There is a new version available...
As a Christmas present ...
Binary only is here:
http://www.hostileencounter.com/os/files/sol_os_2004_12_25.bin
The whole sourcecode is under downloads section here:
http://www.hostileencounter.com/os_main.html
New things:
============
Drivers:
----------
PCI Devices Enumeration
Network drivers for Realtek 8139 cards
Floppy Driver improved a lot
COM1 Mouse Driver
Improved ATA HDD and CD-ROM detection
Video Driver improved with 8 bits resolutions
Network Applications:
----------------------------
-Ethernet raw packets send/recive,
-ARP LAN resolver,
-IP Layer,
-ICMP Ping and statistics application
-UDP layer
-DNS resolver Application
GUI Improvements:
------------------------
-Added Icons and GFX as HE Sprites (+Animated)
-Scroll Bars improved + added horizontal
-List Box improved
-Anchor controls bottom/right
-Keep relative size for controls
Applications:
-------------------
Print Screen Application:
-saves raw on floppy
-you must use rawread and IfranView RAW plugin to read image in.
System Colors application
Fdisk Application
Character map application
Debug viewer improved a lot
Text view Application
Other minor changes:
-----------------------------
-Press Alt+A to toggle alpha of selected window
-Ctrl+X clears Edit box contents
I think the 'How to Install' page should be fixed as it does not show the correct syntax to make a floppy
rawrite -f os8.bin -d a
is correct, the page forgets to tell the user to use the -f and -d switches
rawrite os8.bin a
is not going to work.
Having said that, the OS is really taking shape!
Paul
Thanks for the christmas gift, but I don't know if creating a different OS or merging will help out of the problem which WINDOWS
bloated code has. Until I learn.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work on either of my machines. One is too old (how can that be) and the other has an NTFS file system. Just when I thought there might be a neat toy to play with, what a shame...
Paul
Hmm, pretty cool. I remember using Windows 3.1 when I was 5 or 6, and this feels a lot like what I remember of that. I don't even want to think of how long it must have taken to create. I've rearranged my keys to the Dvorak layout, and I have my keyboard remapped by Windows. You may want to see if you can get it to do that.
Hi,
I hace have had these probs with the previous versions of SOlOs also. I can run it in BOchs but it is very slow. But I can't run it on my system. I suppose i don't have VESA or something!! ::) . I have an Intel 801e motherboard with onboard graphics ( Intel(r) 82810 Graphics Controller ). Any ideas on what to do?
Thomas Antony
You can try QEMU - the mouse will work ok but QEMU has some problems with the keyboard (it generates wrong scancodes)
You can also try free trial versions of VirtualPC or VMware (45 day trial i think)
Or we can work it out steep by steep with me via email ;)
(i do prefer bogdanontanu at yahoo dot com)
I have no ideea how P1's NTFS filesystem could stop SolOS from running ...
Since i do not read files from HDD until HDD explorer ask for such actions, so i do not really need a HDD to be present.
The only problem can be non VESA 2.0 video boards but i do support 8bits gray video modes, 16bits 565 modes and 24/32bits modes... so there should be a bunch to choose from
I could add a standard VGA 320x240 virtual screen mode for very old video boards if you guys feel like need it ;)
(i think a i have a start for this in there if you press the X key when choosing vido mode.
For VESA 1.2 there is an example driver (only 1 routine i needed) for Neomagic 128. So if you own an older VESA 1.2 board and you know the bank switching routine --> then you could change the code to make it work with your video board.
I do not see how it looks like Windows 3.1 :P
Since i do have show contents while dragging, translucent windows, 32bits flat memory mode with up to 4G RAM access and you can place icons on the desktop :P
And BTW i have released a new version on 2005_01_08 check it out on the main site.
The HDD Explorer on this new version will detect NTFS partitions (but is not browsing them yet)
And the network applications and drivers have been enhanced
Anyway the NTFS browser is going to come ... sooner or later
I think that adding NTFS support is going to be a big plus for your OS. I am eagerly awaiting it so I can try your OS. With all the different hardware configurations available these days, it must be a monumental job to get everything to work.
