Hi... just a general rambling here...
microsoft gives away some good free stuff in its ddk's and sdk's.... the very fact that we can use a nice package like hutch's masm32 is a testimonial to that.
my question is... in the /bin directory in one of the new ddk's
(either ME or 2k section of windows DDK)
they have an old c compiler (which is a major help)
and it has some libs and headers with it...
now... is there anywhere that microsoft gives away the headers and libs for 16 bit windows and ms-dos development with this compiler? (must be both free AND legal)
cuz i sure would like to tinker with writing stuff for older systems
i think the version of the compiler was visual c++ 2.0 or some such
im mostly interested in the ms-dos part
I'm not sure if MS has it still on their site, they tend to obsolete stuff to encourage you to upgrade. An example is they no longer sell Quick Basic, even though it runs just fine in a dos box.
If free isn't available, how about cheap? A few years ago I bought a "learn visual C" package that for 40 bucks actually came with MSVC, albeit a not-current version, it was a vintage 95 (very possibly version 2), and had both 16 and 32 bit compilers. See if it's still around.
However, I wouldn't recomend doing lots of work on a dead end OS.
Lurker,
I would be tempted to have a look at LCC as they already do a 32
bit C compiler that many like. I have never seen Microsoft release
a C compiler free, even when its an old one so I don't know if you
have much chance there.
Your only problem will be that this stuff is old now and may be a
bit hard to get.
Good Luck.
hutch@pbq.com.au
There's a lot of free compilers around. LCC-Win32 is a pretty good
(and free) one for 32bit windows stuff (or, with some messing,
dos extenders, extra libraries, other linkers), 32bit dos stuff.
It doesn't do C++, but does feature operator overloading (iirc),
and // style comments.
If you need to do dos stuff, does it REALLY have to be 16bit? If
you can "live" with 32bit dos extended (which is so much nicer),
look for DJGPP (www.delorie.com/djgpp) or CC386 - both are free.
As for 16bit dos stuff...YUCK :). Your best chance would be to
find borland c++ 3.0, it's so old that it can hardly be called
piracy :). I think there's a free+legal version of turbo C around
somewhere?
Thank you all for the input...
yep, the learn such and such type packages are great... got a boxed package called game programming starter kit with visual c++ 4.0 but..
mine only had the 32 bit part tho i think...
as for djgpp... its great, i love it ,
for some odd reason though i really am in a 16-bit dos type mood
i do have a couple of the borland compilers from the Borland Community Museum :o) ...
and there are a couple free c compilers out there for it
the pacific c demo springs to mind
mostly i just figured tho "this compiler is sittin here wouldnt it be cool to actually DO somethin with it"