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 Post subject: I'm new
PostPosted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 8:40 pm 
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Last edited by d3crypt on Wed Feb 01, 2017 4:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Re: I'm new
PostPosted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 11:56 pm 
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Hi,

d3crypt wrote:
Hey, my name is Will Jones, but people call me d3crypt.
I live in Los Angeles California and I'm 17.
My main hobby is programming and I'm going to major in Computer Science at University of California Santa Cruz.
I have to say that this site is amazing. I already planned on making an OS, but I had no idea where to start.


Welcome to the forums.

The Getting Started wiki page might help if you have no idea where to start.. :)


Cheers,

Brendan

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 Post subject: Re: I'm new
PostPosted: Sat Oct 24, 2015 5:32 pm 
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Location: Athens, GA, USA
Greetings.

As Brendan said, the wiki has a goo deal of material about starting points and different things you can try (or try to avoid). You definitely want to read the Introduction, Required Knowledge, How to Ask Questions, and Beginners' Mistakes pages first thing, if only to get an idea of what's what.

I would definitely recommend starting by getting your tools in order. Before anything else, consider what you want for your target system, development host, emulator or virtualizer, toolchain, language(s), editor, and version control system, and get them set up for what you plan to do. Note that even if you want to use a different language, you should have a good handle on C and the target system's assembly language before you begin, if only because all OS work involves some amount of assembly coding, and most of the information about OS-dev is geared towards working in C. If you are using binutils (the GNU tools used by Linux, and the long-time favorite of most hobbyist OS devs), make sure you have a separate cross-compiler set up for your development work, and get familiar with writing Makefiles (or whatever build tool or project manager you have chosen).

Also, don't even consider working on a project this size without version control - if you don't have some way of rolling back changes, you will come to regret it. This is true of any larger development project, but doubly so for OS dev. VCS repository hosts like Github, Sourceforge and Bitbucket are usually free for open-source projects, and relatively inexpensive (or free) for private ones, and the effort of using them is trivial, so there's no excuse for not having a cloud repo.

A lot of people, including myself, have started out with writing a bootloader, but it is a lot of work for something that really doesn't move your kernel design forward. My recommendation is to use writing a very simple two-stage bootloader as a warm-up exercise, something to get you into the swing of assembly coding and low-level access, but not to rely on the result unless you are certain that your OS design won't work with an existing production-quality loader (which is very, very unlikely).

Beyond that, it is up to you. I would recommend reading the pages on "What Order Should I Make Things In", for both inspiration and a bit of a chuckle.

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 Post subject: Re: I'm new
PostPosted: Sat Oct 24, 2015 6:48 pm 
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Thanks for the information :D
So far I have decided to target the P6 Micro-architecture.
I have the cross compilers built and I have finished Bare Bones.
Next I need to read up on process organization, interrupts, and memory management.
I know I shouldn't be worrying about something so silly, but I'm struggling to come up with a name.
Oh well, I'm sure that will come later.


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 Post subject: Re: I'm new
PostPosted: Sun Oct 25, 2015 1:05 pm 
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d3crypt wrote:
I know I shouldn't be worrying about something so silly, but I'm struggling to come up with a name.
Oh well, I'm sure that will come later.


Just use whatever pops into your mind as a codename to use for version control and such. You can rename it whenever and how many times you like. Or you end up liking the codename so must you stick with it. No worries.

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Failed project: GoOS - https://github.com/nutterts/GoOS


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 Post subject: Re: I'm new
PostPosted: Sun Oct 25, 2015 1:19 pm 
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Welcome to OSDev.
d3crypt wrote:
I know I shouldn't be worrying about something so silly, but I'm struggling to come up with a name.
Oh well, I'm sure that will come later.
Well for starters most of us used MyOS as the first name. :wink: (not much of a name, but if you say MyOS anywhere here we know it is "your" os...)

Honestly what's in a name? I just recently dropped the name MyOS for BOS, and I'll probably change it again when it is more "functional" to something that (may or may not) better suit it...

Anyways, I wish you the best of luck (and patience) in all your OSDev endeavors.
Hope you have a notebook or ten :) (the paper type of notebook)

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 Post subject: Re: I'm new
PostPosted: Sun Oct 25, 2015 3:34 pm 
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BASICFreak wrote:
Welcome to OSDev.
d3crypt wrote:
I know I shouldn't be worrying about something so silly, but I'm struggling to come up with a name.
Oh well, I'm sure that will come later.
Well for starters most of us used MyOS as the first name. :wink: (not much of a name, but if you say MyOS anywhere here we know it is "your" os...)

Honestly what's in a name? I just recently dropped the name MyOS for BOS, and I'll probably change it again when it is more "functional" to something that (may or may not) better suit it...

Anyways, I wish you the best of luck (and patience) in all your OSDev endeavors.
Hope you have a notebook or ten :) (the paper type of notebook)


How does FreeMicronix sound? Cheesy, yes,
but as you said, I can change it later.
And I think I will have to go get a notebook or few today then :)
I decided to use the Artistic License 2.0 with a few minor changes.


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 Post subject: Re: I'm new
PostPosted: Sun Oct 25, 2015 8:16 pm 
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Welcome!

Schol-R-LEA wrote:
Also, don't even consider working on a project this size without version control [...]


I couldn't agree more. I thought I would get slick and only put the things I thought were ready for public viewing on GitHub and keep my own repository on a Subversion server on my VM Server. Then, I suffered a 2-disk failure on my SAN. Very very bad news. I had some of what I was working on stored on single disks here and there and I was able to cobble together a good part of what I lost -- but not all. Now, everything I do is saved to GitHub.

It was a hell of a lesson.

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The name is fitting: Century Hobby OS -- At this rate, it's gonna take me that long!
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 Post subject: Re: I'm new
PostPosted: Sun Oct 25, 2015 10:24 pm 
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eryjus wrote:
Welcome!

Schol-R-LEA wrote:
Also, don't even consider working on a project this size without version control [...]


I couldn't agree more. I thought I would get slick and only put the things I thought were ready for public viewing on GitHub and keep my own repository on a Subversion server on my VM Server. Then, I suffered a 2-disk failure on my SAN. Very very bad news. I had some of what I was working on stored on single disks here and there and I was able to cobble together a good part of what I lost -- but not all. Now, everything I do is saved to GitHub.

It was a hell of a lesson.

Good thing its up on Github already :)


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