Paul
Well, I can't remember much what Windows 3.1 was like, this just seems to look something like my vague memories of it. If you get NTFS browsing and reading working, your OS would make the leap from a fun novelty to a very useful debugging tool for crashed computers, and one that could fit on a single floppy, too, Keep up the good work.
Ok, so then we are decided: NTFS browsing will be next :D
Mr. BogdanOntanu,
:U
great!
it is the first RealTime operation system written by win32asm. my pc without floppy disk need to install your SOLAR OS, but I can't make a bootable CDROM. I hope you write a installing proc. let me install your SOLAR OS into my harddisk with multibootable. and then, I may use a uninstalling proc to resume my system to be original.
best regards.
Is it possible for third party OSes to browse NTFS, though? I've heard that Microsoft refuses to reveal exactly how the file system works.
Hi,
I tried QEMU, It has some gfx probelm. The graphics looks sort of pressed together. I will put a screen shot soon.
Thomas Antony
Quote from: Bieb on January 12, 2005, 02:53:01 AM
Is it possible for third party OSes to browse NTFS, though? I've heard that Microsoft refuses to reveal exactly how the file system works.
Knoppid-STD has NTFS r/w capabilites: http://knoppix-std.org
And yeah, M$ (:P) doesn't exactly document the format.
thomasantony:
============
I have just tried in QEMU PC emulator version 0.6.1, and Solar OS works in all color resolutions
Of course i use the vgabios-cirrus.bin for VESA options.
six_L1
=======
There is a CD-ROM image on site but it is an .NRG file for Nero burn software
You can easyly make a bootable CD-ROM with Solar OS by using the provided os8.bin file or by using the os8.dsk file.
The os8.dsk file is exactly 1.44M in size and it is generated by the full.exe application from the os8.bin
Options for making the bootable CD depend on the software you use but besides the os image you do not need anything else. And yes CD-ROM version of SolarOS boots almost instantly.
For a HDD instalation you just have to tell your boot manager to load os8.bin SolarOS uses no files on the HDD so there is no need for an uninstall procedure. I plan to investigate and provide an HDD instalation soon but i have no use for it myself. During OS development we do not want to write the HDD all the time ;) but for usage i can understand that.
Mr. BogdanOntanu,
Thanks you for replying.
today, we have to depend on Microsoft to live in the virtual IT world. we sincerely wish you build an another IT world and send Microsoft back home. it's need long road to walk. if a dream to be exist, someday of accomplishing will always be exist.
regards.
It is not my intention to attack or duplicate/clone Microsoft Windows or other OS (like Linux)
I am just doing my own OS the way i like it. I will constantly refuse to orient my OS in the direction "others" want me to.
Either "elite" others or large numbers of "common" users. However you are free to do with it as you like under the GPL license.
This OS is (if ever) intended only for some types of programmers that want total control over their hardware and are not willing to sacrifice simple things for paranoical security. It can be used for testing and fast prototyping of hardware, for toy and for fun and for serious applications also. But you have to pay the price of knowledge and confidence and it will never be "trendy".
Fortunately my choices will keep my OS from ever becoming much to popular or sucessful in the world we live in now :))
And i can live ever happyly with this.
Hi,
This is how my Qemu window looks like. That is the SolOs menu screen(resolution selection)
Thomas Antony
[attachment deleted by admin]
Thomas,
I think something went wrong with your image. It is just barely readable to me.
Paul
Thomas Antony
I can not open the jpeg inside the zip something is wrong with it
Anyway for screenshots JPEG is the worst choice, PNG is much better
JPEG destroys the image in ways that are incomplatible with regular shapes
Please take care to use the VGA bios that has VESA support in QEMU
an important request, sys restore against hacks.
Hi Bogdan,
I finally got it to work in Qemu. It was just that i was too lazy to read its docs. It worked Ok when I set my desktop res to 16-bit high color. But still I wish I could run it on my real system. Then it would be much more faster (Qemu - 41 MHz and My PC:850 MHz!!). Even when running menuet os, I have to use the VGA color mode which is absolutely boring. When I ran it in QEmu the VESA modes looked gr8 but it is still very slow. If my gfx doesn't support VESA, how come I can use 24-bit True Color 1024*768 in Windows?
