Cross-compilers - Manx Aztec C Cross Compilers

Manx Aztec C Cross Compilers

Manx Software Systems, of Shrewsbury, New Jersey, produced C compilers beginning in the 1980s targeted at professional developers for a variety of platforms up to and including PCs and Macs.

Manx's Aztec C programming language was available for a variety of platforms including MS DOS, Apple II DOS 3.3 and ProDOS, Commodore 64, Macintosh 68XXX and Amiga.

From the 1980s and continuing throughout the 1990s until Manx Software Systems disappeared, the MS DOS version of Aztec C was offered both as a native mode compiler or as a cross compiler for other platforms with different processors including the Commodore 64 and Apple II. Internet distributions still exist for Aztec C including their MS DOS based cross compilers. They are still in use today.

Manx's Aztec C86, their native mode 8086 MS DOS compiler, was also a cross compiler. Although it did not compile code for a different processor like their Aztec C65 6502 cross compilers for the Commodore 64 and Apple II, it created binary executables for then-legacy operating systems for the 16 bit 8086 family of processors.

When the IBM PC was first introduced it was available with a choice of operating systems, CP/M 86 and PC DOS being two of them. Aztec C86 was provided with link libraries for generating code for both IBM PC operating systems. Throughout the 1980s later versions of Aztec C86 (3.xx, 4.xx and 5.xx) added support for MS DOS "transitory" versions 1 and 2 and which were less robust than the "baseline" MS DOS version 3 and later which Aztec C86 targeted until its demise.

Finally, Aztec C86 provided C language developers with the ability to produce ROM-able "HEX" code which could then be transferred using a ROM Burner directly to an 8086 based processor. Paravirtualization may be more common today but the practice of creating low-level ROM code was more common per-capita during those years when device driver development was often done by application programmers for individual applications, and new devices amounted to a cottage industry. It was not uncommon for application programmers to interface directly with hardware without support from the manufacturer. This practice was similar to Embedded Systems Development today.

Thomas Fenwick and James Goodnow II were the two principal developers of Aztec-C. Fenwick later became notable as the author of the Microsoft Windows CE Kernel or NK ("New Kernel") as it was then called.