TBOS 0.1.4

... is almost here!

Give me a couple of days, it will be ready. Among the highlights are a new keyboard driver using IRQ1 and a malloc()/free() implementation by yours truly :)

TBOS32 has moved to a new site!

The great quok of the Quokkites has created QuokForge, the first project hosting site built for hobby operating systems. As such, I have moved TBOS32 to the Redmine-based QuokForge. I've also updated the www.tbos32.co.nr redirect to the new site. Yay! Thanks, quok!

Cheers!
--Troy

Eve Online sucked

I played it for about 30 minutes. It sucked ass. I was hoping for more of a Freelancer-style gameplay, but nope! Something a lot more boring.

*thinks of starting a Freelancer MMO server*

rant from http://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=20364

My opinions follow (contains colourful metaphors!):

I'm anti-GPL. I find the entire thing to be less of a free and open-source software license and more like a mass of hobbyist-approved, M$-style legalese. The BSD license, although extremely permissive, can logically be shortened down to two or three sentences. The rest is just to cover the developers' asses in the event someone uses their program and their computer shits itself.

The BSD license is interesting; it used to have four clauses, one of which was controversial. The original third clause said you had to include the following statement in your program and advertising: "This product includes software developed by the University of California, Berkeley and its contributors." It was removed in 1999 to create the three-clause license we call the BSD license today. Personally, I'm a major advocate of three-clause BSD (and the MIT license, too.)

Another fun little OSS license is the MIT license. It's basically a version of the two-clause BSD license but worded differently. FSF calls it the X11 license as it's most commonly used for (and was designed for use in) the X11 window system.

This one's kind of funny, and I'm not sure if I like it or not: The Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL) for their Shared Source program. It's almost BSD-like but prohibits relicensing in source code form. It looks like Microsoft's response to the open source movement in the form of "Ballmer! Get the open source licensing people on the line! We're fucked!"

paxcoder wrote: Don't you think copyleft is a necessary "evil"? You say GPL wants us to "share-the-way-we-tell-you-to-or-don't-distribute", but I'm asking: what's the problem in that kind of sharing? What your freedoms does GPL compromise, accept your "freedom" to deprive someone else of the very same freedom you have been given? I see nothing "hypocritical" in it.

Oh gods no. It's not necessary, it's just evil. It kills our freedom to have our code used by the public following our guidelines, yet giving them lots of slack. It kills our freedom to have control, as users, over the way we're allowed to use the wonderful tools developers spend time writing for us.

http://negix.rootdirectory.de/?p=58 I highly encourage anyone on either side of the GPL-vs-BSD debate to read this (more so for the people one the anti-GPL side.)

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So, I've reworked the todo list for TBOS32. 0.1.4 is going to be the debut release for the beginnings of the system call interface/library. And yes, folks, it works.

0.1.5 is going to have a more complete library and some hackish code in mush to run binaries off of the initrd. The floppy driver is currently on hold in favour of this and a few other things (TBA.)

I have had a wonderful month.

This month has been a wonderful one for me. I've released TBOS32 0.1.x, released TBOS16 1.1.0, discontinued TBOS16, and I'm celebrating my 14th birthday on Sunday. I also plan on releasing TBOS32 0.2.0 by this time next month, and many updates between now and then.

As for TBOS32's naming and versioning, I intend to keep calling it TBOS32. The versioning scheme of TBOS32 is x.y.z, where x = major version, y = minor version, and z = release.

Oh, and www.tbos.co.nr has had an overhaul.

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EDIT: Well looky here, TBOS32 0.1.2!

TBOS 1.1.0 Release Announced on OSDev.org

http://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20224

Yeah, that's it. Yay,

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Oh, and one more thing. My versioning scheme sucks. I plan to release the next versions of TBOS (yeah, I'm not dropping it, just slowly rewriting it) with less major releases (the y in x.y.z) and more revisions (the z in x.y.z.)

