1 Oct
2004
1 Oct
'04
3:18 p.m.
Are there any PDP11 simulators that run "right down on the iron" of a
PC?
I know there are PDP11 cards that can be put in PCs, that's not what I
am looking
for.
1 Oct
1 Oct
5:18 p.m.
Ron Hudson wrote:
Are there any PDP11 simulators that run "right down on the iron" of a PC?
I know there are PDP11 cards that can be put in PCs, that's not what I
am looking
for.
What do you mean "right down on the iron"? You couldn't run PDP-11
binaries on i386 hardware, if that's what you mean. Do you mean
something that is effectively a self-contained operating system, that
will boot up and just be a PDP-11 emulator?
Gordon.
9:15 p.m.
> Are there any PDP11 simulators that run
"right down on the iron" of a PC?
What do you mean "right down on the iron"?
You couldn't run PDP-11 binaries
on i386 hardware, if that's what you mean. Do you mean something that is
effectively a self-contained operating system, that will boot up and just be a
PDP-11 emulator?
An x86 runs x86 code, an '11 runs '11 code. To make the twain
meet you need a simulator or an AWFUL LOT of transistors. What's
wrong with one of the OS-loaded simulators?
2 Oct
2 Oct
6:52 a.m.
On Oct 1, 2004, at 11:15 PM, Tom Jennings wrote:
Well, two things... I would like the simulator to be able to use the
serial ports, and perhaps a
serial service board and the parallel port for a printer.
Also I would like the simulator to become available without user
intervention (though I suppose I would still have to enter the
3 ^j s for RSTS to come up.
Right now I login to my linux box as root, cd to the /opt/simh
directory,
run screen (so I can detach from the simulator once I get RSTS going)
run simh with a startup file, type what I need to to bring RSTS up,
then detach.
What do you have to do with a real PDP-11 to get to
the point where RSTS is running and people can login?
In my ideal simulator, The screen and keyboard (and mouse) would be the
operator console and
keyboard/screen of KB0: (put the vga monitor into 50x80 and use the
top half for the op console
and the bottom 24x80 for vt100 (hazeltine?) emulation. (or even
decwriter of some sort emulation where
the lines off the screen are buffered and can be scrolled back to or
dumped to the printer)
If I wanted to make things more simple, I could have the 80x25 screen
switch between KB0: and op console.
I suppose a third mode would let me attach and detach files to
simulated devices without stopping the
simulation.
I suppose I ask too much.. :^)
> Are there
any PDP11 simulators that run "right down on the iron" of
> a PC?
What do you mean "right down on the
iron"? You couldn't run PDP-11
binaries
on i386 hardware, if that's what you mean. Do you mean something
that is
effectively a self-contained operating system, that will boot up and
just be a
PDP-11 emulator?
An x86 runs x86 code, an '11 runs '11 code. To make the twain
meet you need a simulator or an AWFUL LOT of transistors. What's
wrong with one of the OS-loaded simulators?
8:39 a.m.
Ron Hudson wrote:
On Oct 1, 2004, at 11:15 PM, Tom Jennings wrote:
Well, two things... I would like the simulator to be able to use the
serial ports, and perhaps a
serial service board and the parallel port for a printer.
Also I would like the simulator to become available without user
intervention (though I suppose I would still have to enter the
3 ^j s for RSTS to come up.
What distribution of Linux are you running? Everything you want to
do could be done by manipulation of the startup scripts on most Linux
systems. I wouldn't go so far as calling it "trivial", but it won't be
complicated at all.
If I were going to design a drop-in install to do this I'd probably
use Debian or Slackware, but whatever you're using should do fine.
> Are
there any PDP11 simulators that run "right down on the iron" of
> a PC?
What do you mean "right down on the
iron"? You couldn't run PDP-11
binaries
on i386 hardware, if that's what you mean. Do you mean something
that is
effectively a self-contained operating system, that will boot up and
just be a
PDP-11 emulator?
An x86 runs x86 code, an '11 runs '11 code. To make the twain
meet you need a simulator or an AWFUL LOT of transistors. What's
wrong with one of the OS-loaded simulators?
Right now I login to my linux box as root, cd to the
/opt/simh directory,
run screen (so I can detach from the simulator once I get RSTS going)
run simh with a startup file, type what I need to to bring RSTS up, then
detach.
All this can be done either in root's startup scripts, so that it's
automagic when you log in, or as root in the system scripts, so that
root can attach to the sessions after login.
What do you have to do with a real PDP-11 to get to
the point where RSTS is running and people can login?
I don't run RSTS, so I don't know.
In my ideal simulator, The screen and keyboard (and
mouse) would be the
operator console and
keyboard/screen of KB0: (put the vga monitor into 50x80 and use the top
half for the op console
and the bottom 24x80 for vt100 (hazeltine?) emulation. (or even
decwriter of some sort emulation where
the lines off the screen are buffered and can be scrolled back to or
dumped to the printer)
If I wanted to make things more simple, I could have the 80x25 screen
switch between KB0: and op console.
The simplest solution here would be to run X with a very simple
window manager, and autostart tiled xterms that attach to the running
simh session. I _think_, but would have to look it up, that if you want
them both visible you need not to run screen, or run two screen sessios
if you need to detach.
If you'd rather do text mode than X, why not use Linux's virtual
consoles instead of screen?
I suppose a third mode would let me attach and detach
files to simulated
devices without stopping the
simulation.
I suppose I ask too much.. :^)
Probably. ;)
I don't have a lot of spare time right now, but if you'd like to
pursue this as a project tag me off-list. If it works the way you want,
we can document it and post it back here for comment and improvement.
Doc
9:33 a.m.
If you'd rather do text mode than X, why not use
Linux's virtual
consoles instead of screen?
Screen is the ideal way to run SIMH or E11, by running under screen
you can ssh into the system and connect to screen. You don't
actually have to have physical access to the system to do stuff with
the emulator. Also, if you do have physical access you can
disconnect screen and log out of the system. Or, you can set it up
some that SIMH is run under screen as part of the system startup
(only good for OS's that don't require you to answer prompts).
Zane
--
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
9:44 a.m.
On Oct 2, 2004, at 10:39 AM, Doc Shipley wrote:
simh won't let me do that, I have to stop the simulator to change
things.. including detaching the
print file and attaching a new one so I can spool the old.. I tried
attaching the print file to /dev/lp0 but that didn't work.
All this can be done either in root's startup
scripts, so that it's
automagic when you log in, or as root in the system scripts, so that
root can attach to the sessions after login.
I suppose the next thing to try is running screen (command pdp11) as
some part of init.d that should get
the simulator started, disks attached and the boot process begun...
running under screen pdp would run
until it needed input. (the date/time or ^j )
I am running redhat 7.0
What do you have to do with a real PDP-11 to get
to
the point where RSTS is running and people can login?
I don't run RSTS, so I don't know.
In my ideal simulator, The screen and keyboard
(and mouse) would be
the operator console and
keyboard/screen of KB0: (put the vga monitor into 50x80 and use the
top half for the op console
and the bottom 24x80 for vt100 (hazeltine?) emulation. (or even
decwriter of some sort emulation where
the lines off the screen are buffered and can be scrolled back to or
dumped to the printer)
If I wanted to make things more simple, I could have the 80x25 screen
switch between KB0: and op console.
The simplest solution here would be to run X with a very simple
window manager, and autostart tiled xterms that attach to the running
simh session. I _think_, but would have to look it up, that if you
want them both visible you need not to run screen, or run two screen
sessios if you need to detach.
If you'd rather do text mode than X, why not use Linux's virtual
consoles instead of screen?
> I suppose a third mode would let me attach and detach files to
> simulated devices without stopping the
> simulation. I suppose I
ask too much.. :^)
Probably. ;)
I don't have a lot of spare time right now, but if you'd like to
pursue this as a project tag me off-list. If it works the way you
want, we can document it and post it back here for comment and
improvement.
Doc
3 Oct
3 Oct
7:42 a.m.
Rumor has it that Ron Hudson may have mentioned these words:
simh won't let me do that, I have to stop the
simulator to change things..
including detaching the
print file and attaching a new one so I can spool the old.. I tried
attaching the print file to /dev/lp0 but that didn't work.
