Re: Help: accessing Bios param from Ada

[Alain Senjean <senjean@club-internet.fr>]

Tom Moran wrote:
> 
> > I am defining a Dos Ada program
> but originally you said
> >I am using AdaObjet 7.1.2 under Win98
> Are you cross compiling from Win98 to DOS?  Then your compiler should
> have libraries supplied that give you access to IO ports and physical
> memory addresses.  In fact, any compiler targetted to DOS, regardless
> of where it compiles, should do that.

I fully agree.

Yes, I am using ObjectAda under Win98 to develop a Dos Application SW.

Yes, I fully agree that a native compiler SHALL provide even 'basic'
interface to access 'standard' I/O ressources of a machine (BIOS, LPT and
COM are) even in a not event driven way.

I konw that it is not the main concern of an Ada Compiler, but you need
access to the environment which is not reduced to windows and for this you
need basic constructs to access resources.
With those basic constructs you can build your own abstract level.

What I can not agree with is to buy a C compiler to complete my standard
native environment access (several people could discuss this, but it is not
the aim).

What I feel for solving this problem is:
1) there is a package MACHINE_CODE_386 in AdaObject that could solve the
problem (as stated in ANNEX M --> specific to AONIX) but I have found its
specification nowhere !!

2) there is a binding to Ms SDK and within the 5000 items there is a service
that solves my problem. In this case I shall use a win32 application.

But today I am blocked by this parallel port nibble mode management problem.

Best regards.


A. SENJEAN