TBOS 1.1.0 -- HOLY CRAP IT'S OUT!!!!!

http://code.google.com/p/tbos2/downloads/detail?name=tbos-1.1.0.zip&can=2&q=

"d00d, ub3r 1337 h4x, j00 g0t 1t 0ut!!!!111oneon1!!oeone"

Yes. I am a lazy, half-assed programmer. Download it and test it, and constructive criticism on the bugs is appreciated.

The Future for TBOS, Part II

First, I'd like to say that if anyone wants to, feel free to link to us in your forum signature somewhere with this dynamic userbar: http://designer.userbars.com/dynubd1742.png

Second, to discuss the future. Recently, in the Elite Café, I said I was thinking of dropping support for TBOS (16) and rewriting TBOS32 in C. Well, I'm certainly doing the second, and I'm actually thinking about fulfilling the first. I find TBOS to be extremely insecure and basically a bad MikeOS clone. If someone wants to continue development of TBOS, speak now or forever hold your peace.

No, I swear, it will never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever happen again.

... ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ...

This will be the final note before the release of TBOS 1.1.0, I promise. I hope to have it out and ready by Sunday night (PST.)

Oh, hey, look! Another todo list!

• TBOS 1.1: FIREY ANVIL r0, hash 0.4
• TBOS 1.2: multiuserness fixed, FIREY ANVIL r1
• TBOS 1.3: hash 1.0 (oooh, colours)
  
• ........
  
• TBOS 2.0: some simple cross-compiler (probably BASIC)
  

I appear to have a new plan.

I've started re-implementing FIREY ANVIL (which was lost after a complete TBOS failure scare that turned out to be a bad segment register) and it should be done and in Python) to make FIREY ANVIL entries for TBOS files.

The kernel and loader must stay FAT files, as I don't think I could write FIREY ANVIL routines in the three or four bytes the boot sector has left :P

Ahh well, off to school.

An O RLY? Book...

http://www.oreillymaker.com/link/25072/tbos/

WHOA!

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[TroyMartin] my plan is as follows: rewrite part of the FAT12 code for 1.2, then write a nice little FS in 1.3
<pc[work]> ah nice
[TroyMartin] I was also thinking of having the special FS be the main TBOS filesystem, just using FAT12 as a "container" of sorts
[TroyMartin] FAT12 doesn't really do much justice :D

---

A little snippet from a discussion in #pedigree on freenode. In all honesty, I don't like Microsloth's FATty file system, and I originally intended to use something completely different, but FAT stuck with the history of TBOS.

Whatever the TBOS filesystem will be called (the codename is Firey Anvil), I plan to use FAT12 as a container for either Firey Anvil files or the filesystem itself. I'll be uploading spec sheets as I write them.

I have seen the future...

...and it involves a rewrite!

I'm planning on releasing TBOS 1.1 this fine May weekend and then doing a bunch of rewrites to important/bloated/copied pieces of code (for example the entire k_fs.asm.) I'm also hoping to pump out a multi-user system for TBOS 1.x by the end of the month.

Mailing list

Clicky.

TBOS 1.1 Progress

Well, my plan to release by the 18th was a bust...

So, I inadvertently fixed an error which was causing me to look for another error which caused me to do a complete rewrite of tbosload.sys, and once that was giving me sh!t, I pulled three lines of code out of the kernel, built the old tbosload.sys, put it all on a floppy, and it now officially works. Don't ask what, just wait for the release!

Let's just say AUTOEXEC.BAT was undoubtably one of the most useful DOS thingies ever. :)

---

I'm planning, from now on, to release TBOS in two separate packages: the source version and the install version. The install version will use the new features with setup.bin to create a working setup disk.

The Future for TBOS

Recently, while working on hash 0.4.0 for the release of TBOS 1.1.0 in a few days, I started thinking about what would happen to TBOS in the next few months (TBOS 1.x releases.) I came up with the following releases and their major features:

• TBOS 1.1 - hash 0.4, setup.bin
• TBOS 1.2 - multi-user capabilities, serial access
• TBOS 1.3 - partial MS-DOS and MikeOS compatibility
• ...
• TBOS 2.0 - port/write assembler, increase programming capabilities

There's a "Profit!" in there somewhere, but I don't exactly know where. It's after the ellipses, I think.

