Confession

[Mercury Thirteen]

Alright, I have to come clean. I have a confession to make.

I've been moonlighting on two different projects: both NightDOS and another in which I am designing a computer system from scratch. There. I said it. Shame on me. lol


But seriously, the reason why I mention this is that I wonder if such a project strikes the fancy of anyone here. For clarity, I should specify that when I say "build a computer" I'm not speaking in the modern sense where you buy a motherboard, a CPU and some RAM, throw it all together and suddenly you have a computer. No, I'm talking the 1970s method of constructing a motherboard from raw parts, building the system to your own specifications, and designing everything from the ground up. I've been kicking this idea around for awhile now and only last year have I decided to start putting things in place to make it happen. Since I'm a software guy, there's a steep learning curve for me in the electronics world, but as always I think it can be done, so why not try it? I've already laid out some basic specs (the EPiC project, which you can see here (which need updated (parenthesis-ception - woah!))) if anyone is interested.

This isn't to say I'm abandoning NightDOS. Far from it. After all, every computer needs an OS to run on it, right? Yep, I plan to port NightDOS to the 68K architecture. :)


So hey! If anyone has any interest here, you can email me directly about it. Otherwise, forget I said it. I didn't confess to anything. You can't make me talk! lol

[Maarten]

Oh, good Luck! :)
Great choice of words too! 'moonlighting' and 'NightDOS'

[Antony]

Hi,

Congrats on your endeavor. Since you plan on porting NightDOS, you probably need to revisit how it's being written. From a portability perspective, coding in assembler will no longer work. Well, it would, BUT you now have to learn 68k assembler in addition to x86. The memory architectures are different, there is no ROM BIOS, so on and so forth.

Coding in C becomes more practical along with building a hardware abstraction layer. The good thing is that GCC targets both platforms. 

Just something to think about.

[Mercury Thirteen]

On Sunday, May 8, 2016 at 2:57:34 PM UTC-4, Maarten wrote:

Oh, good Luck! :)
Great choice of words too! 'moonlighting' and 'NightDOS'

You saw what I did there, eh? lol

[Mercury Thirteen]

Thanks! And I know it may sound like a dumb move... but I want this kernel also coded in assembly because:

-I already know most of the 68K family's assembly quirks. I used to pore over the coding books when I was young. :)
-I want the kernel to run as speedy as possible since the hardware will not be modern by any means.
-The entire ROM BIOS needs to be written (also most likely in assembly) anyway.

I do appreciate the input though. :)