https://scalibq.wordpress.com/2023/02/01/the-dos-sdk/ Scali's OpenBlog(tm) Programming, graphics, hardware, maths, and that sort of thing [path] Skip to content * Home * About * Just keeping it real, a series of articles on oldskool/ retro programming * Thoughts on software development - A great upgrade for the PCjr: the jr-IDE The DOS SDK Posted on February 1, 2023 by Scali A thing I have been working on, on and off, for many years now, is a set of headers and helper routines for programming DOS machines directly on the hardware in assembly and C. As you may recall, my earliest retro-programming blogs focused on the Amiga. And for the Amiga you have what is called the "Native Development Kit", or NDK. It's a collection of C header files and assembly include files, which contain all sorts of constants, type definitions and such to interface directly with the hardware. This allows you to write nicely readable and maintainable code (although there's a bit of irony in the fact that many Amiga coders came from C64, and were used to very raw and basic assembly, and just hardcoded addresses and values. And they took that raw style of assembly programming to the Amiga). When I started my DOS retroprogramming, there was no equivalent available. So I slowly started building my own include and header files to codify any hardware-specific stuff from the chip manuals or Ralfs Interrupt List and BOCHS' ports.lst. The idea has always been to eventually release it. But I never got round to that, until now. I have put it on Github here: https://github.com/Scalibq/DOS_SDK And here is the README for a short introduction: An SDK for developing DOS software for x86 machines, including IBM PC compatibles and NEC PC-98 This SDK (Software Development Kit) is modeled after the Amiga NDK (Native Development Kit). The Amiga NDK contains a set of header files and libraries for both assembly and C development, which provides all the required constants, flags, data structures and whatnot to interface directly with the hardware, and having readable code making use of human-readable symbols and type definitions. An equivalent for the IBM PC platform, or PC DOS/ MS-DOS/compatible environments has never been available to my knowledge. This SDK attempts to fill that void. Think of it as Ralfs Interrupt List and Bochs ports.lst turned into .inc/.asm and .h/.c files ready for use in a programming environment. There are some basic rules in how this SDK is structured. Since a PC is composed of a number of off-the-shelf chips, the SDK is structured in a way to reflect this. This means that the definitions related to specific chips such as the 6845, the 8253, 8259 etc. are separated from how they are implemented in the PC architecture (the IO addresses, memory addresses, IRQ and other resources they use). A header file for a specific chip will only contain the generic information for the chip. A separate system-specific header file (in this case IBMPC.inc/IBMPC.h or PC98.inc/PC98.h) will then contain the information specific to the implementation of that system. This allows you to use the header file for the chip for any system that implements it. This is especially useful for writing code for both IBM PC and NEC PC-98, which mostly use the same hardware, but not at the same locations. In future, it may also be expanded to other systems, such as the Tandy 2000. For system-specific or hardware/standard-specific definitions, a prefix is used for the symbols. For example, the IBM PC-specific symbols are prefixed with PC_, and NEC PC-98-specifc symbols are prefixed with PC98_. For graphics standards, we can see MDA_, HERC_, CGA_, EGA_ and VGA_ prefixes. This is a work-in-progress. Feel free to contribute changes, additions or suggestions to make the SDK as complete as possible. 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