BOS 0.04

[bubach]

I released a new version of BOS today.
New is a simple MM and floppy driver.

http://bos.asmhackers.net/

PS: I have a zipped .img-file that might come in
handy for lazy BOCHS testing..

/ Christoffer

[Warrior]

Very nice job!

Edit: Here's me having fun with the VGA stuffs

[bubach]

Thanks. Cool, so you got the source? I had problems with that, used capital letters in the .zip-file by mistake, so the link on my download page wasn't working.. Fixed now.

/ Christoffer

[Warrior]

I just went to /downloads, I think outside the box :p

[distantvoices]

it's pretty, nice and stable. I daresay it could have quite some more commands. *gg* Each of the commands I've tested works fine. so to say, all of them.

I'm going green coz of envy. you've got a date/time thing in your os. Mine still lacks this. But t least I've got the colors straight *chuckle*

[bubach]

lol.. thanks.
it's now the fun starts. gotta fix VFS, fat12, driver interface and user program support until the next version... ;D

[Pype.Clicker]

seems to work nice with qemu, except it apparently took 100% cpu time all long...

Works fine on my K6-2 too: i get the mario displayed, date and time, delay, FDD (which was giving weird output on qemu, compared to K6-2)

[smiddy]

seems to work nice with qemu, except it apparently took 100% cpu time all long...

Works fine on my K6-2 too: i get the mario displayed, date and time, delay, FDD (which was giving weird output on qemu, compared to K6-2)

Out of curiosity, how fast did it load in QEMU versus a real system? I pointed this out to bubach on his site, Bochs loads really fast while in a real system it seems to take forever (ok, slight exageration, but it is noticeable).

[Brendan]

Hi,

I tested BOS 0.04 on some computers - I didn't try Bochs or QEMU (enough people have tried them already). For each computer I tried all commands .

On all computers, the floppy drive motor remains on after boot. The "fddtest" command doesn't turn the floppy motor off either. It also sounds like it's resetting the floppy drive or something after loading each sector when booting (rapid clicks from floppy - too rapid for normal "between tracks" clicking).

I couldn't find any extra problems with any of the commands for the following computers:

[tt]Computer N - AMD-K6(tm) 3D processor 300 Mhz
64 Mb memory
24x CD-rom
1335Mb hard disk
S3 video card
ethernet card

COMPUTER O - Pentium Pro 200 MHz
128 Mb RAM
Adaptec AHA-2940 SCSI controller
Compaq ST32550W SCSI hard-drive
IBM DCAS-34330W SCSI hard-drive
IBM DGHS09U SCSI hard-drive
Sony CDU-76S SCSI CD-ROM
Ethernet on motherboard

COMPUTER Q (Compaq Proliant 1600) - 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

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[/tt]


For the last computer it always locks up the second time I type "memtest" in:

[tt]COMPUTER H - 160Mhz Cryix/Pentium
16Mb Memory
1.44 Mb floppy
514Mb Hard disk
CDrom using IDE interface
Cirrus Logic 5430/40 PCI video card
ESS ES688 Audiodrive sound card
NE2000 compatible ethernet card[/tt]

I figure this has something to do with the memory test assuming 32 MB is present...


Cheers,

Brendan

[bubach]

Hi, and thanks for all your tests!
My bootsector sucks, I have the "ultimate" read_sectors routine, which handles lba->chs, carefully reads on sector at a time etc..
Well, it sucks..

The memtest command have some included debug code that allocates and frees memory, the thing is that i never test if the pointer returned by alloc is zero ( not enought mem).
And the testing assumes 32mb of RAM, so on your machine (with 16mb) it hangs when it tries to free unexisting memory.. :/

/ Christoffer

[NotTheCHEAT]

FDD (which was giving weird output on qemu, compared to K6-2)

It's supposed to give "weird" output. If you look closely at the output, most OS dever's (even noobs, like me) should notice the last two bytes printed, which are the same characters we see printed in a hex editor when we're making minor adjustments to our bootsector image - 55, AAh. Therefore, what fddtest does is print the bootsector on the screen.

Everything works fine on my PC:

Intel Celeron 2.0GHz (actually, software tests indicate it's closer to 1.8GHz)
256 Mb memory
CD-RW/DVD-ROM
60GB hard disk
Intel-something video card
ethernet card

Nice mario sprite, where'd you get it?

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get it working on Bochs on linux (it's not your OSes fault, it's bochs fault or linuxes fault, or most likely, my fault)

You got great code, works fine on my PC. Keep it up!

[bubach]

Thanks!
The mario sprite is from the famous PC version of mario: http://www.wieringsoftware.nl/mario/

I have fixed the bootsector so that it should load much "better" now..
And about the floppy light, I had to rewrite parts of the fdd code, becasue with the one in BOS 0.04 it stops working when i turn the floppy off.. :S

Anyway, next version will hopefully be both better and more stable.

[Pype.Clicker]

hey! that's the guy who wrote "Charlie the duck!" ... i was ROFL when i saw someone writing a PhD thesis and pointing at "GameMaker" in the bibliography as i've been myself a heavy user of GameMaker myself when i was teen.

(respects, though ... he managed to do more than i did)

[bubach]

hehe yeah.. but is charlie the duck really more famous then the mario game? his mario version rocks..
i had the old "cracked" version he talks about on that page, and was really happy when i found the full version, and with source!