rkj@ides.UUCP (Rick Janka) (01/10/86)
I need to write some software for an Amdahl X.25 Network Administrator (4404E), which is an 8088-based micro used to control Amdahl PADs in an X.25 network. The micro runs CPM, and while we do have a Pascal compiler available, I'd rather code in C. I've never shopped for a C compiler, and have only a vague idea of the C compilers available that will run on CPM. I'd certainly appreciate any advice and information from anyone who has had experience with C compilers on a CPM system. Rick Janka AT&T Information Systems (ihnp4,allegra,akgua)!abcom!cnmsrkj
Kushall.henr@XEROX.ARPA (01/13/86)
From: Bruce Eckel <morgan%fluke.uucp@BRL.ARPA> I have used several C compilers on CP/M and have tried most of the things you refer to. All of them produce "com"able code, if you mean produces a .com file. I also think all of them require you to go through and assembler, linker and loader to accomplish this. If you mean "rom"able, I know Aztec does it and I think the others will too if you put in the right ORG statements or whatnot. There is usually a way even if they didn't design it in. 1) Aztec. Expensive at $200, but K&R complete, or more so than most. Good library. Includes its own assembler, linker and librarian. Slow as mollasses. I use it because I am familiar with it and didn't want to mess with the idiosyncrasies of the others (at the time). No bit fields or preprocessor macros, but it seems NOBODY has those. The manual is geared after UNIX (not a terribly good precedent but OK) which I am sure they developed the language on. One of the big plusses about this system is its transportability -- Aztec makes (virtually) identical compilers for essentially every processor and operating system. They even make cross-compilers so you can (for example) develop on cp/m and run on apple. 2) BDS . A friend swears by it and it seems fast, efficient and correct. That is, the compiler seems fast. I don't know that much about the code efficiency but he says it is efficient. $150. The manual is very good. No library is as complete as Aztecs, but you can always add your own library modules to any of these. BDS was really the CPM C standard for quite a while, before: 3) C/80 . for 50$ (might be 60 now) and 20 extra for floating point, the real bargain in C compilers. I used an early version of this and didn't like it because they didn't seem to conform to K&R (at least not the library functions) and as I was struggling to *learn* the language in the first place, I didn't want to mess with language variants. Now, however, it seems to have been cleaned up significantly. People seem to love it only second to Turbo pascal, and amazing things have been written with it. The people at Software Toolworks (makers of C/80) have written a lot of stuff with it themselves, notably MyCalc (best spreadsheet for cpm I have seen; I am told supercalc does sorts better, but I just like the way MyCalc works. Amazing that visicalc made any money at all, considering how limited it was) and Mychess. Lots of other people use C/80. Real nice to have floating point; I think it comes with Aztec but you might have to pay extra for it. C/80 is probably your best bet (at least to get started). 4) Q/C. The only thing I can say about this is it comes with source code, written in C. I don't know how it runs since I've never used it, but if you want to know how a compiler is written, this would probably be $95 well spent. Chances are it is real slow (whereas BDS and C/80 are written, I believe, in assembly). What do I prefer? Well, they all do so many disk accesses, and of course going in and out of the editor (wordstar) is incredibly time consuming. I get very frustrated and am thinking of putting a RAM disk on my Kaypro with a megabyte (~$450) to speed up *everything*. But it seems such a waste for most tasks, which are fast. I keep hearing rumors about: 5) Turbo C. Vaporware at the moment, but if it is anything like Turbo P, it will be worth waiting for. They may have put all their efforts into Modula-2, but we can hope. I would by Turbo C in a second, and be off and running. Failing that, I may just give up the wait and buy Turbo Pascal. Bruce Eckel <morgan> uw-beaver!fluke!morgan
jrv@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA (James R. Van Zandt) (01/15/86)
Here's another C compiler for CP/M. It's the Small-C compiler which
appeared in Dr. Dobbs #45 (May 1980), but modified by me to include
floating point. The compiler requires a Z-80 processor and produces
Z-80 assembly language output. There's a companion assembler and
linker. You can get the whole package, including source code in C for
the compiler, as volume 156 from:
C user's Group
Box 97
McPherson KS 67460
(314) 241-1065
They charge $8 per volume and offer nearly any format. If you want a
more detailed description, you can look at the September 1985 issue
of their newsletter.
I believe it's also available as SIG/M volume 224.
Credits: Small-C was written by Ron Cain. The floating point routines
themselves were written by Niel Colvin. The assembler and linker are
by Bruce Mallett.
(As you can tell, the C User's Group is not-for-profit. I don't make
any money off this, either.) (I'm not maintaining this code, either.
I've now moved on to the 16 bit world.)
- Jim Van Zandt