22 Aug
2001
22 Aug
'01
10:27 a.m.
On Wed, 22 Aug 2001, Jay West wrote:
Not being able to use OS services makes it quite a bit harder, especially
given that the physical address of display memory isn't a constant on machines
of the same architecture. Moving a string to display memory is easy if
you know the destination address. In other words, a program that would do
the job on the Ultra 10 on my desk is 32 bytes or so. A program that will
do the job on the Ultra 10 on my desk and on the Sparcstation 2 on the next
desk is a few K. It gets a whole lot easier if you can use the ROM or the OS.
Eric
Yes, but per my earlier example.... are we
shooting for less instructions in
the program or less intructions executed in total for the program? (ie, your
23 byte example is calling dos system services, so.... lots of additional
instructions there).
So far, nobody has set the rules for the game.
And if it is NOT to use OS API stuff, should we also outlaw using the OS
to start and end the program or even to load it?
How about routines in ROM? (PC BIOS INT 10h function 0Eh will display a
character)