Writing My Own Operating System

[bitshifter420]

Hi Sam, im sorry for not providing good install instructions so here...

Step 1) Insert clean floppy and format to FAT12.

Step 2) Double left click the 'compile.bat' file. (This compiles the asm files.)

Step 3) Double left click the 'mkfloppy.bat' file. (This writes the data to disk.)

Step 4) Adjust you BIOS to look in floppy drive first for bootsector.

Step 5) Restart your pc and it you should be in my os.

To exit my os simply remove the floppy and type 'exit' into the command console.
(This causes re-boot, and since no bootsector is found in floppy, your os gets it)

As for doing any work on the code, the answer is no.
I no longer use nasm compiler since switching to fasm compiler.
Sometime in the future i will port the code syntax and go from there.

[Nim]

I love the idea of a separate sleek OS for gaming and graphics. I wish I could read what you have written, but my experience with Assembly is using MIPS for a class, lol...

[Sam Hobbs]

Thank you for the instructions. It seems simple and obvious and I don't remember why it did not work for me; it has been a while. I probably did not expect to have to compile (assemble) it. Now that I know there is not a newer version I will try again.

Does it help to use a virtual machine for development purposes? I know that you are not currently working on it but virtual machines have become quite useful in the past few years.

[bitshifter420]

I used boch's emulator for writing/testing bootstrapper and kernel.
The shell and inout stuff are all bios driven so it was written/tested
in a seperate dos .com module, then plugged in later very easily.
I do have most of the new inout command buffer/router and stuff done for the next version!
It now incorporates a command lookup table for command function handlers, cool stuff.
Now its super easy to add a new command and handler to the list.
Right now i dont have either of my 286,s with me so all i can play with
is the stuff that can be written/tested in dos .com module.
Next on the todo list is the file handling stuff, maybe by spring?

[Sam Hobbs]

There are virtual machines you can use within Windows; VirtualBox is one, which I think is an improved version of QEMU. Parallels had a special offer in which they gave away their VM, but I assume that offer is not available now. Microsoft has a VM and I think there is one more that is available for free.