Roll your own toy UNIX-clone OS | Hacker News Reader

Roll your own toy UNIX-clone OS

jamesmolloy.co.uk

130 pointsyawniek16 comments

nice tutorial on how a simple x86 OS works

There is also movitz - a Common Lisp running on the metal - http://common-lisp.net/project/movitz/

That's pretty cool. Do you know if anyone's tried using that for embedded systems? It's been in the wild for a while. I know that Rodney Brooks developed L, a common lisp for embedded systems, but that was a more than a decade ago (http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/712056.html)

There's a project called Hedgehog Lisp that's been used "in the wild" for embedded sensor systems. It's bytecoded, but the interpreter gets down to 20kb. It's not CL; it's got its own set of special forms and predefined functions, but it's a real Lisp:

http://hedgehog.oliotalo.fi/

He mentions in "The Screen"

You could also have a scout at the linux0.1 code - that has an implementation of vsprintf which is quite neat and tidy. You could copy that function then use it to implement printf()

here are the goods:

http://oldlinux.org/lxr/http/source/kernel/vsprintf.c?v=0.11...

I've got no problem with the C code, but the assembly is a little beyond me. Anyone know of a good x86 asm primer?

I would try just looking at the x86 manual by Intel. Just looking up the different operations might be all you need.

Art of assembly. A google search should bring it up.

I would be more interested in building a small practical operating system based on Linux, but with new user interface components (i.e. building your own configuration, terminal, and GUI portions).

I want a new Apple II.

Looks cool, but how is it different from Minix? Minix is a pretty nice system for learning, and very clean.

This is smaller. Its probably more comparable to Nachos. Minix is a full featured UNIX with many features TCP/IP, Posix support, etc. That said, I'd rather learn (or possibly teach) from this code over Nachos.

Minix is also a microkernel, which is a whole different can of worms.

This is great!

Well, I know what I'm doing in my free learning time now.

Thanks for sharing, this looks awesome!

Very nice tutorial(s). He links to Google, saying "There are plenty of resources out there if you know where to look." But here is something that takes the concept a bit further, already having done a bunch of "weeding" : http://www.zentu.net/oss/?q=forum/10.

BTW. If you or anyone else happens across some tools/etc. that aren't listed in that directory, please submit them! I think all the ones JamesM's tutorial mentions are in there somewhere, plus are there quite a few more.

Haven't been focusing so much on this aspect of my project, esp. not promoting it, but I think it's still useful -- namely for researching options that a perfunctory Google search that might not capture efficiently. Anyone is more than free to add a link relevant tutorials, wikis or forums at the directory.

heres another list with some links i found via google http://www.rohitab.com/discuss/index.php?act=Print&clien...

movitz looks interesting too.

Sigh, reminds me of the good old times... http://www.osdever.net/ for more information

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