Did you try rerouting the output thru what's called a FIFO? It's similar to
a pipe (|) from the command line, but it's linked into the filesystem. The
only caveat that I remember (I've not used them much) is they're only one
way, so you'll need two pipes for 2-way communication. Gee, think you could
spare a couple of inodes??? ;-P
Here's a good page about 'em:
http://linux.about.com/library/cmd/blcmdl4_fifo.htm
Googling for "linux FIFO" brings many others... ;-)
=-=-=-=
and Stan Barr may have mentioned these words:
Also AFAIK simh won't support a real console
terrminal on a serial port,
which was part of my requirement.
Isn't there a way to re-route the serial port to 'console' invisibly in
Linux? I *thought* there was, but I've never done it...
Maybe this would help...
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Remote-Serial-Console-HOWTO/
Anyway, I hope it helps, but I've never run simh, so I don't know the
particulars of it...
Laterz!
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger --- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
zmerch(a)30below.com
Hi! I am a .signature virus. Copy me into your .signature to join in!
2 Oct
2 Oct
6:04 a.m.
On Oct 1, 2004, at 7:18 PM, Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
Ron Hudson wrote:
The latter, or perhaps it runs from DOS but it takes over all the
ports, both serial ports would support terminals, and the parallel port
would support a printer. Actually it would probably have to run over
some OS so that it could emulate hard drives as files, since the normal
PDP-11 hard drive was much smaller than todays 60gb monster.
Are there any PDP11 simulators that run
"right down on the iron" of a
PC?
I know there are PDP11 cards that can be put in PCs, that's not what
I am looking
for.
What do you mean "right down on the iron"? You couldn't run PDP-11
binaries on i386 hardware, if that's what you mean. Do you mean
something that is effectively a self-contained operating system, that
will boot up and just be a PDP-11 emulator?
Gordon.
7:56 a.m.
Hi,
Ron Hudson <ron.hudson(a)sbcglobal.net> said:
On Oct 1, 2004, at 7:18 PM, Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
That's exactly what I do with E11 (hobbyist version). It runs on an old
486DX4, headless, with an old terminal attached. My autoexec.bat ends
with
CD \E11V31
E11
so it boots straight into the PDP OS and from the terminal you can't
really tell it's running on an emulator as you never see DOS.
--
Cheers,
Stan Barr stanb(a)dial.pipex.com
The future was never like this!
Ron Hudson wrote:
The latter, or perhaps it runs from DOS but it takes over all the
ports, both serial ports would support terminals, and the parallel port
would support a printer. Are there any PDP11 simulators that run
"right down on the iron" of a
PC?
I know there are PDP11 cards that can be put in PCs, that's not what
I am looking
for.
What do you mean "right down on the iron"? You couldn't run PDP-11
binaries on i386 hardware, if that's what you mean. Do you mean
something that is effectively a self-contained operating system, that
will boot up and just be a PDP-11 emulator? 
9:21 a.m.
Stan Barr wrote:
That's exactly what I do with E11 (hobbyist
version). It runs on an old
486DX4, headless, with an old terminal attached. My autoexec.bat ends
with
CD \E11V31
E11
so it boots straight into the PDP OS and from the terminal you can't
really tell it's running on an emulator as you never see DOS.
To the people who want a bootable system?
Why don't you get one of the 'floppy' linux systems and build simh
to run from that.
Ben.
9:54 a.m.
Hi,
ben franchuk <bfranchuk(a)jetnet.ab.ca> said:
Stan Barr wrote:
I run simh/Linux on another machine....(and I have a Micro 11/73...)
The 486/E11 combo makes a convincing demo to show people what 1970s
computing looked like to a user, that's what I intended it for.
The computer is tucked out of sight. Actually it's on the other side
of the room - I didn't want to hide the blinkenlites :-)
--
Cheers,
Stan Barr stanb(a)dial.pipex.com
The future was never like this!
That's exactly what I do with E11 (hobbyist
version). It runs on an old
486DX4, headless, with an old terminal attached. My autoexec.bat ends
with
CD \E11V31
E11
so it boots straight into the PDP OS and from the terminal you can't
really tell it's running on an emulator as you never see DOS.
To the people who want a bootable system?
Why don't you get one of the 'floppy' linux systems and build simh
to run from that.
10:13 a.m.
Hi,
ben franchuk <bfranchuk(a)jetnet.ab.ca> said:
Why don't you get one of the 'floppy'
linux systems and build simh
to run from that.
Also AFAIK simh won't support a real console terrminal on a serial port,
which was part of my requirement.
--
Cheers,
Stan Barr stanb(a)dial.pipex.com
The future was never like this!
2:03 p.m.
On Saturday 02 October 2004 14:13, Stan Barr wrote:
Hi,
ben franchuk <bfranchuk(a)jetnet.ab.ca> said:
Sure it will, just start it like:
getty -in -l /usr/bin/pdp11 ttyS0 9600 vt100
(getty syntax will vary depending on the getty that's installed on your
machine. The syntax above works with "agetty" as distributed with
Debian GNU/Linux).
Or you can just run a normal getty on your serial port, and log into the
*nix via the serial port and run simh.
So, if you felt creative, you could do:
getty -in -l /usr/local/bin/pdp11-script.sh ttyS0 9600 vt100
sleep 10 # or whatever you feel like
getty -in -l /usr/local/bin/telnet-script.sh ttyS1 9600 vt100
sleep 1
getty -in -l /usr/local/bin/telnet-script.sh ttyS2 9600 vt100
sleep 1
getty -in -l /usr/local/bin/telnet-script.sh ttyS3 9600 vt100
sleep 1
getty -in -l /usr/local/bin/telnet-script.sh ttyS4 9600 vt100
sleep 1
# repeat as necessary
And have a pdp11-script.sh which sets up and runs simh appropriately,
and a telnet-script.sh like:
#!/bin/sh
telnet localhost 10000
...assuming that you have port 10000 as the TCP port you gave to simh
for connections to your simulated DZ11.
I'm tempted to cook up a small Linux/simh image that'll do this.
Pat
--
Purdue University ITAP/RCS --- http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/
The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org
Why don't you get one of the 'floppy'
linux systems and build simh
to run from that.
Also AFAIK simh won't support a real console terrminal on a serial
port, which was part of my requirement.
6:50 p.m.
On Oct 2, 2004, at 4:03 PM, Patrick Finnegan wrote:
If you are not running a normal telnet daemon, I wonder if you could
tell
simh to take port 20(? telnet's normal port)
It would probably be ok just to have simh use the console port, or to
have it
start with screen in the background ( KB0: would then be "secure"
behind a root login )
Hmmm, fun.
On Saturday 02 October 2004 14:13, Stan Barr wrote:
> Hi,
>
> ben franchuk <bfranchuk(a)jetnet.ab.ca> said:
>> Why don't you get one of the 'floppy' linux systems and build simh
>> to run from that.
Will simh fit on a floppy? Surely the disk images won't.
Also AFAIK simh won't support a real console terrminal on a serial
port, which was part of my requirement.
Sure it will, just start it like:
getty -in -l /usr/bin/pdp11 ttyS0 9600 vt100
(getty syntax will vary depending on the getty that's installed on your
machine. The syntax above works with "agetty" as distributed with
Debian GNU/Linux).
Or you can just run a normal getty on your serial port, and log into
the
*nix via the serial port and run simh.
So, if you felt creative, you could do:
getty -in -l /usr/local/bin/pdp11-script.sh ttyS0 9600 vt100
sleep 10 # or whatever you feel like
getty -in -l /usr/local/bin/telnet-script.sh ttyS1 9600 vt100
sleep 1
getty -in -l /usr/local/bin/telnet-script.sh ttyS2 9600 vt100
sleep 1
getty -in -l /usr/local/bin/telnet-script.sh ttyS3 9600 vt100
sleep 1
getty -in -l /usr/local/bin/telnet-script.sh ttyS4 9600 vt100
sleep 1
# repeat as necessary
And have a pdp11-script.sh which sets up and runs simh appropriately,
and a telnet-script.sh like:
#!/bin/sh
telnet localhost 10000
...assuming that you have port 10000 as the TCP port you gave to simh
for connections to your simulated DZ11.
