old elks codes

[tyama501]

I didn't know old elks codes are on the github.
I didn't know there was 286 protect mode elks extender.

https://github.com/lkundrak/elks/tree/master/arch/i86/286pmode

[tyama501]

Commit dates are older than github history.

[tyama501]

Hi @ghaerr

I didn't know you have been contributing to elks as maintainer from this era :)

https://github.com/lkundrak/elks/blob/master/Documentation/MAINTAINERS

Thank you!

[ghaerr]

I didn't know old elks codes are on the github.

Wow, I didn't realize this was out there either. But in checking it and against our own commit history, our repo contains all the commits in it, up through the last commit in 2006. It appears then Jody Bruchon took over in 2012 after six years of no activity, and of course, our repo came from him.

FYI, lkundrak also has the "original" dev86 8086 toolchain, which now Jody also maintains. @rafael2k originally used lkundrak's dev86 to get CPP86 and LD86 from, but then adjusted to using Jody's version as it has more fixes. Then AS86 was added from Jody's repo. Since then, lots of enhancements and bug fixes have been made which will very likely stay in @rafael2k's and my 8086 toolchain repos instead of upstream, since the dev86 toolchain is built around the BCC C compiler, which IMO is quite a bit inferior to the C86 compiler that @rafael2k selected when he started our own 8086 toolchain project. The dev86 project also supports 6809 development and has been distributed within Debian releases for various smaller requirements for 8086/6809 CPUs. Lots of history out there and its nice to see these old tools get a new life in our 8086 toolchain!

I didn't know there was 286 protect mode elks extender.

I just spent some time looking at it, and I'm not quite sure what it actually does or whether it ever worked. It sets up the LDT and GDT registers and switches to protected mode, but I can't understand how the kernel might actually run with protected mode segments, since all the internal segment arithmetic assumes real mode. I remember it was deleted by MFLD back when he was reorganizing ELKS around ia16-elf-gcc instead of BCC. It is fascinating looking at some of the older source code, and there's still lots of good stuff in there and lots to be learned, although our version is much cleaned up since then, and I don't think any previous versions did anything our kernel can't currently do.

I didn't know you have been contributing to elks as maintainer from this era :)

Well, I'm not sure why I was listed as a kernel maintainer, but the mention was likely from my contribution of Nano-X to ELKS back in 1999 :) Building Microwindows and Nano-X was a daily project for my back then.

[tyama501]

Interesting to see the history, and it is still enhanced a lot, which is very nice.
Thank you!