Windows Server 2003 as a Domain Controller

I love it.

I downloaded the WS2003 180-day trial recently and installed it in VMware Server II. This afternoon, I painstakingly set up a DNS server and Active Directory, and recently got a Windows XP and a 98 client logging into the domain. Granted, I need to give each a static IP instead of using the router's DHCP server, but it connects to the network and the internet fine!

I've also set up a document/network drive system that works wonders. The X: drive is set to be the user's nice little chunk of the small 20GB virtual drive I'm using.

Now I just need to get a crapload of people using my server :P

Lookit Me, I'm a Crusader

An ongoing holy war is that of Linux vs. Windows vs. Mac. Normally, that wouldn't be a bad thing, and we'd all be taking sides. Windows would be winning, since it's what the new folks these days are being brought up on and 99 percent of store-bought computers are loaded with some edition of Vista.

Another bunch of holy wars, albeit smaller, are the license wars: BSD vs. GPL, etc. Personal choice? BSD. What's winning? Depends on who you talk to.

This can continue on and on. IE vs. FF, Gnome vs. KDE, to a lesser extent WPA vs. WEP, the list goes forever.

To quote ThymeCypher: "You forgot the even worse Apple monopoly. I’d like to see someone DARE an open source OSX clone like ReactOS without Apple threatening various lawsuits and every fan boy out there immaturely throwing F-bombs and whatnot as if you have to be worthy to breathe the same air as Steve Jobs. Pshh."

Can Cityscape

So my family drinks a LOT of soft drinks, and we stack the cans on the coffee table. Sometimes they make nice cityscapes. Here's a recent one:


This one's a bit older:

TBOS32 progress, TBOS 1.1.0

TBOS32's timer IRQ is fixed, and I hope to have the first version of TBOS32 out by the end of this week!

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I also hope to have released TBOS 1.1.0 by the 18^th. As of right now, a text editor and terminal pager are not on my critical priorities list, but increasing the screen resolution and doing up a new "setup" program are.

To-do list:

• CRITICAL - write new setup program
• CRITICAL - allow 640x480 text mode to be used - done!
• HIGH - define a TBOS ABI
• HIGH - create "program-kernel interface area"
• MEDIUM - get a simple login system working
• LOW - write terminal pager
• LOW - write text editor (might leave this up to someone who wants to tackle it)

As you can see, it's a good two or three days of intense coding or a few weeks of "ahh, I'll get around to it later!"

TBOS 1.0.1

I hope I didn't miss any files in this release! :D

I took out setup.asm since I'll be rewriting it shortly, and added an APM shutdown command to hash, replacing the restart command with shutdown -r. Note that the shutdown part won't work under Virtual PC since it doesn't include APM support.

Screw Facebook

Yes, it's another one of these rants.

Seriously, Facebook needs to be killed off brutally with a butter knife and duct tape. For example, there are 2.547 million people in the Metro Vancouver area, where I live. There are 881 thousand registered and active accounts on Facebook that have the location set to Vancouver, BC. Simple number-crunching, that's a ratio of 1:2.89 people with an active facebook account. Let's just say that's one in 2.89 people who could spend their time doing something waaaaaayyyyyy more useful, say, writing or reading or learning new things, or even finding hobbies that don't include the use of writing useless posts about your mood, what you're listening to, etc. on the internet for everyone to see and go "OMG I R DOING TEH SAME THING!!!!!!111oneone" about.

Myspace isn't much better. The music feature is just useless (see here) and the site is almost as bad as Facebook, but I think it would be better than Facebook (for example, nobody goes up to me and says "join myspace, ill friend u!!" Oh, and one word: FOX.

