[unios] More Mumbeling

Alan Grimes alangrimes@starpower.net
Fri, 28 May 1999 19:37:58 -0700


News: I have been talked into making the prototype fully protected mode. So if
you have been lurking untill you hear that. Consider that message heard and stop
lurking!!!

Keith: I'll take you off this list if you give the word.

Nostalga: 
Back in the Good Old Days of DOS any dip could write a program. Even with the
crudest assembler and no linker all you had to do was set your starting address
which was allwasy the 257th byte in the memory segment. And you didn't have to
worry about external symbols because everything was done by over-documented
interrupt calls. In effect linking was unneccessary. Not to say that linking
wouldn't have been a tremendous enhancement to the OS. It simply wasn't
absolutly needed. 

My OS: 
The load address of each object us undefined. It can be anywhere within the
segment. Therefore a feature known as "relocation" must be implemented for each
code section. Second the OS will make absolutly NO use of the processor's
interrupt system. Therefore any syscall will NEED to be linked at loadtime. LD
may make the object files, a linking loader can probably be found in the
"filesystem" section of the LiNuKs source but I can't really access it because
it is on the other partition that is barely functional at this time. =\ Besides
I don't have an acceptably good linuks editor I can't browse it. I'm being
helpless, I know. I guess I need a good kick in the pants...

I realize that some of you may recieve this twice or want to be taken off this
list just flame me and I'll take care of it... :)