GTHEALL@PENNDRLS.UPENN.EDU (George A. Theall) (08/10/89)
A while back I promised to spend a few hours with Borland's TCC to see whether I could patch it for the Rainbow. For some reason, the commandline compiler and macro preprocessor are fiddling with int 18h, which on the PC is for ROM Basic but on the Rainbow is intimately tied to the hardware. As a result, patches must be applied to TCC and CPP if they are to function properly on the Rainbow. For version 2.0, I believe I have derived the requisite patches successfully such that interrupt 60h is used in place of 18h (I choose 60 out of the blue, but presumably any unused vector would work just as well.) Since Thursday, I've used TCC to compile and link programs on my Rainbow without crashing the system. Things work fine. However, John Lundin (Lundin@LUNDIN.URICH.EDU) has also applied my patches and reports no end of problems when compiling/linking on his system. He even says the loaders placed on his disk by WUTIL were trashed once! I'm at a loss to explain this - both of us have Rainbow 100B's, hard disks, and full memory. As for TSR's, he is using only MDRIVE while I use SEARCH, HISTORY, SETRAM, and Switch-It. Further, we're using Borland's patch utility to apply the patches - this effectively idiot-proofs the patching process. What I would like to do is ask for the help of others on the net in testing these patches. If you have TCC, v2.0, and don't mind living dangerously, send me e-mail. You will also need PATCH.COM, which can be found in any of Borland's official patches (check out SIMTEL20, Compu$erve, or your local bbs). I would also *strongly* recommend you work from a floppy or at least back up your hard disk before testing the patches. I've not had any trouble, but there's always the possibility my patches are incorrect or incomplete. George Disclaimer: These patches are in no way sanctioned by Borland. +------------------------------------------+---------------------------+ | GTHEALL@PENNDRLS (BITNET) | Dept. of Economics | | GTHEALL@PENNDRLS.UPENN.EDU (INTERNET) | Univ. of Pennsylvania | | | 3718 Locust Walk /6297 | | (215) 898-3419 (AT+TNet) | Philadelphia, PA. 19104 | +------------------------------------------+---------------------------+