XAOS

0.0.2 alpha 021010

Introduction

Yet another operating system...

XAOS is a brand new operating system written from scratch (Pronounced "Khaos" as in Greek ΧΑΟΣ). All the software is free and open source. The operating system currently runs on Intel 386+ processors. It is written mostly on C++. Some parts (such as boot sector code) are written on assembler.

How To ...

Install

To install the operating system please follow the simple instructions below:

Unzip all files with the operating system binaries.
Insert a blank floppy disk.
Run the setup program which comes with binaries.

The setup program will make a bootable floppy with the operating system installed. Now the operating system is ready to boot.

Note! At the final stage the setup utility writes the boot record into the floppy disk. If you are running setup under Windows NT family systems (NT,2000,XP) you may receive message which warns you about "direct access to disk". Simply choose [Ignore] to continue.

Boot

The only booting from 1.44M floppy is supported.
To boot use the floppy created by setup program.
All accessible disks will be mounted with DOS-like aliases (a, c, etc.)

After booting the shell will be loaded and invitation ':)' will be displayed.

Note! The software is very new and untested. I did everything possible to avoid any information loses from user's disks. Operating system uses ONLY ROM BIOS services to get access to disks and only for READING purposes. There is no code compiled which can write anything to the disks. So all disks are visible as READ ONLY. The current (and probably several further) versions of operating system CANNOT change anything in your disks.

Run

The help or ? command will show all supported commands.
Run tetris to play the game.

Build

For compiling use bld utility. Download and unzip all neccessary packages and tools. If you will unzip all source packages into /src directory then you don't have to change anything, otherwise set the correct paths in default.bld file. The default.bld file is located in the same directory with bld.exe. bld seeks any .bld file in the current directory and builds the first target described.

Note! I work on sources and change time to time many things. So I don't provide now convenient way to build all sources. You have to build everything module by module.

Information

Technical

Machine/CPU	Intel 386+, 16-bit real mode
RAM	1M conventional memory
File System	FAT12/16/32 (read-only, LFN supported)

What's New

All the source was rewritten for Netwide Assembler and Digital Mars. So now only free (as in beer) compilers are used.

Future

Soon...

Full disk access (read/write)
XAOS SDK
ANSI C compatible standard library

Further...

32 bit
Multi-user
COFF support for linker
Direct hardware programming, first priority includes disk drives and CD-ROM
Mounting to directories

Download

Operating System
xaos.0.00.02.zip (94k)	Operating System Binaries

Operating System Sources
xaoss.0.00.02.zip (150k)	Operating system sources

Packages Used in XAOS Operating System
lib021010.zip	Application library Version 021010 Sources
libs021010.zip	APL 021010 Generated Sources
libh021010.zip	APL 021010 Generated Headers
libdosd021010.zip	APL 021010 Compiled for DOS 16-bit Real Mode, Digital Mars C/C++ Compiler
libnond021010.zip	APL 021010 Compiled for No Operating Systems DOS 16-bit Real Mode, Digital Mars C/C++ Compiler
libxosd021010.zip	APL 021010 Compiled for XAOS 16-bit Real Mode, Digital Mars C/C++ Compiler

Utilities used to build XAOS operating system
lnks021010.zip	Linker Sources
lnkwin021010.zip	Linker Binaries, Windows Console
mksrc021010.zip	Source File Generator Sources
mksrcwin021010.zip	Source File Generator Binaries, Windows Console

Compilers used to build XAOS operating system
Digital Mars C++	Digital Mars compiler is used to compile 16-bit .cpp modules.
Netwide Assembler	Assembly modules have to be compiled with Netwide Assembler

Other
tetriss.0.02.zip (9k)	Tetris game sources