[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

Sphere

om

I'm considering ways of implementing my design of a Sphere Operating
System on MMU based hardware... 

the sphere design is at: 
http://users.erols.com/alangrimes/UCE/sphere/sphere.txt 

I'm reviewing a two year old printout of the oskit manual... I don't
know/can hardly fathom what the authors were thinking when they made
this thing so huge and complex to the point that hand-coding the kernel
in machine language is likley to get me further faster than trying to
comprehend an artifact of this complexity. =( 
Ofcourse I have no intention of doing anything in machine language on
the x86; its just not worth it. I would hope that there was a quick way
to spew out an OS and then get on to better things... 

I better back up a little and give some background... 
I may have posted some of this here years ago...

I am writing this e-mail on an Athalon 800 running windows 3.11. I have
BeOS on the other partition but I didn't give it much space because I
don't use it much (read: havn't booted it in months; don't know if it
still works). I MAY get a Mac laptop in a few months too. 

I have no experience with software development under a Unix like
environment because I am no where near advanced enough to use even linux
much less gain a comprehensive understanding of its core development
tools. The only compilers I ever successfully used were Borland TP5.5
and TC3.0... The only software project of any scale that has held my
attention is this very same OS which I began working on six years ago.
=\ 

Now about this OSkit... Incase you havn't looked at the thing in a
while, ITS NEARLY FIFTY MEGABYTES IN SIZE!!! My mind boggles! How could
one possibly manage something that bloated. =( How could it possibly get
to that size anyway? All of DOS fits on a couple or three 5.25's (and
its still better than any other PC OS in existance)... I have a few of
them in a box on my desk... I have seen numerous hard-drives that it
couldn't fit on. 

Tell me: How does a HUMAN BEING manage and make use of something that
huge? My current work of fiction is probably going to be finished at
about 200 kilobytes... =\ 

Please excuse my asking but what kind sick and depraved mind leads to
software as ugly as this? Unix, Linux, windows (to a lesser extent),
BeOS, and Macintosh (which at least has the sense enough to try to hide
it). Do you get paid for code by the megabyte? Do they pay you extra if
it is far too complex for anyone else to understand? Unix is cult; not a
useful peice of software...

Oh, by the way, I am still using Win 3.11 because I refuse to give up
DOS until I have something truly better...

...THE SPHERE OPERATING SYSTEM.... 

Sphere is a Subsystem based OS. The closest design in existance is the
Chorus distributed OS. Sphere is a highly distilled design. It sticks to
to the basics and chops complexity like sushi. 

The only real abstraction in Sphere is the sphere. Files, processes, all
that stuff MAY be provided by OPTIONAL subsystems. It discards close to
90% of the entire C standard library. It approaches POSIX with an "I
fart in your general direction" aditude. (See Monty Python's quest for
the Holy Grail).

Using Conventional (read 'shitty') tools to get this monstrer on-line
will not be even remotely easy. It'll be like trying to make a jet
engine at an 18th century smithee's... =\

I have not done any serious work on this type of implementation of
Sphere (preferring the more advanced kernel-free version.)

The kernel will actually be a driver-cluster inside the Core Sphere
which will be a Sphere system that is the principle (but not exclusive)
provider of global services... The Big Problem is figuring out how to
initialize the Sphere System on an architecture as severely demented as
the x86... 

The bootsector is trivial but building the system initializer to set up
all the convoluted half-documented BIOS and chipset stuff is well beyond
what I can obtain proper documentation for... =\ I havn't really
bothered with this low-level stuff in more than a year... =(

If it weren't for the fact that everyone making computers these days are
clueless or demented I wouldn't be here at all... =\ 

HELP!!!

-- 
NUKE NIGERIA!!!!  (419)
http://users.erols.com/alangrimes/  <my website.
Any usage of this e-mail account is subject to the terms and conditions
specified on my website.
Follow-Ups: