* Note: This reply was supposed to go just after Wendys first post, but there was server maintainence so I had to leave it in Notepad for a bit.
Awww. Never show DOS OS related source code to the old fogie.
Okay... firstly... RX DOS looked so promising for a while, shame it never happened... well, I think there was a commercial off-shoot of it that was reasonably successfully for a while. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's used in document scanners (mark sheets) and such.
Second of all, RTFM!!! some of what you ask is included in the source documentation for the OS.
You should type the following instructions to produce the
binaries, (assemble and link) and to install on a 1.44MB floppy disk:
make boot nxdos sys command label ...
sys A:
The .C and .CPP sources can be compiled usign Borland C and
or Turbo C 2.01.
Taken from "nxdos-0.9.6.1-src-i386-20080517.zip\DOCS\NXDOS.TXT"
I'm slightly confused by some of the miss conceptions this developer has. He clearly has a better understanding of how to write an OS than I do (it's something I've tried several times, and the closest I get is a command line boot sector) and yet he makes statements about legacy hardware (often using outdated branding hype) which is actually temporally mixed terminology.
fe.
The project began in 1992 when I received my first IBM-PC
an 286XT Monochrome w/ dual 360K floppy drives where I disassembled
MSDOS 2.1 and 3.1 using nothing but debug program.
Well *my* first "IBM Compatible" came with DOS 3.1 on a 360K Floppy, and I did the same. Funny thing is that MicroSofts DOS handbook used to encourage you to disassemble the OS giving examples of how to do so. The only thing I learned from that was that MS Debug was a heck of a lot harder to operate than a Spectrum Multiface 1, and crashed about as often as Unix VI before Linux upgraded it to VIm (VI Improved).
A 286, is however an AT machine. XT specifically meant 8086/8080, only the 80286 processor had the "Advanced Technology" to provide 24-bit addressing via the LIM (Lotus Intel Microsoft) EMS system, and provide additional memory protection required for Microsofts new OS/2. (Basically Windows 1, before Microsoft and IBM went their separate ways and the v2 NT version became IBM OS/2 v2 and the DOS version Microsoft Windows v2)
He also writes that it should run on an "80x286 C/ISC" where the / is supposed to be an italic I in C/SC for CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) as opposed to the new RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computers) which were proving far more powerful for less power input and lower heat expenditure. Hence why many Universities used Acorn Archimedes systems Emulating an IBM compatible to get results from their scientific computations quicker and cheaper than if they ran the same software on a true PC. The C/SC logo was supposed to promote the Complex Instruction sets as being the real genuine thing, not some jumped up upstart who ran twice as fast on half as much fuel but goddamnit it's a FAKE!!! Just like the "Intel Inside" logos which proved you had a slow expensive buggy Intel processor not some cheep fast and stable Cirix or AMD chip.
ARM (Acorn RISC Machines) aficionados had as much fun with the C/SC logo as Motorolla (especially Amiga) fans had with the iNTEL inside logs.
Additionally (of course) there is no such thing as an 80x286. The 80286 processor is an early variant of the 80x86 range, where the x represents the model number.
with minimum of 640KB of RAM and atleast 4MB of secondary storage space.
hmm. In OS kernel terms the 640K Base RAM in DOS is defiantly secondary storage space. CPU Registers are considered the Primary storage, anything on the data or address lines is Secondary and Floppies, CDs, Hard Disks and any other "Long Term" storage is a Tertiary storage system. So I don't know where he expects the 4Meg to be, or if he expects the 4Meg to be on top of the 640K or the 640K to come out of the 4Meg. I'm also not sure where he intends to find 286 based Embedding processors when even the COAC (Computer on a Chip) type processors made by Zilog et el are 386 based.
To answer Nunos question, again the answer is in the docs:-
Generally, an RTOS provides a preemptive multitasking kernel and middleware utilities such as TCP/IP, FOSSILS, and FILE SYSTEMS etc... this OS should be geared for the embedded computing needs... small, robust, realtime clock, and a tcp-ip/fossil stack that run on any I/O port IRQ interface. OS need to be reprogrammable on the fly via scripts such as PHP interpreter support in command with hardly any hardcoding
Okay so we're looking at something that aspires to be very like RX DOS. Should be Multitasking natively, and he mentions that he has done the leg work of making DOS API calls re-entrant (the biggest stumbling block of any other attempt to do this so far) already. Should be capable of network communication natively in the kernel which is very impressive, even Windows and Linux don't do that, except via Kernel extensions... but then he is only talking about 1 network driver built into the kernel, the NE2K driver. (If you don't know, NE2K is to Ethernet what VBE is to Graphics)
So what he's mapped out so far, and what he claims to have achieved is incredibly impressive. I can only suggest that this is an incredibly talented, entirely self trained individual who is better at doing what he does than communicating his intentions.
Unfortunately I fear that as a GPL group project, his lack of educated industry standardized terminology will probably kill it off. In my experience, this sort of thing leads to so many arguments about what is being done that work is actually slowed the more people get involved. But I'd like to think I'm wrong.
Oh and BTW @Wendy.
Don't believe everything that Microsoft says is true for all DOS variants. I'm pretty sure that even some of the older MS versions of DOS the SYS command only copied the Boot sector from the present system disk to a new one. This sometimes led to Boot Sector virus being moved from one floppy to another via SYS.COM. Around DOS 3.x there was an upgrade to SYS.COM which allowed it to modify the boot sectors parameters from a 160K floppy to a 320K floppy to a 720K floppy etc as different size floppies were becoming available, but it didn't do much more than alter the Sides, Tracks, Sectors Per Track information according to the size disk inserted in the drive from the boot sector you had on your boot disk.
I'm sure that if I used SYS.COM from MS DOS 3 in DR DOS 6 to a new disk, the new disk booted DR DOS 6 not MS DOS 3.
And the legality of distributing DR DOS is that if it is branded DR DOS then you can't re-distribute it (any more than you can re-distribute MS DOS, but nobody's gonna be beating down your door) if it's labeled Novel DOS the same applies. If it's Caldera Open DOS then that's fine, do what you like with it.