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 G-DOS 
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Joined: Sat Aug 10, 2019 1:13 am
Posts: 7
Hello all,
I just want to share the hobby OS that I've been developing over the past year and a half: G-DOS

Link to the G-DOS GitHub repository

It's a 32-bit ROM-native OS that I initially made for my m68k/68030 based homebrew computer.
I designed it with portability in mind; it currently supports the m68k, arm, and PowerPC architectures, with 6+ platforms implemented.

Some highlights:
Custom libc, shell, and machine monitor
Disk drivers for ATA, ramdisks, and romdisks
ISA driver for CGA graphics output
PS/2 Keyboard driver, and several serial drivers

I've treated G-DOS as my sandbox for playing with various random ideas. It's not intended to be a serious OS for real use, but more as a playground for my low-level coding.
If you want to try running G-DOS, there are instructions on the GitHub page. I warn that I haven't tested the build system for portability that much, and it will probably have cause trouble.

I'm sharing this mostly as a resource for others, since it targets more esoteric hardware.


Mon Apr 27, 2020 12:44 pm
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Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2013 6:54 pm
Posts: 1780
Bravo! Thanks for sharing. A portable OS for anything with a C compiler, more or less?


Mon Apr 27, 2020 1:40 pm
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Joined: Sat Aug 10, 2019 1:13 am
Posts: 7
Thanks!

Yes, that's the general idea. I put a lot of work into architecture independence.
I can usually port it to new architectures and platforms in just a few hours work.


Mon Apr 27, 2020 2:18 pm
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Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2019 2:41 am
Posts: 585
I got a 24 bit cpu ... and 6 bit FEILD DATA bytes . Is your OS really portable?
Will it fit in 32K words? Joking aside. Most cpu's now days tend all to be the same
8 bit bytes. 32 or 64 bit ints. Large virtual memory. I tend to feel what makes
a system portable is the C compiler. If you can't port that and self comple on your system
you don't have a portable system.
I have nice 32 bit CPU (DE1 FPGA) but no C compiler or software, just paper tape loader
at the moment. The design is LS TTL from about 1978 time frame with 128KB of memory
and serial I/O. OS/32KB HEAP 32KB RAM 64K, unsigned bytes only. My problem is finding SMALL software.


Mon Apr 27, 2020 6:45 pm
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Joined: Sat Aug 10, 2019 1:13 am
Posts: 7
Its as portable as I could make it without compromising my sanity :D.
I agree that its not true portability if it's not self hosting. Since I'm not too focused about porting other software to it at the moment, it might be a while before I can be truly portable.
When I started the project, I was focused on the commercial 16-bit CPUs of the home computer era (specifically the m68k), which influenced what I was willing to work with compatibility wise
G-DOS can boot on systems using as little as 16KB of RAM, since its designed to run directly from the ROM of system.


Mon Apr 27, 2020 9:22 pm
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