News and Updates

July 23, 1996

Boot-code:

Pretty much done. I believe this to be a simple matter.

Kernel:

Samuli is working on it. Seems to be coming along. Good job so far!

Assembler:

Cleo Saulnier (moi) is working on it. Coming along rather well, although VERY SLOWLY. But I'm using actual parsing techniques this time around. Once the grammar is written and it parses OK, then the coding will begin and this should be QUITE easier since the code will be VERY modular, unlike previous versions.

The problem overall seems to be to get a shell up and running that can load programs from protected mode. Samuli has apparently gotten a shell up and running, but the loader is another story. We need to load the Device Drivers for Hard Drives and Floppy, then the DLL for the FileSystem of choice needs to be loaded. The DLL can be loaded afterwards, so that's not too much of a problem, but the Kernel still has to know how to load these Device Drivers. I believe this is where Samuli is at. Trying to load a config file and loading the appropriate Device Drivers and DLL's. But we can't have DLL's and Device Drivers until I finish the Assembler. Hopefully the chiken and egg question will be resolved soon. TO MEMBERS: Share your thoughts to the group if you have any!