I’ve been making a little toy operating system for the 8086 in the last few days. Now that was a lot of fun!
I don’t plan on making that code public. This is purely a learning project for myself. I think going for real-mode 8086 + BIOS is a good idea as a first step. I am well aware that this isn’t going anywhere – but now I’ve gained some experience and learned a ton of stuff, so maybe 32 bit or even 64 bit mode might be doable in the future? We’ll see.
It provides a syscall interface, can launch processes, read/write files (in a very simple filesystem).
Here’s a video where I run it natively on my old Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop (and Warp 3 later in the video, because why not):
https://movq.de/v/893daaa548/los86-p133-warp3.mp4
(Sorry for the skewed video. It’s a glossy display and super hard to film this.)
It starts with the laptop’s boot menu and then boots into the kernel and launches a shell as PID 1. From there, I can launch other processes (anything I enter is a new process, except for the exit at the end) and they return the shell afterwards.
And a screenshot running in QEMU:
#y3h75za
(#y3h75za) @movq@www.uninformativ.de That is so insanely cool! 😎
#trm2z7a
(#y3h75za) @prologic@twtxt.net 😃 It surely was/is one of the most fun projects recently.
#ssa57xa
(#y3h75za) Improving the filesystem is probably going to be the next big task. I don’t know that much about this stuff, so I’ll have to learn a lot. 🥴
#7fq32yq
(#y3h75za) > I don’t plan on making that code public. This is purely a learning project for myself.
So, just a hobby. It won’t be big and professional like GNU, then?
Seriously, that’s very cool. I wish my bootloader was that excited about a successful boot.
#2o5im7q
(#y3h75za) @mckinley@twtxt.net
So, just a hobby. It won’t be big and professional like GNU, then?
Ha! 😅 No, that certainly won’t happen this time. 🥴
(What an exciting time that was when there were new operating systems. 🤔)
#nupdkna
(#y3h75za) @movq@www.uninformativ.de Oh, a movqOS, that’s super cool! :-)
Yeah, glossy screens are straight from hell. :-D What’s this spooky wind chime background music?
Anyway, have great fun learning more and experimenting with this low level stuff!
#bdw4aaq
(#y3h75za) @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org That must have been “Between Interval - Radio Silence” playing in the background: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIzhpg01Faw&list=PLApmGFOVPZhko_EIfnvcPVdqXSklqJTIq (I didn’t pay attention to audio, sorry. 🥴)
#wbnlv5q
(#y3h75za) @movq@www.uninformativ.de Hahaha, no worries. :-)
#nwydpxq