Suggest an OS

[eden]

I am following this forum maybe a year already, but I haven't been active, mainly because I am not developing OS myself, and am not that competent to answer questions. Now I fill I could start making something, but I would not like to start from scratch. Could you suggest me some OS that has the basics working, like FAT, memory manager, scheduler. Possible with comments (I know 'am asking too much).
And to be able to run on 80486 with 8MB RAM, I have a testing unit I would like to use.

Thanks to anyone,
Goran

[smiddy]

Try Solar OS, I think it can handle everything you're looking for.
http://www.hostileencounter.com/os/os_down_source.htm

[eden]

Thanks for the link. I'll try it this evening.

Goran

[Phibred]

If that doesn't work you can use mine.
http://individual.utoronto.ca/Phibred

[eden]

I had a quick look at both. SolarOS is quite mature, but I had problems getting to the desktop (switching from textmode) on the 486 machine. Maybe the videocard or the ram is problem. But, I could run it on a pentium2.

The second ran also on the 486.

Thanks for the support.

[bontanu]

Well, SolarOS will need a VESA 2.0 compatible video board with a Linear Frame Buffer for GUI setup. It is possible that the 486 has only VESA 1.2

You could tweak SolOS to use a standard video graphical mode like VGA mode 13 and simulate a bigger screen (virtual 640x480x8bits) while only showing 320x240x8bits on screen.

Or you could tweak the VESA 1.2 bank switching routine. There is an example of such a bank switching architecture on the Neomagic VESA 1.2 driver in SolOS. However you will need a routine specific to each video board.

I think for the next release I will include such a low resolution 320x240 mode because it is very compatible for a GUI start-up on old 386 and 486 machines.

It will be black and white and quite big on screen but once you have a running system you can tweak it for your specific video board....