[Vm-dev] Byte addressing

[Casey Ransberger]

The VM depends upon the availability of byte addressing in the underlying hardware, is this correct?

My somewhat-educated guess is yes, what with things like ByteString, etc. 

If I wanted to build it on a platform that didn't support byte addressing, e.g. Chuck Thacker's TinyComputer, what work would need to be done?

For now, I'm asking about the interpreter VM. I'll worry about Cog later. 

I suppose a supporting question, given that GCC expects byte addressing, might be: what other C compilers can I use currently to build the Squeak VM? I'm aware that the Microsoft compiler will of course work, but I can't use that. I ask because it will be easier to modify just the VM than it will be to modify both the VM and the C compiler. 

If the right answer, amongst the experience here, is "don't even try," that will likely be useful advice, so don't be shy:)