Derrick 0.0.2 released, please test!

[Troy Martin]

LD doesn't seem to work either, complains about a bad BPB or something in Slovak.

[cpumaster]

I am curently testing your kernel for problems.

[inflater]

LD works for me, if the kernel driver complains it should write a error bilingual, Slovak and English. Then depending on the language version, the shell should explain it to you (either Slovak or English, depending which version you downloaded).

You're using Microsoft Virtual PC are you? Solution: switch to the 16-bit driver, VPC is a little picky about my 32bit one. Go to the control panel, select "Other" and select the 16-bit unreal mode driver and voila.
The FDD driver may display "bad BPB" when you're trying to read an incompatible filesystem, only fat12 is supported atm.

[Troy Martin]

Hehe, that worked, thanks. Apparently there's a directory called . on every FAT12 disk as well!

Just noticed that you can set it to a QWERTY layout, you should do that by default on the English version. Just one more flag to add!

[inflater]

Memory contents messed up.. or trash readed from the floppy Huh, but I've noticed it only on VPC, on bochs it always works fine, pmode or real mode driver. That same for VMware.
On real machines the pmode driver *may* work, but may also throw some error reading sector, altough the LD command completes on both drivers. Just VPC is so picky.. try the SPIRAL demo, if you tried Derrick only on VPC, it's not like it should look that way. On VPC the SPIRAL demo is corrupted, don't know why.

//EDIT: Just tried VPC again, and the smily faces disappear from the directory's contents if you call the command twice or more times. I think it doesn't "spin up" properly for VPC. microsoft, microsoft, how many souls do you have dismayed...

[cpumaster]

I cant get it to boot i have tried vmware player and microsoft virtual pc whats wrong do i changne it to iso?

[inflater]

ISO? Just select "Capture Floppy image"...

[Troy Martin]

Well, SPIRAL seems to work for me on VPC just fine. And yes, it does give some error reading sector during boot on VPC.

[inflater]

When Derrick's booting and it passes all tests (5), it'll read the first sector of the 0th track and check for validity. If it's not valid, it warns that it could not read it and the diskette driver may not be functional. Then it will wait 10 seconds and it'll boot the system.
Thats the Slovak text under the boot error, sorry, will be fixed in 0.0.2.

Anyways, the spiral demo under VPC looks like this for me:


and this is what it should look like


Anyways, VPC is the only emulator which seems to emulate PC speaker. You maybe noticed the sound at the boot up - it's CHIMES.WAV from Windows 95 converted to my OS's digitized PC speaker driver (Good old DOS days eh? ), command BEEP plays it again if you want. VPC doesn't emulate it right, but at least it has the "melody". On real machine it works fine.
Other emulators do not emulate PC speaker at all.

[AJ]

When I tested it in VPC2004 before, I got an image like the second screenshot.

Cheers,
Adam

[Troy Martin]

I get the second (correct) screenshot in VPC 2007.

[inflater]

Weird, I don't know what could be causing this corruption, I've tried to experiment with the Virtual PC settings but it always throws that mess (first screenshot).

Anyways thanks everybody for testing. You're welcome to add more advices.

[deflater]

Derrick 0.0.2 development in progress...

Planned features in 0.0.2:
- Simple FAT12 file reading
- a TYPE command to display raw file contents
- Debug functions: remove the VESA modes and clock the PIT max. to 60Hz
- Debug functions: Detect emulator presence
- Text color 0x07 by default instead of white
- A configurable BSOD...
- Load and save settings from diskette

I've added an attachment picture of the shell running at darkgray color... does that look good?

[OrOS]

- Debug functions: Detect emulator presence

I've found the easiest and quickest way for this is to look at your PCI table for the emulators display device. Its always unique.
Ex, if(gPCI->PCIDeviceExists(0x1234,0x1111)) // Zomg, its bochs!

[inflater]

Derrick 0.0.2 released,
http://derrick.xf.cz/en/home_en.htm

New features:
- Floppy driver auto-detection, if the pmode fails, real mode is used
- Changed the default text color to 0x07
- Wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derrick_(operating_system)
- FAT12 driver: LD command now displays "File Size" and "DOS disk label"
- FAT12 driver: A simple TYPE command - read text file.
- SYSINFO now detects emulator presence - Bochs, MS VPC and VMware are detectable
- Debug functions: PIT clocking max to 60Hz
- Debug functions: Removed the "call BSOD" function
- English version has a US QWERTY layout on boot-up
- Fixed the memory requirement, now runs as specified even on a 4MB RAM setting (0.0.1 complained about it)

Bugs found:
- TYPE command won't find the file if it's located outside the first root directory sector (the first 512 bytes). Will be fixed in Derrick 0.0.3, altough I planned it for 0.0.2 - well, 0.0.3 will also have full track reading instead of slow single-sector one.
- Derrick still doesn't work properly in MS VPC. Use another emulator instead.
The new bug found, special only for MS VPC: TYPE command doesn't work the second time

Altough Derrick 0.0.2 was released some days ago, I couldn't post it here for some reason...

I'm happy to hear test results from you.

Thanks in advance.
Regards
inflater