spoon - 30.09.2004

[durand]

Hi,

Could people please try and boot my system?

http://www.djm.co.za/spoon/floppy.tar.gz

Pentium 2+ with > 64 MB RAM.

There are four menu options:

1 - basic shell, a bit messy
2 - basic shell with networking (realtek cards). Don't try this on a busy network. You can basically just set up your IP and ping the machine from a remote computer.
3 - A GUI desktop 800x600x32 which requires VBE2
4 - a half-complete cd player app which uses atapi cd commands. Doesn't work too well - if at all. I'm still busy.

Virtual desktops/shells can be accessed with ALT-F1..F8. If there is a crash, the kernel will dump info to the screen on a console or the GUI.

I don't expect it to crash in any bad way. I just want to see if it boots on multiple systems as it should.

[distantvoices]

Hehe, cool thing.

I gonna test the gui on a real computer today evening for it doesn't work with vmware: blue screen, and thats it.

The shell works (I've tested the networking image), althou I've ecountered some debug messages: you print all the perceived keyboard scancodes as well. This - obscures the commands one types a bit.

The scrolling is a bit slow - well, it is in vmware, so I have no rights to ***** about that.

What is this appserver doing by the way? Huuuge image listed by ps.

Stay safe and keep up the good work.

[durand]

thanks, sorry about that. I actually forgot about the keyscan printing... Hmm. I've uploaded a fixed image.

The information about memory usage (for the app_server) is wrong. I know about that problem but it's just a stat and not actual memory usage.

The blue screen shouldn't be happening in vmware. What version of vmware are you running (4.00 build 4460 is mine)? Older versions of vmware didn't work correctly (ie. the way I wanted). How much RAM have you allocated? (I use 128MB).

[durand]

okay, that was kind of lame. In text mode, init wasn't moving the irrelevant apps onto their own consoles. So it must have been a mess. I was too interested in the GUI. :-\

All fixed now, thanks.

[Brendan]

Hi,


I tested the original download (before/while you changed the keyscan printing, etc). Here's the results:

WORK MACHINE
Pentium IV 1.66 Ghz
256 Mb RAM
40 Gb hard drive
8 Gb hard drive
NVIDEA RIVA TNT2 Model64 Pro video card
NETGEAR FA311/FA312 PCI Ethernet card

Booted the normal version and the 800*600 version - both worked well. The terminal window in the GUI didn't update when it changed - had to move the window to see any changes (pressing TAB didn't help). One time I booted the 800*60 version and it didn't respond to the keyboard (mouse only). While trying to get it to respond to the keyboard I clicked all the buttons on the terminal window (minimize, maximize, etc) and the terminal window started displaying wrong - looked like the bit blitter was using the wrong horizontal size for the source data.

BTW - it's possible to get the addresses of 8*8 and 8*16 font data directly from the BIOS before switching to protected mode (easier than creating your own fonts)...



COMPUTER P
Dual Pentium III 1 GHz
512 Mb RAM
Adaptec AIC-7899 dual-channel SCSI on motherboard
2 * 9 Gb Quantum ATLAS SCSI hard-drives
IDE CD-ROM (50x generic)
Ethernet on motherboard plus 2 PCI ethernet cards (one is RTL8139).

I tried 800*600 video version first and it stopped with "syscalls.c(0000000053): syscall_memory : 34000001 memory returning NULL". I rebooted and tried the normal version, which booted and worked well.

I booted the networking version (after plugging the ethernet cable into the Realtek card). The OS detected the card and it seemed like it was configured and working, but the OS stopped with the "IRQ: unhandled IRQ event for 00000000C" before I could test it. I tried twice more but was unable to type "ifconfig 192.168.0.33" and "ping 192.168.0.33" on the other computer before it stopped with the unhandled IRQ message (it takes about 4 seconds before it stops). According to Linux IRQ 12 (0x0C) is the PS/2 mouse..



COMPUTER Q (Compaq Proliant 1600) - configured with linux
Dual Pentium II 400 MHz
384 Mb RAM
Dual-channel SCSI on motherboard
5 * 4.5 Gb SCSI hard-drives
IDE CD-ROM
Ethernet on motherboard

Booted the normal version and it worked fine. I tried the 800*600 video version which stopped with the same error message as computer P. I don't think this computer (or computer P) supports 800*600*32bit.



Cheers,

Brendan

[durand]

Thanks Brendan,

That's great. Basically, it's a logical flaw in my IRQ handling... unhandled IRQs are masked so that they don't mess up the system again. I did this after I discovered that some IRQs keep firing until they're serviced. I'll need to fix it now.

I don't know why the kernel debug error occured in syscall.c :/

The stopping after 4 seconds with the network version may be due to my poor network driver crashing under normal load. I've only been able to test it on crossover cable and pinging successfully...

If the card doesn't support 800x600x32, then the kernel should not start up in "graphical" mode .. it will be plain text. Since GRUB is the one doing the switching.

But yeah, that was exactly what I wanted. Now I have areas to focus on

[distantvoices]

Ok, I've given it a look again and have managed to boot up in graphical mode - in vmware 4.5.1 with 128 mb ram.
Just look at the attached screenie.

The window moving lags a bit in vmware. Thats because all the while waking up a server via message passing and have it retrieve one message after the other *is* slow like hell. I've experienced that kind of stuff in my own micro kernel adventure too - so I've split up tasks.

The rectangle for the windowmoving leaves some artifacts on the screen. It isn't wild, just a bit disturbing.

The terminal window has some serious issue:

If you enter keys, the text control is not updated. you oughta issue some redraw or have the application redraw itself. I've revealed the typed text after moving the window - which caused it to be actualized.

Minimizing/maximizing/iconify didn't work. the one window with garbled contents is the result of my tries with the three icons in the upper right corner.

Stay safe - 'n have a spoonful of spice