Re: [TUHS] So now that the source is finally out...

On Thu, Jan 24, 2002 at 01:39:50PM -0500, Rob Becker wrote: OK I know that the comment was a joke but... Funnily enough I started looking at doing just that around 18 months ago. Unfortunately (from that point of view) it ground to a halt when wedding arrangements took priority. Anyhow the wedding is out of the way - the missus is now a computing student so I should get some sympathy from her (she likes Unix :-), so hopefully I can resurrect my notes etc and start working on it again. No promises mind as I havent touched C or assembly for around 18months now so am getting increasily rusty. Not that my x86 assembler is particulary good, or that the missus will allow me enough free time to get my head back into coding at home... So the following is what I can remember from quite a while ago... Also from what I did look at, I rapidly came to the conclusion that a "real" mode i386 port was the more straight forward as that keeps everything in 16 bits and saves a lot of mucking around. So you could either rewrite it as a process that runs as 16 bits and so use it as an app under say Linux/FreeBSD/OS/2 (I wont mention the people from Redmond :-), or as a 16 bit OS running native. Either way the first skirmishes I made with the source lead me to believe that in simple terms, the following would need to be completed: - rewrite the assembler portion to x86 - memory management/interrupt handlers/booting and initialisation etc etc - rewrite the disk driver to run the floppy drive (1.4 MB should be enough to demonstrate it works and boot a kernel etc) - the tty stuff could conceivably be pointed at COM1 and you could hang a console/teletype (for the sad) onto the back of a PC or just produce suitable keyboard/screen drivers. With any joy if the assembler level can be done correctly (device drivers aside) you could theoretically leave the bulk of the C source intact - which could possibly make it a purer port, assuming you can get gcc to compile K&R C - I havent tried yet. Anyhow comments and sarcastic remarks are welcome. Regards Paul ------------ Paul Osborne Computing Officer University of Kent at Canterbury Computing Service