Good News: I managed to bastardize the mkQNXnbi.c program to take
my test program, and successfully build an NBI-format file, and
successfully boot it on the x86.  It got through resetting video
modes, printing some text on into the VGA frame buffers (that I saw as
expected), and enabled the stupid A20 line so we can get to higher
memory.

The Bad News: The same source code test that successfully puts the x86
into protected mode for JOS causes the machine to reset itself.

This might be because I'm using NASM (the assembler of choice -- see
http://www.web-sites.co.uk/nasm/) with ELF output format instead of
a.out, which I take it now "ld" will not get stupid about.  I shall
play with this more ASAP (probably early this weekend).

I am glad to be able to concentrate on this as james, dave, et al
attack the macroinstruction problems.

-jm

-- 
==== John Morrison
==== MAK Technologies Inc.
==== 185 Alewife Brook Parkway, Cambridge, MA 02138
==== http://www.mak.com/
==== vox:617-876-8085 x115
==== fax:617-876-9208
==== jm@mak.com