Re: [Nasm-users] calling 'C' functions

[Frank K. <fbk...@zy...>]

Tyler Littlefield wrote:
> writing a kernel isn't to dificult; check out osdev.org if your in to that.
> the issues start when you start to write a memory manager, etc etc.

And then wrote:

 > ld will allow you to manage where your entry point is.
 > If your using grub, you can make your files elf which makes things a bit
 > easier for loading.
 > My current os dev environment uses linux and bochs for testing. I
 > compile the code, if successfull it generates my iso and I just cd ~ and
 > load up bochs for testing.
 > HTH somewhat,

Hi Tyler,

I don't mention it often enough: to reply to this list, you've gotta hit 
"reply all" - just "reply" sends only to the poster. Sorry that bit ya. 
I ASSume you wanted to reply to the list... if not, sorry again. :)

I've been corresponding with Zulfi, and there have been messages on the 
"beginner's questions" forum (and elsewhere? nabble?), so to try to get 
everybody on the same page...

What Zulfi has in mind is something like this:

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1509022

------------------------
ABSTRACT

This paper describes a semester project where students design an 
operating system from the ground-up, capable of booting from a floppy 
disk on an actual machine. Unlike previous projects of this kind, this 
project was designed for students with only one semester of programming 
experience and no prior exposure to data structures, assembly language, 
or computer organization. Students nevertheless wrote a full system 
consisting of system calls, program execution, a file system, a 
command-line shell, and support for multiprocessing. The project was 
assigned to a class and successfully completed by nearly every student.
-------------------------

Sounds wildly optimistic to me, but... The idea is to "hand" the 
students a bootsector, and another few routines in asm, and they write 
the C parts (after one year of Java, in Black's experiment!). I've been 
trying to help out with the asm parts (I guess that's going okay), but 
I'm clueless in C (only use for it is printing floats with printf... and 
that's not gonna work here! :)

Zulfi's on a Windows platform, and I (and Black, and you, and most 
everybody "serious") run Linux. This doesn't help with the "tools" issue 
(although a lot of it has been ported). I don't know if this is 
"negotiable". This is going to be a 16-bit OS (be thankful for small 
favors).

I suspect your suggestion to check out osdev.org and/or 
alt.os.development is probably the next stop.

Best,
Frank