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Show HN: A DOS-like hobby OS written in Rust and x86 assembly

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Re: Show HN: A DOS-like hobby OS written in Rust and x86 assembly

#11

Post by JdeBP »

leeter wrote: post #7
krustowski wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right. The first iteration however is 16bit and is very close to MS-DOS in terms of compatibility. Moreover, any OS that can handle simple disk I/O ops could be considered a DOS system too, innit?

Correct, there is a difference between MS-DOS and IBM-PC compatible and a DOS (ex: all the DOSes that existed for Amiga/Apple II/Commodore etc). There are many DOSes (and even MSDOSes, because yay early PC era incompatibilities!), but there is a very dubious list of things needed to be MS-DOS and IBM-PC compatible. You can probably do it if you're willing to setup a hypervisor and emulate some hardware. NGL one of my…

A version of (say) FreeDOS that was layered on top of the EFI API instead of PC98 firmware interrupts would be quite interesting. That would be a major architectural change to most of the programs, of course. But one would have provided the EFI Shell with essentially a complete suite of MS-DOS (albeit not PC-DOS or DR-DOS) commands. That could probably be quite easily ported to (say) ARM whereas the original still has x86isms.

On the other hand, did you see https://github.com/FlyGoat/csmwrap when it came up a few weeks ago?

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44101828

There are already projects to provide replacements for the vanished Compatibility Support Module.

Re: Show HN: A DOS-like hobby OS written in Rust and x86 assembly

#12

Post by vardump »

JdeBP wrote: post #9
DrNosferatu wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...meaning MS-DOS compatible :) I.e.: runs Alley Cat and Dune 2 - and Doom.

And prevents Lotus 1-2-3 from running? (-:

That's the litmus test. No version of DOS is complete until Lotus 1-2-3 no longer runs.

Re: Show HN: A DOS-like hobby OS written in Rust and x86 assembly

#13

Post by jdsully »

pvg wrote: post #3
rollcat wrote: post #2

Memory-safe language. x86_64, with Arm on the roadmap. Networking stack. Boots from a CD and via multiboot. Your hobby project wipes the floor with DOS.

Whoa there. Gotta run Doom and BASIC to compete with DOS. That is the officially recognized DOS-Kármán line.

Nobody cares about Lotus 1-2-3 support any longer :)

Re: Show HN: A DOS-like hobby OS written in Rust and x86 assembly

#14

Post by leeter »

JdeBP wrote: post #11
leeter wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, there is a difference between MS-DOS and IBM-PC compatible and a DOS (ex: all the DOSes that existed for Amiga/Apple II/Commodore etc). There are many DOSes (and even MSDOSes, because yay early PC era incompatibilities!), but there is a very dubious list of things needed to be MS-DOS and IBM-PC compatible. You can probably do it if you're willing to setup a hypervisor and emulate some hardware. NGL one of my…

A version of (say) FreeDOS that was layered on top of the EFI API instead of PC98 firmware interrupts would be quite interesting. That would be a major architectural change to most of the programs, of course. But one would have provided the EFI Shell with essentially a complete suite of MS-DOS (albeit not PC-DOS or DR-DOS) commands. That could probably be quite easily ported to (say) ARM whereas the original still ha…

I did see that and for people that need that specific functionality it seemed like a good solution.

My goal was more "What if DOS hadn't ended and but kept up support for modern hardware" along with emulation of common things in DOS gaming. So for example you would be able to set up a PIV that mapped certain resources directly or emulated them depending on the need.

Could I use DOSBox for this... yes, but this is a "why not" sort of thing. I figured it would be a good excuse to learn OS dev. But life has kept me busy for now.

Re: Show HN: A DOS-like hobby OS written in Rust and x86 assembly

#15

Post by mycall »

pvg wrote: post #3
rollcat wrote: post #2

Memory-safe language. x86_64, with Arm on the roadmap. Networking stack. Boots from a CD and via multiboot. Your hobby project wipes the floor with DOS.

Whoa there. Gotta run Doom and BASIC to compete with DOS. That is the officially recognized DOS-Kármán line.

also, can't be a dos with the 'dir' command.

Re: Show HN: A DOS-like hobby OS written in Rust and x86 assembly

#16

Post by krustowski »

mycall wrote: post #15
pvg wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa there. Gotta run Doom and BASIC to compete with DOS. That is the officially recognized DOS-Kármán line.

also, can't be a dos with the 'dir' command.

Afaik there is a 'DIR' command in MS-DOS. Anyway, what would be a better command to list a directory? I could think of 'ls' maybe

Re: Show HN: A DOS-like hobby OS written in Rust and x86 assembly

#17

Post by mixmastamyk »

I would have preferred something like this to the current UEFI environment and shell, a FLOSS 64-bit DOS-like. A cool retro boot manager and diagnostic env perhaps.

Could this run from an efi system partition? Seems to support fat12, what about gpt?

Does it poke video hardware like DOS, or have a terminal like output?

Re: Show HN: A DOS-like hobby OS written in Rust and x86 assembly

#18

Post by rzzzt »

krustowski wrote: post #6
pvg wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa there. Gotta run Doom and BASIC to compete with DOS. That is the officially recognized DOS-Kármán line.

What a challenge! Need to implement some interrupts it seems then, to provide an API for filesystem and so... Thank you for such idea

Doomgeneric has a very thin platform-specific layer: https://github.com/ozkl/doomgeneric?tab=readme-ov-file#porti...

Re: Show HN: A DOS-like hobby OS written in Rust and x86 assembly

#19

Post by jmspring »

krustowski wrote: post #6
pvg wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa there. Gotta run Doom and BASIC to compete with DOS. That is the officially recognized DOS-Kármán line.

What a challenge! Need to implement some interrupts it seems then, to provide an API for filesystem and so... Thank you for such idea

I want some TSRs and print spoolers...

Re: Show HN: A DOS-like hobby OS written in Rust and x86 assembly

#20

Post by krustowski »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #17

I would have preferred something like this to the current UEFI environment and shell, a FLOSS 64-bit DOS-like. A cool retro boot manager and diagnostic env perhaps. Could this run from an efi system partition? Seems to support fat12, what about gpt? Does it poke video hardware like DOS, or have a terminal like output?

Booting from an EFI system partition has not been tested yet. FAT12 is the only filesystem (ok, there is a memdisk implementation, but it won't work now) supported, so GPT is not supported at the moment too (yet). Kinda aiming for FAT32 implementation to be the very next implemented (flash disks are usually FAT32 iirc). Not sure about the last question: the OS utilizes/directly writes to the VGA buffer in memory, the provided resolution is 80x25 by GRUB.
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