mknox@NGP.UTEXAS.EDU (Margaret H. Knox) (07/13/87)
Larry, [This mailer will not send to MOST of the people who send to me.] I don't know who you talked to, but the CP/M-68K ALCYON compiler has supported floating point since version 1.2. It is true that the original version 1.1 did NOT, but then it had so many bugs that it\ was practically unusable anyway (never DID get GETCHAR to work right in that version). Version 1.2 had a great number of bugs fixed, and added both IEEE and Motorola format floating point. Version 1.2 of the system also added type-ahead and a number of other features. A VERY BIG IMPROVEMENT. Version 1.3 was a minor maintenance release, no new features. And, curiously enough, they BROKE the floating point in the C compiler! We are still using version 1.2 at TriSoft, since we can not get DRI to look at the 1.3 floating point problem. They and Alcyon are now concentrating on the ST. As far as porting the C compiler (and ST products in general) over to a standard CP/M-68K system, it could be done. It would not quite be trivial, however. To go either way requires a shell to map the system calls back and forth (different TRAP numbers, and arguements passed on the stack for the ST, registers for the CP/M-68K). But it could be done. Compilers and the like are more portable than applications because they do only fairly simple I/O. No requests for the disk allocation vectors and the like. Also, most of them do not do any fancy screen graphics calls. If you are indeed running version 1.1, you might give serious consideration to upgrading to 1.2. Especially if you use the C compiler a lot. And you could also investigate the other C compilers for CP/M-68K (Reams, Whitesmith, etc.). jmk .w