Posted on 05/15/2015 8:52:52 PM PDT by Utilizer
Menuet's kernel includes pre-emptive multitasking support and the super-compact operating system includes an impressive GUI
MenuetOS, a GUI-toting, x86-based operating system written entirely in assembly language, has hit version 1.0.
The milestone comes after almost a decade and a half of development for the operating system, which despite having an impressive graphical user interface is still compact enough to fit on a floppy disk (assuming you can find one).
The 32-bit version of the system is released as open source until the GPL, while the 64-bit version is free for personal and educational use (commercial use requires negotiating with the MenuetOS team).
(Excerpt) Read more at computerworld.com.au ...
So... it doesn’t require 8 gigs of RAM and the latest hardware just to use a mouse? Amazing!
Wow, is this a blast from the past! I think this is one of the things I played with back around Win2k to make a rescue platform with - My mini98SE running on Dos7 was really having trouble with large HDDs and I was desperate to find something... anything! That time really sucked... I didn’t figure out how to hack NT down to a mini till way into XP...
3.5” 1.44M was technically a ‘flexy.’ [There was also a 2.88M high density version.] The biggest true 5.25 inch floppy was a 1.2M high density version, introduced in 1984.
Kind of figured that but the one I linked seems to be more developed
Here’s another way to get an OS written in assembly: Use a real language and then compile it.
It’s practicable. RTOS (real time OS) are used everywhere, particularly in the scientific and industrial computing.
No, it’s not. ASM is nonportable. My point is that one could not take this OS and deploy on another CPU family.
Dude, I think everybody that read this and has interest probably understands the life cycle of a product like this. For the general user ... this is a hackers play ground of learning, but for people into Telemetry, industrialization and automation and robotics? Yes, this is going to be useful, if not as a whole, than some piece of technology that falls out of it.
Assembly language programmers are a group unto themselves and many of them are duel or triple discipline such as a mechanical+electronic+programmer.
Think of them as modern day tinker’s.
I understand completely. I have written tons of ASM for embedded systems; however, that was many years ago. Today, with pipelining processors, it’s no longer possible to write the fastest code by hand. Menuet is a cool, fun project for the people tinkering with it, but the technique behind its development is no longer relevant with modern computers.
I respect your opinion, but I say otherwise.
(Unless you're talking VAX assembly, that is.)
I should note that the motherboard BIOS has only very basic routines on it, just enough to allow the system to access the basic subsystems necessary for operation. memory access routes, boot-up calls and routines, CPU addressing and interrupt methods, bus subsystems calls with flags and IRQ routines, and of course internal drive addressing methods.
Then in the newer boards you have added routines for networking, USB, and graphics access.
That is why Operating Systems exist, to perform higher-level operations that the BIOS alone can not do. Think of the motherboard as a car or truck. The board itself is the physical body of the car, the BIOS is its linkages and control cables, and the CPU is the engine itself.
The Operator controlling the accelerator, brakes and steering is the OS. Trying to control the vehicle with self-correcting mechanisms, throttle controls, automatic braking and steering... well, lets just say that you would not wish to be around such a device on the public streets.
Have to disagree with you about the simplicity of building a useable OS using only BIOS routines.
I prefer to code in Assembly Language. It is difficult, demanding, quite time-consuming, and requires a level of precision that most people simply find too difficult to program well with.
The benefits of using it is that coding using it results in programs that are very, very small -and incredibly fast.
If it was so easy to produce any highly-useable OS written in assembler we would see as many versions of that as there are linux distros.
Don’t see that having occurred yet.
Not the same. The output code is still much larger (and slower) than anything using assembler. It is just easier to code with human-understandable (for the most part) languages and then compile it to machine code than writing the machine code directly. It’s simply not intuitive to write instructions using machine code.
Back in the day I created quite a few custom, small operating systems to run on x86 motherboards. The mobos were very cheap and we used them as custom industrial controllers. This sort of thing is done now using ARM processors and FPGAs... that’s what I play with now.
I always found the basic BIOS routines helpful, much better than taking a raw x86 processor and re-inventing the wheel by coding custom versions of the BIOS routines that were free to use.
It would have been nice back in the old days to have had something like the $35.00 quad-core Raspberry Pi to use.
Four cores at 900mhz, 1080p HDMI graphics accelerator, a GB of fast ram...etc. It seems too good to be true :-)
I enjoy asm coding although mostly I code in C now and use asm for interrupt code or when exact timing is needed. The last major bit of asm I wrote was for the 100mhz ARM core that was the controller inside a run of SD cards. It’s amazing that every SD card has a 32bit CPU more powerful than the early model super computers.
The very best asm coders have OCD.
The best x86 asm coder I know is Steve Gibson.
www.grc.com
Will it ever be more than a Hobby OS?
Little endian or Big endian?
Sounds like something that it might be fun to play with in a VM for a while. Will have to check out how it does Doom in a VM
Nope. I had a 2.88 Mb floppy drive. They never really caught on, because by the time they came out, CDs were starting to really take over.
You’re right - I had forgotten about those. They never really caught on and didn’t get widespread use.
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