Thomas Antony
Windows will have a driver specific to you video board.
What kind of video board do you have thomas?
Maybe i can make up a driver for your video board; but i need more informations about it.
And i do need to see the screenshots and what info is shown on the text mode SolarOS startup setup screen on your hardware.
If your video board supports VESA 1.2 then we only need a small bank switching routine for it to make all OS work
I guess that ZIP with the screenshot image was compressed with a compresion method that is so new that my old un-zipper knows nothing about it :D. And btw QUEMU has a problem with keyboard scancodes :D
Hi,
Plz see these links
http://support.intel.com/support/graphics/intel810/sb/CS-009140.htm
It is the support page for my Gfx card
and this
ftp://aiedownload.intel.com/df-support/2695/eng/os2r214.zip
That is the developer files for the card
Thomas Antony :U
I will check them out,
From what i see the I810 video chip supports only 24bits for truecolor. It is not supporting 32bits.
Also the accelerated functions only work in 8bits or 16bits but NOT in 24bits or 32bits.
I have not found ony references about VESA 2.0 support yet... i will have to see.
AFAIK the 24bits is no problem for SolarOS latest versions neither are 16bits or 8bits.
So it should be working... unless it is not supporting VESA 2.0
I am still checking...
Hi Thomas,
Instead of trying to determine if your system supports VESA 2.0 indirectly, why not just "ask" it what it supports. The attachment is a quick and dirty DOS app to do this. It works OK under Windows 2000 so it will probably work OK under any version of Windows, but note that you must run the app full screen.
There is also a VBE function to return detailed information on any of the supported modes. The VBE 3.0 standard is available here (Free Standards and Public Documents):
http://www.vesa.org/standards_free.html
[attachment deleted by admin]
Hi,
I used your prog and got this info.
VbeSignature = 'VESA'
VbeVersion = 0300
OemString = 'Intel(R) 8xx Chipset Video BIOS'
Capabilities:
DAC width is switchable to 8 bit per primary color
Controller is VGA compatible
Normal RAMDAC operation
No hardware stereoscopic signaling support
Supported VBE display modes:
0109h, 010Ah, 010Bh, 010Ch, 011Dh, 010Eh, 0100h,
0128h, 0101h, 0110h, 0111h, 0112h, 0102h, 0103h,
0114h, 0115h, 0105h,
TotalMemory = 1024KB
OemSoftwareRev = 2182
OemVendorName = 'Intel Corporation'
OemProductName = 'Intel(R) 8xx Chipset'
OemProductRev = 'Hardware Version 0.0'
Press any normal key to exit...
Hope this helps!! :U
Thomas Antony :U
Well under those circumstances it should run in Sol OS i see no reason for it not to run...
Is it returning the same information when the program is started from a plain DOS and not from windows?
Of course it supports 2 unknown custom mode that i do not list :D
And probably higer resolutions are achiveable only by using a specific driver but still from your list you could use:
In 256 colors (pallete black and white in Solar OS)
101 = 640x480x256 colors -> Option 0
103 = 800x600x256 colors -> Option 1
105 = 1024x768x256 colors -> Option 2
In 65536 colors "High Color" ; RGB 5:6:5 color format
you can use:
111 = 640x480 x 65536 colors -> Option 4
114 = 800x600 x 65536 colors -> Option 5
In 16milions of colors - "True Color" ; RGB x:8:8:8 color format
you can use:
112 = 640x480 x True color -> Option 8
115 = 800x600 x True color -> Option 9
Other options are not available for you in solar os for now.
You are missing the 1280x1024 modes and most 1024x768 modes :D
Again, I bet that the higher resolutions modes can only be setup by a specific PCI driver
or by investigating the two unknown (to me) modes: 11Dh and 128H
Other modes reported by your video card using VESA video interface
are either in much to low resolution, 5:5:5 duplicate or text modes.
