[unios] An OS Foundation layer

[Pieter Dumon]

On Fri, 12 Mar 1999, OJ Hickman wrote:

> The Foundation module is the first thing loaded by the boot
> loader. It consists of the initialization code, the basic
> HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) accessible via a thunk
> table and read only access to the boot drive file system.
> After initialization the Foundation loads and runs the
> Target code file.
> 
> The Target code then can be any sort of kernel or even non
> kernel system that resides at ring 0 and uses the HAL
> functions to manage the computer and load other components
> from the boot drive.
> 
> This might be against certain design philosophies but it
> provides a fix to the chicken and egg problem of loading a
> microkernel and disk file system driver.

What you describe is a bootloader. These exist: the NT loader, GRUB,
LILO etc. They all load an image in some executable format.
 
> 
> What do you think of this as a foundation for a UniOS (or even TUNES)
> system?  -- It

This is not something that forms a foundation for an OS. It doesn't even
need to be part of it. It just need to exist in some way. A foundation for
an OS is a programming model and  a binary model etc

Pieter

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