Port of mknbi-dos to MSDOS 32-bits now available

[Mike Hammer <mike-hammer@usa.net>]

Hello there,

Well, after couple of trial runs i finally managed to build
a successful version of mknbi-dos from 0.7.2 of netboot.  I'm
calling this mknbi-dos4msdos according to the patch i was
given to by Gero.  THANKS GERO!!!  I'll soon try the same port from 
the most current version of netboot which is 0.8.1 of mknbi-dos.  I 
hope there wasn't too much of change from 0.7.2 release.

Anyways, i ended up using delorie's djgpp GNU package for
DOS 32-bits DPMI platform.  Please note that i'm not all that
familiar with GNU development environment.  I'm not even sure
about all the compiler options available.  In a sense i'm coming
directly from DOS/Windows based development and i have to admit, with
so much backing behind GNU development tools and well just tools,
i'm currently thinking very serious about going all out on GNU for
all my future developments.  GNU compilers even support cross development
on i960 processors.  WOW!!!

I guess one think i'm little spoiled in coming from DOS/Windows
development platform is the commercial backing of such tools with
nice printed documents and integrated development environment everything
with editors, visual debuggers, project managements, etc.  I'll have to
see what's available at the GNU side for similar environments and tools.

Anyways, i guess i just got side tracked for a moment.  Back to
port of mknbi-dos.  Knowing the dissimilarities between Unix/GNU and
DOS/GNU, i had to make some modifications to auto configuration and
some sources and headers.  The end result executable, mknbi-dos4msdos,
size is around 130KB and comparing the ramdisk image generated by
mknbi-dos and mknbi-dos4msdos seems to be exact, i think.  Well, it
works that's what's important to me.  Memory foot print looks the
same and i was able to use rmrd.com to completely remove the ramdisk.

Basically i ended up doing the following at the command line:

gcc -c *.c -o mknbi-dos4msdos.exe

Since i'm not sure all the command line flags original mknbi-dos build
uses, i just omitted all.  The original makefile that comes with
Netboot seems little complicated for me to sort through for the
necessary compiler flags for release and debug builds.  One of these
days i'll have to understand the GNU makefile script.

And thanks to Gero for providing makec.c, i use the generated *_c.c
and don't bother assembing the .S files for mknbi-dos.  I was having
some trouble running the assembler.

Anyways, more later as i find more infos.

PS. I would like to post mknbi-dos4msdos either as diff or
    entire package.  Since i'm not all that familar with using
    diff i would rather post the entire package as an e-mail
    attachment.  Is this okay?  Currently i think i would be
    able to generate a Unix compatible diff using Microsoft's Visual
    Source Safe during its visual diff process.  I'll have to
    try.

PSS.  Does anyone know of a way to access the TCP/IP stack created
      by the bootprom code from DOS application?  Maybe through a
      software interrupt interface some how?  It would seem waste to let 
      that stack just sit there in memory, or is that stack completely
      wiped out after running rmrd.com?

Regards,

-mh


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