Re: [ECOS] hal/i386/pc prerelease.

[Jesper Skov <jskov at cygnus dot co dot uk>]

>>>>> "Patrick" == Patrick O'Grady <patrick@plasticgrape.com> writes:
Patrick> Just wanted to let you all know that I've posted a *very
Patrick> early* but actually functional version of a hal for running
Patrick> eCos on a standard '386 or better PC.

Nice one! :)

Patrick> A question for Cygnus: there was a lot of platform-specific
Patrick> initialization I had to put in the file vectors.S--since the
Patrick> linker is told to put that module first.  Unfortunately
Patrick> vectors.S is stored in the 'arch' tree rather than the
Patrick> platform tree.  Is there any plans to separate this?  I'd
Patrick> suggest doing a careful audit of that file in order to split
Patrick> it into a platform specific part (for PCs which boot from a
Patrick> floppy or other PC-type boards which boot out of ROM) and an
Patrick> architecture part (for all 386's).  I think that the first
Patrick> file in the linker script should be stored in the platform
Patrick> tree, not the arch tree.

The vectors.S should contain mostly platform neutral code. When
there's a need for platform specific stuff, it should be handled via
macros/calls defined by platform files.

The current i386 HAL is a bit out of shape in this regard. The ARM HAL
is a better example of how things should be handled for multiple
platforms.

Patrick> Anyway, I've been working on this for the past couple of
Patrick> weeks, and now that I've got the threading to work, I'm going
Patrick> to move over and start doing some actual applications work...
Patrick> which means that I'll be slowing down as far as completing
Patrick> the port.  Anyone who cares to get involved is encouraged to
Patrick> tinker with this...  I'm sure that I'll be posting updates
Patrick> fairly frequently, so if you're at all timid about dealing
Patrick> with the stuff that's missing here, just hang tight.  Post
Patrick> any questions or observations to
Patrick> ecos-discuss@sourceware.cygnus.com...  I'll try to answer any
Patrick> questions which come up there.

I'd like (obviously) to have a look at this, but it's unclear when I
will get the time to actually "tinker" with it. Unlikely to be within
the next couple of weeks though.

Jesper