1980s/1990s 68k C cross (and not so cross) compilers

[Phil Budne]

Brad Parker wrote:
> ....  Remember sumex-aim ? SumMacC. 
> Anyway, I think the Kinetics fastpath was compiled with that....

Perhaps originally....  But when the FastPath code arrived at Shiva it
was using the SunOS 4 native compiler on Sun3.  I moved it to gcc on Sun4.

The 6/88 KIP release has CC=/usr/stanford/bin/cc68
Rutgers KIP c. 1989 used gcc

> There was also that wacky company in cambridge which made a hybrid 
> c-compiler/c-interpreter.  It worked really well but it wasn't quite 
> right.  I loved the idea but never bought one.  That was around 1988, 
> 1989?  I always hoped to find the source code for that.

Saber-C?  It became "Code Center" by Centerline.  Steve Kauffer kept it
going while working on startups (TripAdvisor being the successful one).
It ended up at ICS.COM: https://motif.ics.com/products/codecenter

ISTR some product of that ilk that read and patched object code and
only worked on RISC platforms...

> I think gcc was the standard for 68k from 1987 on.  Yes, greenhills, but 
> it's not clear it produced better code and it was really expensive.

I never dealt with that many 68K compilers.  I remember a whole slew
of problematic compilers and debuggers on 32x32 (Encore) and ROMP (IBM
PC/RT).  At least of them couldn't handle cfront output and/or "Duff's
Device"

phil