Getting started

[Rob]

I am interested in playing around with building an OS. I am running Win XP and was curious on what I need to get started. Should I put together a computer with just DOS and GCC or can I code and compile on XP using GCC? What are some setups that you all have?

[Slasher]

The setup isn't really that important,its the availablity of development tools for that setup that is.
I use win98,Bochs 2.0,Djgcc 3.xx,nasm 0.98 and a text editor. I also use a free PC to test the code after it works in Bochs.

[Tim]

If you're developing under XP, you're better off using Cygwin. Bochs is good for debugging your code to begin with, but you're better off with a real test PC in the long term.

[jamesb.au]

Hello Tim, is debugging with Bochs really all that useful? I used it a few times (quite a while ago now) and found its timing issues to be a real pain in the ring. There are some "real time" hacks, but apparently they aren't stable.

Do you honestly find that the timing isn't really a big deal when running on Bochs? It just confused me personally. I want things to run in ways they would if I were watching it execute on a real PC. Can Bochs emulate a lot better now? Or doesn't this matter to "time slices" when sheduling round robin etc?

[Tim]

You're right, Bochs does fudge timings a lot. But Bochs is almost vital for the early stages of OS development: switching to protected mode, enabling paging, and adding an IDT. It's also handy for getting to grips with some of the standard PC hardware, because you can see what it's doing inside (via the source).

But once your kernel has stopped triple faulting, Bochs becomes less useful, since timings on Bochs are just weird.