Tring to make an OS, need help.

[Tora OS]

hmmm....i see the problem with my old mouse driver. I think you assisted me, at least.

OS projects are fun....but challenging.

[thoover]

What is easier to use for an os?

EXE
COM
OBJ

this was all my favorite and best compiler will let me do.

[AR]

Flat Binary is better to start with, if you use GRUB to boot then you'll be better off with ELF as it's hands off. OBJ is an unlinked object file, it's not even a program.

[TaylorH]

Will anyone compile my C file into BIN for me? my compiler only dose EXE's.

P.S. I have to do a few changes to the file

P.S. I will have the first prototype in about 1 day the second in about 23 days and the acctual file in about 1 and a half years.

P.S. Thanks to GLneo I don't have to learn alot about assembly but I may still want to edit the file later. It finaly worked.

[JoeKayzA]

Hi!

What is easier to use for an os?

EXE
COM
OBJ

this was all my favorite and best compiler will let me do.

AFAIK, the multiboot standard (that GRUB supports) is format independent and will allow you to boot EXE's too, but you'll have to include a valid multiboot header (and yes, you'll need asm for this too), and it will boot you into protected mode, so you need to switch back to realmode if you really want to work in realmode.

Check GRUB's site for more on this (they also have a good tutorial). Further, I remember having seen a topic here on booting EXEs from GRUB too, search to forum for this.

Otherwise, there is something called 'bootprog' that also boots EXE's directly, never tried this however.

@TaylorH: I really recommend you to switch to another compiler, that at least supports flat binary (recommend gcc here). Sending out your source code files every time you want to do a recompile isn't a solution.

cheers
Joe

[Solar]

Yesterday evening I fixed a stupid bug after about 30 edit - compile - test cycles. Not having your own development environment set up isn't a solution.

[Kemp]

I second that sentiment. During moments of inspiration while working on my boot loader or when making tests to try bits out I was doing a code-assemble-test cycle every 5 mins or so, that's impossible unless you can do the entire process yourself.

[thoover]

can anyone give me a program to change an EXE or COM to BIN?

[AR]

It would be easier if you just use LD to link to flat binary (I think it can understand the MS Object files), you shouldn't have much difficulty writing it yourself which you would have had to anyway (to launch programs when your OS supports it you would need to understand the executable format).