resman
Veteran Member
I think everyone is trying to focus your challenge to be something a little more palatable if you've never written an OS or compiler. But, it will be a learning experience for you and I hope you share your journey.
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1983 - coming ready or not
- Thread starter kerravon
- Start date
He's referring to BDS C which first appeared in 1979:
https://www.bdsoft.com/resources/bdsc.html
As the above link states, it was released to the public domain in 2002 and was written to run on 8080 based machines.
I've been looking this challenge over and thinking about it for a while now. I think the intent is to simulate the kind of circumstances Linus Torvalds had when he went to University and wanted a better OS for his 386. In Torvalds' case, that led him to produce under the GPL. But here you are a believer in the Public Domain Project and want to produce a better than MS-DOS product that will become the new base line OS all "future" (i.e. post 1983) computers are loaded with.
In essence, the challenge is to give PDOS the shot in the arm that GNU got from Linux. So, there is no implied class where you are given this as an assignment to do, no time limit the project is expected to be completed by, and no clearly-defined goals as to what the OS is supposed to be like other than that you are familiar with DOS and want an improved version of it. For example, you feel that all the power of the 386 is ignored/wasted by MS-DOS and you want a full 32-bit version of DOS, so you start writing a improving PDOS for this goal.
Am I right about this Kerravon/Paul?
It is something along those lines, but I would add some corrections/clarifications.
There are two challenges - 8086 and 80386. This thread started on the 8086 (1983), rather than the 80386 (1986). It is my expectation that in 1983 you should be able to write in C for the 8086, but write in a (portable) way that you are preparing for the 80386 (and 80286 too).
I don't necessarily want an improved version of DOS, but that was an obvious gap/choice to start with. Someone else may want an improved (or even inferior) Unix.
One part of the challenge is to write an unspecified operating system and/or tools.
Another part of the challenge is to do the above using only public domain tools.
If for some reason you were banished to Mars and only allowed to take public domain tools with you, where would you stand? Where does the public stand with regard to what they actually own already? Would you like to experience first-hand the difficulties you will face if you are restricted to just public domain tools?
It is unclear to me at the moment whether the PDOS University Challenge is in fact the only option available to go to Mars with. It's just the only one I'm aware of. I'm aware of Temple OS, but that's x64.