Re: A86: New operating system...

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Re: A86: New operating system...


At 17:39 1999-02-19 -0800, you wrote:
>on the list correctly at the time.  But imagine an operating system 
>design for the pupose of running games or running more powerful memory 
>hungry applications.  Instead of these little 1k-3k and maybe 5k toys.

So your idea is to abandon the TI-OS completely, and _only_ use the calc
for asm games & applications? I don't really see the point on getting
an TI-86 for that - a palmcomputer sounds like a much better idea...

Also, how many TI users do you think would actually run this OS??
I mean, most people use their calcs for math, and play games during
boring lessons. I don't think they will use your fantastic OS to
just get more "freedom" which they won't even notice (most likely)

>and allcoating program ram and data ram.  Why are we limited to only 
>running programs at $d748??? this does not have to be the case.  With a 
>little preperation in programming, a general program could be written 
>such that when the OS loads it, all the instructions are updated before 
>runtime, so that it can be put at ANY address!!!  But the TI-OS of 
>course does not support this.  All the TI-OS does is throws us a bone 
>and gievs us ~10K to work in "easily".  Sure you can hack just about as 
>much memroy as you want for a power hungry program, but this is just 
>hacking...  and I'm tired of it.  Plus... the TI-OS sinks ~32k of memory 
>on its on.  This is memory that you can't get to without worry of 
>messing up the TI-OS.

It's not hard to write big programs, using a lot of memory. And I wouldn't
call it hacking. "just hacking" - so writing an OS on the 86 isn't hacking?!

>     With the combination of a 200hz interrupt and a good kernel 
>capibily of putting a program anywhere in memory, a SHELL could be 
>written to even "time-share" programs on the calc.  All this with little 
>or no change in z80 coding...  of course this means no rom calls would 
>be available(I'm not sure if rom calls would be possible outside the 
>TI-os, I'm not that much of an expert on it).  But power proagrms 
>written totally in z80 assembly, with very little "OS-specific 
>accomidations" could be written for this new operating system.

If the OS is to include the whole API, timesharing etc, the OS will get biiiig.
Remember you only have 128k RAM to play with.

If you're seriously thinking about writing an OS, wait till the TI-86+
(it _must_ come!!) so you can put the OS in the flash ROM instead...
On the 89 this is already possible, although I doubt anyone wants to
an OS for the 89... there just too much work. A linux clone would be cool
though :-)

Jimmy Mårdell                          "Ash nazg durbatulūk,
mailto:yarin@acc.umu.se                 ash nazg gimbatul,
http://www.acc.umu.se/~yarin/           ash nazg thrakatulūk,
ICQ #: 14193765                         agh burzum-ishi krimpatul."
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