In conclusion, can we please, as a society, detach ourselves from these sites and have normal lives? Thanks.

EDIT: For those who think that WoW is just as bad, it just might be. I personally think it's not. End of story.

Torneth Reborn

I've just finished a draft for a Dungeons & Dragons -style game called Torneth Reborn. It's real simple compared to D&D, and if anyone's in for a game on Freenode, my nick is TroyMartin. I also have a mIRC-based dicebot, but it's a little screwed over, so I'll have to look through the source.

EDIT: Replaced the mIRC dicebot with a standalone one written in Ruby scripting, so I can edit the source and then reload it in less than 10 seconds. :)

On the subject of TR, I'm almost done the Core Rulebook and the Game Master Guide. Expect the first edition this week :D

The "S" is for Serial

I've commenced work on a little operating system in real mode assembly (of course) I've called TBOS-S. I'm not sure if I'm going to release it or not, depends on how buggy it is. Basically it's an operating system over the serial port.

Visual C#

I love it. Josh was blathering on and on about it, so I thought, "what the hell, I'll download it."

Holy crap. Finally a Visual Studio language I can relate to.

Goals for the Week

If you read post #2, you'll remember that I said I'd get some releases done this week, since I'm on Spring Break. I've decided on the goals:

TBOS

• Do up some nifty stuff (yes, I'm being vague here.)

TBOS32

• Release 0.2.0 as soon as I fix the IRQ issue
  
• Write an IRQ-based keyboard driver
• Write a memory debugger/dumper

Other Sub-projects

• I don't know, write some open-source utility that people need (open to suggestions from anyone!!)

TBOS32 - Always a Constant PITA.

Whooo. I'm about to pull my freaking hair out of my head. Just as I find a way of doing something more efficiently, the timer interrupt dies. It doesn't fire off at 18.2 Hz like it should (and like it was before the little efficiency explosion...) I'm completely stumped. I think I'll SVN the latest code as soon as I get a working copy on my box set up.

In other news, I'm starting to like protected mode. I had thought of enabling A20 in TBOS, but then I'd lose 186 compatibility. The 32-bit registers are the biggest bonus in my eyes, but accessing > 1 MB of memory is pretty nice too. Maybe I'll write a C library once a floppy driver, FAT12 reading, and ELF parsing is done.

EDIT: I uploaded the latest (read: broken) code to the SVN repo (anonymous checkout is at http://tbos32.googlecode.com for those interested!)

Scrolling for hours on end, woot!

Yessssssss! Thanks to the help of the folks on #communityos (namely Josh) the scrolling code works perfectly! I've yet to break TBOS32 since I fixed it (error occured between the keyboard and the chair.)

Expect it out either tonight or sometime before noon PST tomorrow!

TBOS32 progress

Well, this morning I finished working on the IDT for TBOS32, wrote a call to remap the PIC, and crazily wrote simple handlers (just sending an EOI and iret'ing) for IRQs 0, 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8.

Sadly, the console scrolling code is broken, and I hope to have it fixed by Monday. If not, I'll do something else to TBOS and release 1.0.1.

Spring break, TBOS, 32-bitness, etc.

Yay, I've got the following week off for spring break!! As a result, expect TBOS 1.0.1 out sometime in the week of March 15th, as well as the release of TBOS32 0.2.0 (or whatever version I decide to name it.)

Speaking of TBOS32, I have no intention of halting development on the 16-bit TBOS in order to work on the new 32-bit version. I started the new version because I wanted to let the TBOS 1.0.0 downloads come in like money to Donald Trump before filing for bankruptcy, as well as since MP (Mr_Piranha) in Freenodes' #communityos told me to. :)

I'm trying to gather up some stuff that I finished but never released to be smaller projects here, since two incomplete operating systems isn't much to gloat about.

First Post, Woot.

I hope you note the sarcasm in the title.

Welcome to the Titanium Bonfire Project Blog, which is both the homepage for the project and the place where the developers blow off some steam or explain what's been going on with development lately.