Wednesday, November 3, 2010

CTA Operating System news

The operating system has reached a new milestone. Some key features were created, here is this first preview.

The OS has it's own bootloader, which works much faster than GRUB. Multiboot support was removed, so GRUB doesn't work any more. Here is a screenshot at booting:


The operating system uses a Console user interface, GUI is planned to be added later in the project.

The shell includes a help system for the available commands. 
Also, the user input is more advanced than a typical console, it offers features such as insert/overwrite mode, or using CTRL for skipping whole words, features that are normal to any text editor.

The OS has a memory manager implemented, and also supports paging (so that would be physical + virtual memory manager).

The latest addition was the floppy driver, which supports 3 types of 3.5" disks, more exactly low density (720KB), double density (1.44M) and extended density (2.88M). Any other types are unsupported.
On the todo list there is FAT drivers, to make some order in this mess, and single tasking support (multitasking will be added later).

Finally, this is the kernel panic screen:
Later in the project, when GUI will be added, it will be replaced with a Screen Of Death.

Friday, October 29, 2010

First episode in a new tutorial series coming soon

The first episode into a new series will be coming soon. The series is called "Operating System Development", and it will teach you how to create a real operating system. In the first episode, it will be some theory about what happens when you turn on your computer, the components of the operating system, and we start to create the most simple operating system in C programming language. It will come together with few pilot episodes, and one extra which will show you what tools you need, and how to set them up.

Another thing that you will be seeing around here will be news about an in-house operating system called CTA OS, which is under early development.

Evolution of Windows - Windows NT 3.1



This is the last episode in this 4 episode series, intended to show actual video footage of the oldest versions of Windows. In this episode, it's the first fully 32bit operating system, that doesn't depend on MS-DOS: Windows NT 3.1. NT stands for "New Technology". It offered many security features that any DOS based version could not, and supports networking. This is why DOS was dropped after Windows Millennium, and the NT was used in 2000, XP, Vista and now 7.

Evolution of Windows - Windows 3.0



This is the third episode in this 4 episode series, intended to show actual video footage of the oldest versions of Windows. In this episode, it's Microsoft's third release, Windows 3.0. This is the big hit, that made Microsoft popular. The old interfaces were completely redesigned, and rewritten from scratch. This version offers not just a new interface, but has application support, extended memory, and is running in 32 bits protected mode instead of 16.

Evolution of Windows - Windows 2.03



This is the second episode in this 4 episode series, intended to show actual video footage of the oldest versions of Windows. In this episode, it's Microsoft's second release, Windows 2, which offered new features, such as overlapping windows, or richer graphics.

Evolution of Windows - Windows 1.01



This is the first episode in this 4 episode series, intended to show actual video footage of the oldest versions of Windows. In this episode, it's Microsoft's first release, Windows 1, which is in fact a graphical user interface for the MS-DOS operating system.