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A monolithic operating system in 512 bytes of x86 machine code

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Re: A monolithic operating system in 512 bytes of x86 machine code

#21
post #9
post #4

Why is it monolithic? Why not microkernel? Especially that all the typical jobs of an operating system are outsourced.

Strictly speaking, a monolithic kernel is one which builds in all the code to operate: talk to hardware, load programs, perform its services or even include the ability to load drivers/code to talk to other hardware. All of the key functionality is loaded into the kernel program space but that is usually separate from user space or process space. Dumb programs; smart kernel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolithic_k…

A typical microkernel will have user programs that drive the hardware that expose a very similar interface to what a macrokernel would provide, from the application level there isn't a whole lot of visible difference but at the system level there is, essentially the macrokernel is broken up into a number of separate processes each of which is fashioned as a 'normal' user program. This significantly reduces the scope of the kernel itself which has a whole pile of interesting implications which usually manifest as massive reliability improvements over macro kernels, a penalty in raw io throughput and the ability to elegantly (on the fly) load and unload all kinds of OS components without the need to reboot the system.

But there usually is a clear distinction between such 'kernel processes' and user applications, they also tend to be run at a slightly higher priority to ensure that the system keeps moving.

Re: A monolithic operating system in 512 bytes of x86 machine code

#22
post #18
post #7

This is amazing Would love to see something like this that boots into a chat with either a local or remote LLM

Let's find a way to fit an LLM into 512 bytes!

Large language model (for certain values of "large")

Re: A monolithic operating system in 512 bytes of x86 machine code

#23
post #2

Absolutely mad history here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20569438 (2019) As a teaser, from the above: > For those not aware of the background, the author is a wizard from a secretive underground society of wizards known as the Familia Toledo; he and his family (it is a family) have been designing and building their own computers (and ancillary equipment like reflow ovens) and writing their own operating syst…

I've read about them before, and Oscar's seemingly complete mastery of these type of things.

It makes me wonder what he does professionally, and how much it pays. Is it a valuable(to companies) skill even?

Re: A monolithic operating system in 512 bytes of x86 machine code

#24
post #2

Absolutely mad history here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20569438 (2019) As a teaser, from the above: > For those not aware of the background, the author is a wizard from a secretive underground society of wizards known as the Familia Toledo; he and his family (it is a family) have been designing and building their own computers (and ancillary equipment like reflow ovens) and writing their own operating syst…

You can buy the annotated source code for Oscar Toledo G’s Nanochess here:

http://www.amazon.com/Toledo-Nanochess-commented-source-code...

It was certainly a humbling experience for me.

Re: A monolithic operating system in 512 bytes of x86 machine code

#25
post #2

Absolutely mad history here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20569438 (2019) As a teaser, from the above: > For those not aware of the background, the author is a wizard from a secretive underground society of wizards known as the Familia Toledo; he and his family (it is a family) have been designing and building their own computers (and ancillary equipment like reflow ovens) and writing their own operating syst…

Underground but with an Internet website, github and HN account? probably you are hyping it a bit too much. http://www.biyubi.com/eng_principal.html https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com/nanochess https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nanochess

"Hyping"? My own opinion was presented as-is, without any exaggeration.

Anyway thanks for the links!

Re: A monolithic operating system in 512 bytes of x86 machine code

#26
post #2

Absolutely mad history here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20569438 (2019) As a teaser, from the above: > For those not aware of the background, the author is a wizard from a secretive underground society of wizards known as the Familia Toledo; he and his family (it is a family) have been designing and building their own computers (and ancillary equipment like reflow ovens) and writing their own operating syst…

Assembly was one of the first languages that I wrote in when I learned to program in the 80's, simply because other languages were too slow to develop games and other stuff. Since then I've switched to Pascal, Java, Scala, Python etc. But sometimes I still miss the joy of micro-optimizing some assembly code until perfection.

This Toledo family is amazing. I wonder if this will be the future of SD craftmanship, now that Moore's law seems to come to an end and we are forced to look at optimizing the performance of our software stack.

Re: A monolithic operating system in 512 bytes of x86 machine code

#27
post #24
post #2

Absolutely mad history here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20569438 (2019) As a teaser, from the above: > For those not aware of the background, the author is a wizard from a secretive underground society of wizards known as the Familia Toledo; he and his family (it is a family) have been designing and building their own computers (and ancillary equipment like reflow ovens) and writing their own operating syst…

You can buy the annotated source code for Oscar Toledo G’s Nanochess here: http://www.amazon.com/Toledo-Nanochess-commented-source-code... It was certainly a humbling experience for me.

also:

C:

Nanochess online: https://nanochess.org/chess3.html

Micro-Max: https://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/max-src2.html

assembly:

Atomchess Game

The world's smallest chess program in x86 machine code, only 326 bytes!

https://nanochess.org/chess6.html

Re: A monolithic operating system in 512 bytes of x86 machine code

#28
post #24
post #2

Absolutely mad history here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20569438 (2019) As a teaser, from the above: > For those not aware of the background, the author is a wizard from a secretive underground society of wizards known as the Familia Toledo; he and his family (it is a family) have been designing and building their own computers (and ancillary equipment like reflow ovens) and writing their own operating syst…

You can buy the annotated source code for Oscar Toledo G’s Nanochess here: http://www.amazon.com/Toledo-Nanochess-commented-source-code... It was certainly a humbling experience for me.

There's also these two books: boot sector games http://www.lulu.com/shop/oscar-toledo-gutierrez/programming-...

more boot sector games (includes this OS): http://www.lulu.com/shop/oscar-toledo-gutierrez/more-boot-se...

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