Live data from Hacker News

After 5 days, my OS doesn't crash when I press a key

jvns.ca

31–40 of 90 posts

Re: After 5 days, my OS doesn't crash when I press a key

#32
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite disrespectful to call someone a 'he' when they are obviously a 'she.' This is only vaguely related to the recent discussion about 'they' for people of indeterminate gender. It's also quite jarring to read; I was confused if the OP was speaking of someone else. People often point out grammar or factual mistakes, I see your parent as doing no different.

I was under the impression that banal grammar corrections are frowned upon here on HN, because they do nothing to further the topic or encourage interesting discussion. It's one of the reasons why Reddit is so tedious.

It's not a grammar correction, but a factual one, as if someone were misquoting the original article.

Re: After 5 days, my OS doesn't crash when I press a key

#34

>Press keys. Nothing happens. Hours pass. Realize interrupts are turned off and I need to turn them on. >THE OS IS STILL CRASHING WHEN I PRESS A KEY. This continues for 2 days. Remember that now that I have remapped interrupt 1 to interrupt 33 and I need to update my IDT. I have issues like this a lot (i.e. forgetting I've tweaked something and wondering what is causing weird effects). Any advice on how to avoid it?

Use a rubberducking text file.

Every time you think, write down a line or two delineating your current reasoning and your debugging info. When you make changes, highlight them to mark them as pending ("need to update IDT"). You can also categorize, tag lines/pieces, and so on.

When you're stuck just backtrack this file, whether it is a hour or two days from now, and you'll avoid all of this.

Re: After 5 days, my OS doesn't crash when I press a key

#35
Working at the layer below is a very useful exercise. As part of my undergrad course in EE in the late 1980's we had to design and simulate a 4 bit micro-processor using logic components (essentially NAND gates). I got completely immersed in that project. Not only did it force me to understand a complete, albeit simple processor but actually building it gave me a lot more confidence in writing code. Things have moved on a lot since then and there are many layers of abstraction meaning that most developers don't need to understand the hardware, but having a decent 'programmers model' for the OS can only be a good thing.

Re: After 5 days, my OS doesn't crash when I press a key

#36
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite disrespectful to call someone a 'he' when they are obviously a 'she.' This is only vaguely related to the recent discussion about 'they' for people of indeterminate gender. It's also quite jarring to read; I was confused if the OP was speaking of someone else. People often point out grammar or factual mistakes, I see your parent as doing no different.

I was under the impression that banal grammar corrections are frowned upon here on HN, because they do nothing to further the topic or encourage interesting discussion. It's one of the reasons why Reddit is so tedious.

They point is not so much a correction of grammar, but a correction of the wrong implicit assumption that a person who writes about osdev has to be male. Its no drama if it happens once, but as said in this thread it happened several times in the last few days. And if it happens that often it effectively makes women in this field invisible, especially as role models for the next generation(s).

EDIT: And it goes a bit further. The sole reason why we are having this discussion is because the author explicitly used a female name and her writings still got perceived as those of a male author. If there no name or just a generic nick, most people in here - myself probably included - would have assumed its a male by default.

Re: After 5 days, my OS doesn't crash when I press a key

#37
post #10
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Writing an actual graphics driver is tricky Does that include things that are not in text mode, if I recall the name correctly? Sometimes I just want my tiniest netbook to display the normal 80x40 resolution but it keeps putting the characters in what I think is video mode

I'm not sure how it is implemented at the graphics card level, but the Linux kernel virtual console can be high-resolution. The "correct" thing to do here is set the console font to a larger one. If you are on a systemd-using distribution, see vconsole.conf(8). Now, you could force a lower resolution, but that causes jaggy text, as pixels will be stretched unevenly by the graphics card. This can be done with KMS, or…

As a concrete suggestion, I quite like the "sun12x22" font.

Re: After 5 days, my OS doesn't crash when I press a key

#38

>Press keys. Nothing happens. Hours pass. Realize interrupts are turned off and I need to turn them on. >THE OS IS STILL CRASHING WHEN I PRESS A KEY. This continues for 2 days. Remember that now that I have remapped interrupt 1 to interrupt 33 and I need to update my IDT. I have issues like this a lot (i.e. forgetting I've tweaked something and wondering what is causing weird effects). Any advice on how to avoid it?

> I have issues like this a lot (i.e. forgetting I've tweaked something and wondering what is causing weird effects). Any advice on how to avoid it?

Use your version control, commit more often and use more descriptive commit messages, along with branching/merging strategies to avoid putting not-production-ready code you are unsure of to master.

Re: After 5 days, my OS doesn't crash when I press a key

#39

>Press keys. Nothing happens. Hours pass. Realize interrupts are turned off and I need to turn them on. >THE OS IS STILL CRASHING WHEN I PRESS A KEY. This continues for 2 days. Remember that now that I have remapped interrupt 1 to interrupt 33 and I need to update my IDT. I have issues like this a lot (i.e. forgetting I've tweaked something and wondering what is causing weird effects). Any advice on how to avoid it?

Commit before changing stuff. Easy to roll back, and to see what changes you have done lately.

Re: After 5 days, my OS doesn't crash when I press a key

#40
post #10
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Writing an actual graphics driver is tricky Does that include things that are not in text mode, if I recall the name correctly? Sometimes I just want my tiniest netbook to display the normal 80x40 resolution but it keeps putting the characters in what I think is video mode

I'm not sure how it is implemented at the graphics card level, but the Linux kernel virtual console can be high-resolution. The "correct" thing to do here is set the console font to a larger one. If you are on a systemd-using distribution, see vconsole.conf(8). Now, you could force a lower resolution, but that causes jaggy text, as pixels will be stretched unevenly by the graphics card. This can be done with KMS, or…

Does that work (changing the font) even when you swap to TTY2 for example? If so, you're a lifesaver!
Post reply on HN