I made a mistake in my code that caused it to skip some of the supported modes :red I replaced the original attachment with a corrected version.
Here is the new out put:
VbeSignature = 'VESA'
VbeVersion = 0300
OemString = 'Intel(R) 8xx Chipset Video BIOS'
Capabilities:
DAC width is switchable to 8 bit per primary color
Controller is VGA compatible
Normal RAMDAC operation
No hardware stereoscopic signaling support
Supported VBE display modes:
0109h, 010Ah, 010Bh, 010Ch, 011Dh, 010Eh, 0100h, 0127h,
0128h, 0101h, 0110h, 0111h, 0112h, 0102h, 0103h, 0113h,
0114h, 0115h, 0105h,
TotalMemory = 1024KB
OemSoftwareRev = 2182
OemVendorName = 'Intel Corporation'
OemProductName = 'Intel(R) 8xx Chipset'
OemProductRev = 'Hardware Version 0.0'
Press any normal key to exit...
BTW, when I selected the options you said abt, it says something like LFB at blah:blah and RGB:something else. But when I press enter, it says that Mode unavailable and displays menu again!! what's wrong?
Thomas Antony :U
The list shows the modes that the video board could eventually support not the ones that are sure to work.
The "Mode Unavailable" error in Solar OS is because when it attepted to really setup that specific mode it received an error from the VESA BIOS. From my experience the error usually means that there is not enough memory on the video board to support that particular video mode.
So i suggest that you share more than 1Mbyte of RAM for your on board vido RAM, for example a 4Mytess video RAM should do the trick. But IMHO for 1280x1024 true color resolutions you would need 8Megabytes of video RAM
(6M actually but 8 is the next available power of 2)
Quote from: BogdanOntanu on January 21, 2005, 01:34:44 PM
The "Mode Unavailable" error in Solar OS is because when it attepted to really setup that specific mode it received an error from the VESA BIOS. From my experience the error usually means that there is not enough memory on the video board to support that particular video mode.
but you cant trust VESAtest on newer cards, mine 128mb nvidia 5600FX reports 0kb
to play an old dosgame, first the gameinstaller do the usual VESAtest query and refuses to install because my card isnt svgacompatible, but it works when I plugin a old 2mb pci card and switches to run my 5600 after the game is installed and the rest of VESAfunctions dosgame uses seem compatible or probably emulated somehow
Quote from: daydreamer on January 21, 2005, 06:00:10 PM
Quote from: BogdanOntanu on January 21, 2005, 01:34:44 PM
The "Mode Unavailable" error in Solar OS is because when it attepted to really setup that specific mode it received an error from the VESA BIOS. From my experience the error usually means that there is not enough memory on the video board to support that particular video mode.
but you cant trust VESAtest on newer cards, mine 128mb nvidia 5600FX reports 0kb
to play an old dosgame, first the gameinstaller do the usual VESAtest query and refuses to install because my card isnt svgacompatible, but it works when I plugin a old 2mb pci card and switches to run my 5600 after the game is installed and the rest of VESAfunctions dosgame uses seem compatible or probably emulated somehow
I think the BIOS on your 5600FX card does not support the VESA extensions. Support for VBE has been steadily declining for years, as it is old technology that is little used today.
Well i have never seen a newer video card that is not supporting VESA, the support for is not appearing to be declinig...
Maybe you are right for the new 5600FX but i can not tell since i do not have one here to do the test
Usually is the older applications that expect some special SVGA things or do not follow the VESA standards corectly.
For the Intel 810 shared memory card i guess is the too little memory allocated to the card by default that limited its VESA modes.
And yes after all sooner or later one can and should make PCI or AGP drivers for newer video cards.
Unfortunately the "new technology" behind those cards is hidden and no freely aailable (ie not even the API and functions for setting them up) :P
QuoteWell i have never seen a newer video card that is not supporting VESA, the support for is not appearing to be declinig...
