DS-OS Website Resurrected

[dpacbach]

Hi Guys,

The DS-OS project was a small OS written for 8086 machines back in the late 90's. Includes kernel, boot loader, command interpreter, PS/2 mouse driver, sample application, and installation program. Code is written in 8086 assembly for the A86 assembler. The website was taken down some time in the early 2000's but I found it on an archive and reconstructed it along with its data files on a new server here:

http://itfromterabit.net/dsos

I am the author of this OS but I have not touched it since 1999--the files/data/website are exactly as they were back then. If there is any interest I can put this on github. It's small, but should be a fully functional OS at least on PCs of that time (can boot from a floppy or HD). I also have a text editor for this OS but never got around to putting it on the website--if you'd like I can post it also. If you find any of this useful drop me a line

David Sicilia

[max]

Hey dpacbach,

really cool to see such an old project being resurrected. Must have been some nice work to find the necessary docs and information at that time. Props!
Any plans on a DS-OS2?

Greets,
Max

[dpacbach]

Hi Max,
Thank you- at this point no plans for DS-OS2... I'd be happy if I had a machine on which to run DS-OS, but I've long since given up my old PCs Would be nice if we could run these things in VirtualBox...
David

[b.zaar]

Would be nice if we could run these things in VirtualBox...

Try running it in DOSBox (or BoxOn ;) If you map a directory as a local disk you could use files from your host OS through the 0x13 BIOS interrupt to share data between the 2 OS's.

[dpacbach]

Hi b.zaar,
Wow looks like I'm a bit behind the times, thank you I'll give that a try--
David

[onlyonemac]

I'd be happy if I had a machine on which to run DS-OS, but I've long since given up my old PCs

I've got some old computers that I could run it on for you - although I don't know if they're old enough. Perhaps you could give me some easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions for setting this up and then I can try it out for you? Let me know if you're interested...

[dpacbach]

Hi onlyonemac,
I seem to remember that if you have a PC from the that era with a floppy drive and MS-DOS then you can run the INSTALL.COM file (an MS-DOS program) to install the IMAGE.BIN file onto the floppy drive, then just boot from the floppy and it should work. The install program, when run, will tell you that it is about to erase the contents of drive A: with the image file--when you press "y" it will do so. If you have another way though to get the image onto the floppy which works better for you then I imagine that would work too, as the installation program does nothing but copy it over. If you like I can give you the source to the INSTALL.COM file if you'd rather look at it or assemble it yourself.
David

[linguofreak]

Hi onlyonemac,
I seem to remember that if you have a PC from the that era with a floppy drive and MS-DOS then you can run the INSTALL.COM file (an MS-DOS program) to install the IMAGE.BIN file onto the floppy drive, then just boot from the floppy and it should work. The install program, when run, will tell you that it is about to erase the contents of drive A: with the image file--when you press "y" it will do so. If you have another way though to get the image onto the floppy which works better for you then I imagine that would work too, as the installation program does nothing but copy it over. If you like I can give you the source to the INSTALL.COM file if you'd rather look at it or assemble it yourself.
David

Any Unix-like system (Unix, OS X, etc) will have dd, which can be used to blast an image to a floppy. Furthermore, most virtual machines can load a raw image file on the host system directly as an emulated floppy.

EDIT:

In fact, yes, just rename image.bin to image.img, and VirtualBox will accept it as a floppy disk, from which DS-OS can be booted without any problems.

[dpacbach]

Wow that actually works! I never thought I'd see the OS running again, but I guess I was wrong It might actually be easy to continue developing this OS now...
Thank you
David

[Roman]

Wow that actually works! I never thought I'd see the OS running again, but I guess I was wrong It might actually be easy to continue developing this OS now...
Thank you
David

Are you going to continue developing this OS? Or are you going to start a new project? Maybe a 32/64-bit OS?

[onlyonemac]

Hi onlyonemac,
I seem to remember that if you have a PC from the that era with a floppy drive and MS-DOS then you can run the INSTALL.COM file (an MS-DOS program) to install the IMAGE.BIN file onto the floppy drive, then just boot from the floppy and it should work. The install program, when run, will tell you that it is about to erase the contents of drive A: with the image file--when you press "y" it will do so. If you have another way though to get the image onto the floppy which works better for you then I imagine that would work too, as the installation program does nothing but copy it over. If you like I can give you the source to the INSTALL.COM file if you'd rather look at it or assemble it yourself.
David

I shouldn't have any problems getting the image onto a floppy disk and I've got a 486-based PC which I can test it on. Is that old enough ?

[dpacbach]

If you boot DS-OS on a 486 PC it will be like taking an animal from a zoo and putting it in its natural habitat... DS-OS will be overjoyed and filled with the feeling of "nostalgia for the present."

[b.zaar]

"nostalgia for the present."

It's not about nostalgia... It's about a culture

[Prostyle44]

hey, even I`m working on a project similar to yours (here) but i still could not finish it since i didn`t have much spare time since may . I intend to finish it as soon as i get some spare time.