pascos

[TyphoonSG1]

hi im new
would it be possible to create an os in pascal??

[JAAman]

yes, several people have attempted it
but it wont be as easy as in C+ASM

[TyphoonSG1]

thanks for the swift response, is there any limitations that pascal would cause?

[JAAman]

well im not very familier with pascal myself, but just remember (as with any language) you cannot use most of the built-in functions, you might also need to change some of the initialization stuff that the compiler will normally do for you automatically

[Shark8]

Actually, I could see using Pascal as being as easy {or even easier} than C/ASM, from scratch mind you. (There's a lot of C code floating around there, but it's not the same cut'n'pasting as it is building it yourself.)

The thing that you'll need is a Pascal RTL (run-time library). I'm working on one now, dissecting the BP7 and Delphi5 RTLs... so distributing my derived work (as source) would probably be frowned-upon, I could distribute compiled units from my understanding. (But I'll have to check on that.)

Once you have the RTL implemented, I'm fairly sure that the built-in functions will work, as the System unit is the one that contains all of `em.

As for limitations with Pascal... no moreso than C, as Pascal can do virtually everything C can, the only thing I can think of off the top of my head is user-defined variable parameter number procedures, it just may be a bit more obscure, awkward, and/or difficult to find. In TP5+ you can use ASM blocks, in TP1 to TP7 you can use inline statements to directly encode data/instructions, basically telling the compiler "Put these values here". Plus there's linking to OBJ files, so you can use ASM {or another language... Turbo Prolog can output OBJ, I belive}.

[TyphoonSG1]

thanks for that at least now i know i can be done