I'm tempted to cook up a small Linux/simh image that'll do this.
Pat
--
Purdue University ITAP/RCS --- http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/
The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org
7:23 p.m.
Ron Hudson wrote:
Will simh fit on a floppy? Surely the disk images
won't.
I do know the mini versions of linux, use a older and smaller version
of the C compiler. Other than network bindings I can't see the code
being that large. You may have to remove some things from the mini
linux but that is part of the fun.
Ben.
3 Oct
3 Oct
5:34 a.m.
Ron Hudson wrote:
About all you'd be able to run would be RT-11 if you tried to fit
Linux, SIMH, and a disk image all on a floppy.
You could always boot from a CD, and mount a USB drive containing
your disk images :^)
Zane
--
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
Will simh fit on a floppy? Surely the disk images
won't.
I do know the mini versions of linux, use a older and smaller version
of the C compiler. Other than network bindings I can't see the code
being that large. You may have to remove some things from the mini
linux but that is part of the fun.
Ben.
6:40 a.m.
On Oct 3, 2004, at 7:34 AM, Zane H. Healy wrote:
pdp11 in a "pen" drive :^) ( I know most computers won't boot from a
usb pen drive )
What is RT-11 like? I have only used RSTS.
Ron Hudson
wrote:
About all you'd be able to run would be RT-11 if you tried to fit
Linux, SIMH, and a disk image all on a floppy.
You could always boot from a CD, and mount a USB drive containing your
disk images :^)
Zane
Will simh fit on a floppy? Surely the disk images
won't.
I do know the mini versions of linux, use a older and smaller version
of the C compiler. Other than network bindings I can't see the code
being that large. You may have to remove some things from the mini
linux but that is part of the fun.
Ben. --
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
2 Oct
2 Oct
9:24 a.m.
On Sat, 2 Oct 2004, Ron Hudson wrote:
> What do you mean "right down on the
iron"?
The latter, or perhaps it runs from DOS but it takes
over all the ports, both
serial ports would support terminals, and the parallel port would support a
printer. Actually it would probably have to run over some OS so that it could
emulate hard drives as files, since the normal PDP-11 hard drive was much
smaller than todays 60gb monster.
Hmm... do you mean, 'the entire computer becomes a PDP-11'
meaning no PCish stuff left dangling around the edges? No
WinXP or KDE or X window frames, escape keys, etc visible? No
linux/windows/etc hiding just behind a Control-C or
CONTROL-ALT-DELETE?
If so I bet with some not-unreasonable effort you could coerce a
*nix system running a simulator into doing that, certainly more
easily than M$. DOS too, but it provides no real OS services
(memory management, I/O, etc).
There are lots of small-scale linux and unix (freebsd, for
example) that you can easily scale down to the essentials,
in fact quite small, and still have: good disk/filesystem,
real I/O, memory management (virtual mem), scheduling, etc
etc... Also the *nix's don't inherently consume resources like
M$ products do (daemons and provided services can, of course,
but the beauty is you can remove them all).
Probably very difficult to completely hide, and likely not worth
the effort, would be hardware errors/failures, eg. CPU overheat,
disk drive hardware failure, etc, but once your hardware fails,
well the game's over anyways, and the *nix OSs do a better job
than most.
1 Oct
1 Oct
8:36 p.m.
Are there any PDP11 simulators that run "right
down on the iron" of a PC?
I know there are PDP11 cards that can be put in PCs, that's not what
I am looking
for.
To the best of my knowledge, every PDP-11 emulator/simulator is
listed at http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/pdp11emu.html
As far as I know, there isn't anything that runs directly on the PC
hardware, they all require an OS. However, John Wilson mentioned
something this week on the PDP-11 mailing list that sounds like he's
planning on running directly on the PC HW in a future version.
Zane
--
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
2 Oct
2 Oct
2:55 a.m.
Zane H. Healy wrote:
You *could* write one that just booted up and became a PDP-11 emulator.
