Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: news.duke.edu!newsgate.duke.edu!nntp-out.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!uni-erlangen.de!fu-berlin.de!server1.netnews.ja.net!hgmp.mrc.ac.uk!pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk!bath.ac.uk!unknown
From: "Ben A L Jemmett" <bal.jemmett@ukonline.co.uk>
Subject: Re: On OS design
X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000
X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000
Sender: unknown@bj1084.resnet.bris.ac.uk (Address not verified)
Organization: Jemmett Glover Software Development
Lines: 35
Message-ID: <GM71p2.IAu@bath.ac.uk>
X-Msmail-Priority: Normal
References: <20011030221953.17603.00000905@mb-cp.aol.com>    <9rohhh$1ib3o$2@hades.csu.net> <9rpl3t$8m9$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>    <Xns914C73A0E79FBknight37m@209.155.56.100>    <ant011834fc4fNdQ@oakseed.demon.co.uk> <9rs8bl$28v$1@news.panix.com> <n20ur9.m1s.ln@172.16.100.66>
X-Priority: 3
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2001 22:12:38 GMT
Xref: news.duke.edu rec.arts.int-fiction:94275

"David Given" <dg@pearl.tao.co.uk> wrote in message
news:n20ur9.m1s.ln@172.16.100.66...
> Anyone got an FPGA kit? This sounds fun.
It's an idea I've been toying with myself, but it'd be quite a while before
I'd even attempt to do anything with it.  I know later in my course here at
university we do a fair amount of hardware design and work on the
implementation of processors in programmable logic (I have the recommended
text on the shelf above me in fact), and thought a hardware Z-machine would
be a neat idea for a project if it wasn't going to chew huge amounts of
time.

> Which brings us back to the OS... we *will* need one. It doesn't have to
> be very complicated; something along the lines of CP/M or DOS would do
> nicely. But it has to be able to load and run user space programs.
I was thinking something along the lines of a ROM monitor, at least at
first.  It depends on whether the hardware and firmware form a 'pure'
Z-machine (monitor could then load a gamefile and execute it; nothing else
required really) or if the hardware is geared towards running an interpreter
(sort of as you suggest in a passage I appear to have snipped), in which
case more flexibility could be achieved with running a small OS.

Then again, I was thinking of using a dot-matrix printer as (perhaps one of
a number of) output device(s); stick my old one in Immediate mode and it'd
be quite neat in a teletype kind of way :)

> (And before anybody else points it out... yes, I *am* mad.)
At least you don't hack around in the GEM Desktop code; now some of that's
mad...  :)

--
Regards,
Ben A L Jemmett.
(http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ben.jemmett/, http://www.deltasoft.com/)


