Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hpda!motcsd!xdos!doug
From: doug@xdos.UUCP (Doug Merritt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: 8088->68000 code conversion
Message-ID: <244@xdos.UUCP>
Date: 6 Apr 89 23:02:32 GMT
References: <38280@bbn.COM>
Reply-To: doug@xdos.UUCP (Doug Merritt)
Organization: Hunter Systems, Mountain View CA (Silicon Valley)
Lines: 35

In article <38280@bbn.COM> denbeste@BBN.COM (Steven Den Beste) writes:
>GJose writes:
>> Can anyone help me locate a program to convers MSDOS 8088 code to
>> amiga 68000 code? I have an application written on an MSDOS machine that
>> I would like to directly port to my amiga with a minimum of effort.
>
>My regrets. What you want doesn't exist. It isn't just a problem translating
>the assembly language (though that is bad enough - at the very least each 8088
>instruction would translate to several 68000 instructions, and even this isn't
>easy) but the MSDOS system calls which would have to be translated into
>AmigaDOS system calls.

That's all very true. I thought this would be a good time to mention,
however, that my company does *exactly* this for 68020 Unix systems.
That is, we have software which translates MSDOS 8086 executables into
Unix 68020 code, without source code, despite the difference in the
"operating system environment".

We aren't currently considering targeting the Amiga because the market
for such translations isn't as appealing as for Unix systems (I think)

But technically it could be done...We'd just need to fiddle with the
code generator a bit (avoid 68020-only instructions), and rewrite our
runtime library. A few man months.

BTW the main motivation is that this translation is *far* faster than
software emulation. Know how slow Transformer is? Whereas our translations
are close to the speed of natively compiled code.

I've been off the net for almost a year, and I just got a net feed
set up here today, so I just had to post something...
	Doug
-- 
Doug Merritt				Member, Crusaders for a Better Tomorrow
{sun!pyramid,apple}!xdos!doug		Professional Wildeyed Visionary