It would be quite a lot of work - serial ports are easy to program,
and you could get away with BIOS calls for disk handling maybe, but you
could basically forget about any kind of network support. Far simpler
to use one of the free Unixes. If you were really, really concerned
about not letting anything else run on the machine, you could say
something at a Linux kernel boot prompt like:
boot: linux init=/usr/bin/simh
and simh would run in single-user mode. This would, of course, be silly.
Gordon.
Are there any
PDP11 simulators that run "right down on the iron" of a PC?
As far as I know, there isn't anything that runs directly on the PC
hardware, they all require an OS. However, John Wilson mentioned
something this week on the PDP-11 mailing list that sounds like he's
planning on running directly on the PC HW in a future version.
6:56 a.m.
On Oct 2, 2004, at 4:55 AM, Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
Zane H. Healy wrote:
You *could* write one that just booted up and became a PDP-11
emulator. It would be quite a lot of work - serial ports are easy to
program, and you could get away with BIOS calls for disk handling
maybe, but you could basically forget about any kind of network
support. Far simpler to use one of the free Unixes. If you were
really, really concerned about not letting anything else run on the
machine, you could say something at a Linux kernel boot prompt like:
boot: linux init=/usr/bin/simh
and simh would run in single-user mode. This would, of course, be
silly.
why silly? if it would work.
Are there
any PDP11 simulators that run "right down on the iron" of
a PC?
As far as I know, there isn't anything that runs directly on the PC
hardware, they all require an OS. However, John Wilson mentioned
something this week on the PDP-11 mailing list that sounds like he's
planning on running directly on the PC HW in a future version.
Gordon.
1:46 p.m.
Ron Hudson wrote:
Because none of the userspace daemons would be running. Saying
"init=/bin/sh" is a great way to get the root filesystem and a command
prompt and *nothing* else - the init scripts are never run, so no other
filesystems are mounted, no kernel modules are loaded, nothing like
that. The kernel loads, brings the console up to a known state, and
then forks off to the shell. Normally, of course, it would fork init,
which would then read inittab and then the startup scripts.
Gordon.
and simh would
run in single-user mode. This would, of course, be silly.
why silly? if it would work.
3 Oct
3 Oct
4:04 p.m.
On Sat, 02 Oct 2004 23:46:49 +0100, you wrote:
Ron Hudson wrote:
Because none of the userspace daemons would be running. Saying
"init=/bin/sh" is a great way to get the root filesystem and a command
prompt and *nothing* else - the init scripts are never run, so no other
filesystems are mounted, no kernel modules are loaded, nothing like
that. The kernel loads, brings the console up to a known state, and
then forks off to the shell. Normally, of course, it would fork init,
which would then read inittab and then the startup scripts.
Gordon.
Why would the userspace daemons be needed?
Monolythic kernel. No modules.
Filesystem support built in emulator.
etc. etc.
This is somebody who wants bare access to the hardware, the thinnest
possible layer of emulation. Probably they'd be better off launching
it from a DOS session, actually, since Linux isn't really a compact
'program loader' and that's about all DOS really is. Using Linux that
way would be a waste.
and simh
would run in single-user mode. This would, of course, be silly.
why silly? if it would work.
5 Oct
5 Oct
1:14 p.m.
Scott Stevens wrote:
Why would the userspace daemons be needed?
Monolythic kernel. No modules.
Filesystem support built in emulator.
etc. etc.
This is somebody who wants bare access to the hardware, the thinnest
possible layer of emulation. Probably they'd be better off launching
it from a DOS session, actually, since Linux isn't really a compact
'program loader' and that's about all DOS really is. Using Linux that
way would be a waste.
Well, if you want to re-invent the wheel, go right ahead. Using the
Linux kernel (or indeed any other Unix kernel, I would choose NetBSD
myself) would give you some hardware support, networking if you wanted
it, process separation if you think it's a good idea, and a lot more
besides.
If you're happy to write a filesystem from scratch, and stick with only
using BIOS calls (firmware BIOS at that, so no file handling for you!)
then yes, you could just write it to load as an "operating system" in
its own right. You could make it a standalone DOS application that
would use normal DOS calls too.
Wouldn't it just be simpler to use a normal application running on a
normal operating system?
Gordon.
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