Nor have I seen a newer video card that did not support VESA, but then I have not checked any very recent cards. By "declining" I meant that there has been a decline in the number of modes being supported. I did a small survey some years ago where I sampled and compared the VESA support for all of the video cards I had available. The trend was unmistakable -- the newer the card the fewer the modes it supported. I don't have the numbers available, or a list of the cards I compared, but I do recall comparing a Matrox G450 to a G400 to a G200, an (ATI built) Rage 128 to a Rage Pro Turbo (also ATI built), and a Voodoo 4 to a Voodoo 3. And IIRC among all of the cards I tested I could find only one older one (an STB Velocity 128) that supported dual read/write windows. As an example, here is the info for the Rage Pro Turbo:
VbeSignature = 'VESA'
VbeVersion = 0200
OemString = 'ATI MACH64'
Capabilities:
DAC is fixed width, with 6 bit per primary color
Controller is VGA compatible
Normal RAMDAC operation
No hardware stereoscopic signaling support
Supported VBE display modes:
0100h, 0101h, 0110h, 0111h, 0112h, 0103h, 0113h, 0114h,
0115h, 0105h, 0116h, 0117h, 0118h, 0107h, 0119h, 011Ah,
011Bh, 0302h, 0303h, 0304h, 0202h, 010Dh, 010Eh, 010Fh,
0212h, 0213h, 0214h, 0215h, 0222h, 0223h, 0224h, 0225h,
0232h, 0233h, 0234h, 0235h, 0242h, 0243h, 0244h, 0245h
TotalMemory = 8192KB
OemSoftwareRev = 0100
OemVendorName = 'ATI Technologies Inc.'
OemProductName = 'MACH64GT'
OemProductRev = '01.00'
How many newer cards indicate support for anything close to 40 different modes? And even though roughly half of these modes are not VESA-defined modes, they do conform to the standard and the VBE implementation probably fully supports them.
You should have at least 2M or better 4M for high resolution video modes
I download SolarOS but do not understand it very well. How can I get it to load the kernel from a FAT32 filesystem?
Aero,
You can't --yet--, he will get there. I am also waiting for NTFS support. For now, you must run it from a floppy and get what you get. Remember that this is a work in progress. I think it is very promising!
You are trying to solve your problems by peeking at his source... :boohoo:
Paul
I have no floppy drive, but I have a bootloader which loads a file from FAT32 to 7C00h. I just want to know if it is possible for me to set it up so it works.
Point the WinXP bootloader to the .bin.
Which bin? Will the bin work correctly (something about being loaded at 8000h?)
Ever hear of a RAM drive? ;)
Someone must have made a driver for all MS operating systems by now.
You can make it load from a dedicated HDD partition that must be below 8G limit.
You could also make it load from an FAT32 file system ... you just need to take care where you place your buffers since I load the OS continousely from 7c00 upwards, just linearely get it in there and then it should run ok.
Smiddy made some tests with this and you can find info on SolOS web board. I think he succeded.
I do not care much for loading from an FAT32 partition since i think loading should be linear for speed.
Besides with out a floppy disk you will have a lot of troubles testing OS since is non practical to restart you own PC for every test and putting an OS on a HDD is a 2 stage process that slows down testing considerably. Writting an CD-ROM is also slow and costs more.
You can also boot SolOS from an CD-ROM, theoretically an USB stick should be possible also.
While inside the OS indeed i do neet to support FAT32 and NTFS.
Some primitive FAT32 support/browsing is available as an OS application, NTFS will be available in the future.
Hi BogdanOntanu,
I am able to play with your OS on another box so NTFS is not a pressing issue any longer. When we spoke last, I had one box with an acceptable file system but an unacceptable video card (the dreaded vesa 1.2 crap) and the other box had an acceptable VESA 2.0 type video card but was stuck with NTFS (still am). I have since been gifted with a nice box from my granddaughter! Now I can play all I want and I definitely like what I see! I am thinking about trying some sample code created by me at some near point.
Paul
Nice to hear that Paul ;)
Hey, you are the one doing all the neat work, not me!! Thank you for the nice reply, though.
