<< Fri Aug 22 2003 - 15:35:02 EDT >>

It is now a 136 page document that builds down into 1458 bytes. Many little things have been added, and the task switching code has been formulated, although it might not work.... I haven't written exec or kill yet. ;)

<< Tue Aug 5 2003 - 16:28:07 EDT >>

As of last night, The following functions are also completed: putstr - Draw text to anywhere on the screen

textcenter - Center the text

textright - Right justify the text The demo build is now up to 1406 bytes, but that includes quite a bit of test code and stubs. Up next to write: Task switcher

Task Exec core

Task Kill core

puthex - draw a hex (base-16) value on the screen

putbcd - draw a decimal integer (bcd) value on the screen

putint - draw a decimal integer (base-10) value on the screen Oh, and apparantly, Alpaca was mentioned on July 28 on the weblog at /dev/null. Cool!

<< Fri Aug 1 2003 - 11:41:42 EDT >>

The demo build is now 1162 bytes. This includes the following utility functions: memset - set a chunk of ram to a certain value

clear screen - clears the screen

sine - sine of a value (using a lookup table)

cosine - cosine of a value (using sine)

rand - very pserdorandom number generator

xy2offs - convert XY to video/color ram offset (using a lookup table)

sleep - timer-based wait mechanism (seperate from the task switcher) But it does not include yet: working semaphores

task switching

messaging

a proper 'sleep' I also was vaguely looking in to porting to Bally-Midway MCR/1,2,3 hardware. This would enable the OS to run on Tron, Satan's Hollow, Spy Hunter, Tapper, Two Tigers, Journey, Discs Of Tron, etc. hardware. I also have a goal set for myself. The core kernel (with utility functions listed above, and perhaps more) must not exceed 1k of ROM space. It currently uses 138 bytes too many, but that also includes test code for tasks. Just the core stuff right now is 669 bytes. So I have 335 bytes to implement: task switching

correct "sleep"

puts - draws a text string to the screen

puti - draws an integer value to the screen

puth - draws a hex value to the screen

