Watcom C

[Rick Smith]

Greetings,

A few of us have been trying (very much amateur's) to compile this source code on arca for a BBS program.  I believe it is watcom C?
Anyone have some advice, direction? Or willing to give it a try if you have the experience? Ill attach the zip of the source..

Hope everyone is well

Regards,

Rick

[Dave Yeo]

Hi Rick,
Quickly tried to compile with a recent OpenWatcom, no joy as it seems to be missing some source or libraries.

Code: [Select]

Error! E059: unable to open 'pp386d.pch'
Error(E42): Last command making (H:\tmp\lora\os2\npipe.obj) returned a bad status
Error(E02): Make execution terminated
A pch file is a precompiled header for Watcom.
This, http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/software/IBM/WINDOWS/LORABBS/

: the only compiler that will actually build the DOS, Win32, and OS/2 versions is the Watcom 10.6 compiler because of a dependency on the pre-compiled CXL libraries. Newer versions will not build them because of a change in the way the compiler produced object code and the CXL libraries have been out of production for years.

Watcom 10.6 is at https://winworldpc.com/product/watcom-c-c/106 but the only CXL libraries I found were for Windows at http://www.lanet.lv/simtel.net/msdos/c-pre.html

[Rick Smith]

So do you think its a no-go?  Ah well it would have been nice to use lora again on os/2 as that was my original setup on my BBS back in the early 90's..

Thanks for your efforts I surely do appreciate it

Rick

[Dave Yeo]

Well, if you can find the old CXL libraries, it should be buildable. Perhaps an old Walnut Grove CD or old Hobbes CD might have it. I've just been looking at the Hobbes CD from March 1995, interesting but no CXL. https://archive.org/details/Hobbes_OS2_Archived_CD-ROM_Walnut_Creek_March_1995 Lots of other interesting CD's there including a bunch of Simtel. Links I found were to cdrom.com, those CD's should be somewhere.
Didn't the binary included with the source work? Looks like it came from https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/server/bbs/LoraBBS_2-99-12.zip

[Rick Smith]

Greetings,

I wonder if this one is any different, I will look around for the libraries... I found some called TCXL, and these https://github.com/steeve/ToneLocs, the ZIP attached includes a CXL folder might be the ones

Rick

[Dave Yeo]

Yes, that has a version of cxl for Borland Turbo C. Researching it seems the original author sold it to someone else who extended it. cxlos2.lib is a static lib and it being built for Borland is likely the reason that newer Watcom's aren't compatible.
Unluckily there is no pp386d.pch a precompiled header. There is a wpp386.pch which seems to have been built in my attempt to build it. It might be possible to find the header that was precompiled or reverse engineer it. Unluckily I'm not a Watcom expert.

[Rick Smith]

Yes, that has a version of cxl for Borland Turbo C. Researching it seems the original author sold it to someone else who extended it. cxlos2.lib is a static lib and it being built for Borland is likely the reason that newer Watcom's aren't compatible.
Unluckily there is no pp386d.pch a precompiled header. There is a wpp386.pch which seems to have been built in my attempt to build it. It might be possible to find the header that was precompiled or reverse engineer it. Unluckily I'm not a Watcom expert.

Well I certainly appreciate your efforts thank you very much for trying...

Rick

[Dave Yeo]

Still trying. I installed Watcom 10.6 but unluckily it crashes when in the IDE I try to open a project or even create new. Crashes in ezip.dll, ide.exe and then PMMERGE.DLL.
Guess I should try restarting later with only one CPU core active to see if it is SMP related.
Has anyone successfully used Watcom 10.6?

[Dave Yeo]

Seems 10.6 doesn't like the enhanced file picker from eCoSoft, have to remember how to disable it

[Andreas Schnellbacher]

Seems 10.6 doesn't like the enhanced file picker from eCoSoft, have to remember how to disable it

Code: [Select]

\sys\install\FOC\filedlgtofocdlg.cmd /U

[Dave Yeo]

Seems 10.6 doesn't like the enhanced file picker from eCoSoft, have to remember how to disable it

Code: [Select]

\sys\install\FOC\filedlgtofocdlg.cmd /U

Thanks, that fixed the Watcom crash. Now have to figure out toolkit issues, doesn't like the newer stack, even with TCPV40HDRS defined.