OSDev.org

Ok, firstly i want everyone to know that are no prizes.


GOALS:
This Challenge is to create a nice GUI interface (320*200 256 color), with mouse cursor, a command prompt entirely wrote on the boot sector of an disk (USB, diskette, hard disk, but must to be 512 bytes long).

CONDITIONS:
The promt need to have at least this commands:

[*]COLOR: changes the font color to two decimal
bytes given after the command (background and font colours, each byte may be from 0 to 16).
[*]MOUSE: enable/disables mouse and mouse cursor
[*]SWOFF: turn off by APM
[*]SPEED: change CPU speed divisor (8, 4, 2 or 1, give after command).
[*]BREAK: disables PIC and then HALTS, turning coming back by IRQ impossible:
[*]RESET: reboots the PC
And more than that, there must be icons to RESET, SWOFF and BREAK, they must have some simbol that remember their functions, and must do their actions by clicking on they.
The mouse cursor need to be 8*8 pixels (any format and any color).


RULES:
[*] no disk acesses may happen, only memory acesses, to ensure that only bootsector data will be acessed. Obs.: you may create a type of data compression, and unpack this data in other memory areas that are not between 07C00h~08000h.
[*]This code must run in pure 8086 instructions, and need to work in any real PC with APM and VGA video support.
[*]You need to fill the whole screen with some background color.
[*]Theres must to be some welcome message in the screen and some prompt header as "A:>".

Thank all you that tried! And sorry by not giving any prizes!.

You want all this from one 512 byte boot sector?

The PC you are targeting does not support 320x200x8 or APM.

End of competition.

LMAO!

That could be an excellent scenario for a remake of "Mission: Impossible".

I think ill go build windows xp now

Combuster, sorry, but you being a fool.
Acessing the APM may be not a original 8086 PC supported feature, but in modern computer this may be acessed through INT 015h, without needing to use any non-8086 instructions, and the principal:
THIS IS NOT A COMPETITION, THERE'S NO WINNERS OR LOSERS.

And what would motivate me to do this? The joy of building an operating system for you?

[*]This code must run in pure 8086 instructions, and need to work in any real PC with APM and VGA video support.

The BIOS for a modern computer would be very different from one on an old IBM PC, or something similar. Using any BIOS calls added since then would break the compatibility you wish for. As others have pointed out, this challenge is impossible. If you don't think so, then try coding it yourself.

I call a troll on this one. First off, I agree with Jesse's observation: everything here points to you trying to trick us into writing your code for you. Secondly, you are being unreasonable - you criteria are random, too many (i would need at least 25% of the space just for storing all the required text alone), and lack consideration. An official PC with a VGA would be at least a 286, therefore the 8086 restriction is pointless. Requiring APM puts the minimum requirement even further. You explicitly mentioned prizes, and a challenge is a form of competition, and then I haven't started about you blatantly breaking forum rules by posting direct assaults at my person.

Please think again before doing something stupid.

X 2




For the OP

Dont call anyone truly Greater in OS intelligence experience than you, a fool. Im surprised this wasnt locked. How far can i go posting this

Firstly, I DON'T NEED THIS.
I just want to see how each one would solve this.
But, if you want, i'll do this my self and post the source of the code on this page.
After doing this, can you try?

Ok. Do that then. If you really just wanted to see how we would solve this (which has been pointed out that it doesnt....just no.), then you should have written it already, or at least shown us that you know enough about it and have planned out how to write it that you could do it.

So, please, write it, post your code and make sure you follow all your imposed rules and criteria!

Good luck,

-JL

PS: This forum is for people who prove that they have the capabilities to do OSdev. Please prove this to us, otherwise you will encounter nothing but trouble here. So far, you have not done so. I suggest you get on it.

Hello,

Im not seeing a problem with this post:

He mentioned an 8086 instruction set restriction within the bootstrap software, not as an architecture restriction thus making calls to the APM BIOS and VGA BIOS possible.

Even if this is to "write code for him" or not doesnt matter - the code will end up a complete and not useful mess anyways.

Just my 2 cents.