Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aipna!almond!awb
From: awb@almond.ed.ac.uk (Alan W Black)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: DOS -> Minix   *.EXE -> a.out
Message-ID: <3069@aipna.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 23 Sep 90 13:56:14 GMT
References: <31178@nigel.ee.udel.edu> <27242@usc.edu>
Sender: news@aipna.ed.ac.uk
Reply-To: awb@ed.ac.uk (Alan W Black)
Organization: Dept of AI, Edinburgh, UK
Lines: 41

In article <27242@usc.edu> kjh@pollux.usc.edu (Kenneth J. Hendrickson) writes:
>In article <31178@nigel.ee.udel.edu> JAGBDED1%PANAM.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu writes:
>>   I was noting that PC Minix has a utility to turn .exe files into MINIX
>>executables. Does Amiga Minix have something to convert AmigaDOS executables?
>
>I am not aware of any such utility.  If you have one, please post it!
>
>Some thoughts:
>It probably could only handle small model .EXE, because of Minix's
>64k+64k limitation.  In addition, there would have to be something done
>about any BIOS calls.  Such a utility would probably be extremely hard
>to develop, if not impossible.
>
>-- 
>Ken Hendrickson N8DGN/6       kjh@usc.edu      ...!uunet!usc!pollux!kjh

There was a program distributed with MINIX PC 1.2 (and probably 1.1)
which fits this description.  With 1.2, bootstrap code was included to
help people compile minix under MSDOS.  This allowed you to
compile the MINIX library and build "executables" under msdos, then they
had to be converted to minix a.out format.  These executable would
not run under MSDOS (as they required a minix kernel to run on) nor
is it the case that arbitrary MSDOS program would convert (well they
would but wouldn't run under MINIX).

This program (dos2out) is mentioned in Andy's book, but was never
designed to convert random programs only minix programs compiled under
MSDOS.  Any other program which attempt this is probably to difficult,
I think the only reasonable way it could be done would be to write a 
PC emulator under MINIX (under 32bit version).

So to get back to JAGBDED1's original question, on the Amiga, AmigaOS
binaries could only be converted reasonable if they had been compiled 
with the minix libraries (ahd that would be so much easier to do under
MINIX).

Alan

Alan W Black                          80 South Bridge, Edinburgh, UK
Dept of Artificial Intelligence       tel: (+44) -31 225 7774 x228 or x223
University of Edinburgh               email: awb@ed.ac.uk