Paul
Hallo mr bogdan. Can you made Sol OS run from harddisk or flash disk? Diskette is easyly get damage and also many virus spread from diskette. I cannot made an application for Sol OS also because it use FAT12 and windows cannot read it. Or maybe I must download something from any other site?
Hi,
Almost all floppys nowadays are FAT12 and windows CAN read it AFAIK. It doesn't work only when the sectors are messed up by your boot sector.
Thomas :U
Farabi,
RU sure? What version of Windows are you using. I bet it is a hybrid. You probably should reinstall it because that just ain't right?
Paul
Quote from: pbrennick on May 07, 2005, 01:17:50 PM
Farabi,
RU sure? What version of Windows are you using. I bet it is a hybrid. You probably should reinstall it because that just ain't right?
Paul
It ain't polite to say ain't :bdg :bdg :bdg
Thomas :bg :bg :bdg :bdg :U :bg
Paul:
====
Whenever somebody takes ammount from his peronal time in order to test SolOS it is actually helping me ;)
It would be wery hard for me to test SolOS on so many computers otherwise...
So its is just normal for me to be gratefull
Farabi:
=====
SolOS is NOT using FAT12. Booting from floppy and CD-ROM is easy.
Booting from HDD is also possible but the setup is a little complicated for now. In the next versions i will make it easyer to setup a boot from HDD environment.
SolOS uses its own kind of partition for the floppy: a raw partition. Same goes for the HDD: a partition with code 0x0D that is curently arranged linearely (not FAT12 or Fat16 or FAT32 or NTFS)
There is an application inside SolOS: HDD Explorer that is able to browse multiple FAT32 partitions but not FAT12 or FAT16.
I dislike dependency on a propretary filesystem such as FAT12/16/32 or NTFS. At least for bootingIi do prefer my own partition, arranging things plain linear makes booting 10xfaster on HDD.
BogdanOntanu,
This thing about creating your own partition is a great idea. Will it have to be a root partition or can it be a second boot partition on a HD that must boot c: to ntfs so my laptop can also load XP? I really dislike the fact that companies such as Sony choose to force us to use NTFS by creating a 'rescue' cd instead of giving us a true copy of XP. I rebuilt my granddaughter's DELL with a FAT32 and XP. It works just fine. Gee, let me think, what brand of laptop will I never buy again!! Anyway, SolarOS runs well on my test box and when you give us an HD capability I will test it for you as a multiboot solution.
Paul
Quote from: pbrennick on May 07, 2005, 01:17:50 PM
Farabi,
RU sure? What version of Windows are you using. I bet it is a hybrid. You probably should reinstall it because that just ain't right?
Paul
I use WinXP provided from the vendor, I did not change it or update it from the beggining. I use DDRAM memory, I changed from SDRAM because it not stable on my celeron 1.7 Ghz. But DDRAM is a litle slower than the SDRAM. I dont know where I read and have a conclution SOL OS use FAT12.
Bogdan:
I did test SOL OS and it working, even on my laptop. Floppy disk with menuet OS is able to read but when I change the diskette with Sol OS it unable to read.I think I understand now how to test my application. Keep up the good work.
Paul,
The version released on 2005-03-01 can boot from one of the 4 primary partitions available on a HDD.
On the solar os site you can find instructions about how to install on a HDD partition;
I know it is a little complicated, but that was the first version booting from HDD :D
On the forums you can find some relevant issues/directions/talks also.
Basically you need to:
1)Make a primary partition (not extended) of whatever size you want but greater than 2MBytes.
This partition has to be below the 8G limit :D . You can make it whatever type as it will be changed next
You can use Partition Magic for making this partition esp if you already have data on HDD.Fdisk will refuse to make 2 primary partitions
2)Mark it with partition code 0xDD (I have used Ranish part.exe for this)
3)Boot SolOS form a floppy/cdrom, go to advanced menu, select the destination partition and transfer the OS on it. Take care.
4)You might need a boot manager to switch the active partiton in between WinXP/SolarOS. The above procedure only transfers SolOS on the HDD but it does not make the partition active so next time you will still boot XP unless you have a boot manager of some kind. I have used XOSL for this but maybe XP boot menu can do that also.