Hi, On Sat, Sep 29, 2018 at 3:47 AM Random Liegh via Freedos-user <freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > > I'm not sure this has any value for FreeDOS beyond experimenting (can > this be built by the VAL linker? seems doubtful) and possibly getting > some ideas
Not sure why you think VAL is the main target or only 16-bit linker worth using. There are probably a dozen of freely available linkers that can target 16-bit OMF for DOS. MS used to still publicly host their last 16-bit linker (circa 1994) somewhere (FTP?) (but using PharLap Extender, thus it was 32-bit hosted but targeted 16-bit. Although even OMF/OBJ had 32-bit extensions in later compilers by Borland and MS, et al). I think MS VC 1.52 was the last to support 16-bit stuff (although I've never used it, don't have it, don't need it, don't care, etc), so that particular linker is almost definitely related to that suite (patched version add-on?). My main reason for investigating linkers was using an ancient (circa 1991?) freeware compiler for DOS (Oberon-M 1.2 by Erwin Videki). It's so old that it was from when LINK was still included in MS-DOS proper, hence he didn't include his own, so I had to find a replacement. So I tried a bunch of linkers and had to write a small patch util to nop out an "obsolete" (REGINT) record from the "main" .OBJ for it to work with certain linkers. Japheth even patched his JWlink for me because Wlink didn't handle it properly. Honestly, I have no direct interest in this ancient MS-DOS re-release, even though I guess it's cool that they open-sourced it. It's too weak (DJGPP won't run), and FreeDOS is already more functional. (But I guess it's "better" for 8086 retro users who care about low RAM usage.) Sorry for the rambling about linkers, just saying that we have various other alternatives (e.g. Alink, Valx, Warplink). _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
