> Hiya doodz. I just subscribed yesterday and got flooded by gigabytes of
> ludacrous threads about exactly how to capitolize sMaLlTaLk...
> I'll ignore that for the next few days praying that it will go away.
> [fingers crossed]

Well, I hope you're not planning on using those fingers for a while, because
these are the sorts of minutiae that we love to yammer about around here.
Sadly, I think most of us are not gainfully employed, so we seem to have too
much time on our hands. Just be glad nobody's mentioned "forking" lately!

> I joined this list cuz I been wanting to write my own OS for the last 6
> years... Most of that time was spent playing quake and trying to beat a
> clue out of the textbooks that have consumed most of my pennies...
> Unfortunately my difficulties with college English has held me in a
> community colege... =\

I'm not sure playing Quake is the best prerequisite for writing an OS, but
you never know.  Bill Gates is the richest guy in Seattle, and he didn't
graduate from _any_ college, let alone a community college.  And of course,
we all know he pretty much invented software.

> Now that I have a small colection of clues as to how to go about
> actually getting an OS to work I have grown impatient with myself and
> would like to get this monster jump-started as soon as possible.

Cool.

> An overview of my design can be found on my website, add "
> uce/sphere/sphere.txt " to the link below...

I didn't see much there, but it sounds pretty great so far!  I liked some of
what you had to say about GUIs - sometimes I wonder what those guys who came
up with windowing systems and popup menus and so on instead of the CLI were
smoking. It would be pretty cool if they were here so we could ask them.

> The current plan is to damn the torpedos and full-speed ahead on a
> squeak-based implementation of Sphere. I will be continuing to research
> even more advanced language technologies but I need to get something on
> the net ASAP and Squeak seems to be the best of the object oriented
> languages.

Most of us around here think so, too.

> I read a little about sMaLlTaLk in one of the books I am reading...

Which book is that?

> Now about this "Squeak" implementation. You say that it relies uppon the
> host C compiler to compile certain things? This is no good... I need an
> implementation that does its own harware code generation.

Well, you only need the C compiler to generate a new VM or plugin, not to
write software in sMaLlTaLk.  Most people never rebuild the VM, and I would
guess that once you get a stable VM on your hardware platform, you won't
either.  There's also a "just-in-time" version of the VM called "Jitter"
(it's been a while, so we're probably up to version 4 or 5 of Jitter by now,
I think) which will make things really fast without the need for messing
with the C compiler.

> Secondly I need a current system... I am writing this on Windows 3.11 I
> also have BeOS.

Definitely time for an upgrade, though many people think that Windows went
downhill starting with Windows 95.  Too bad about BeOS though, huh?

> The first version of Sphere will run in a DPMI virtual machine running
> on
> 100% pure unadulterated raw native virgin DOS.
>
> DOS is, unquestionably, the best OS in existance TODAY.

I doubt you'll get much argument around here about that!

> I will be implementing Sphere on DOS for the following reasons:
>
> 1. DOS takes care of all the PC crap that has killed so many other
> aspiring OS projects.

If you're referring to the "driver problem", I'm not sure DOS helps all that
much - it just seems to take care of the simple stuff like keyboards,
floppies and such.  Most of the drivers for advanced devices beyond that,
like printers, graphics accelerators, and CueCats, seem to live in Windows.
I may be wrong, though.

> 2. I can fit DOS, a DPMI host, *AND* Sphere on a single floppy, and
> possibly a second for utilities..

You can certainly fit a Squeak VM on a floppy, but I think the image is
quite a different kettle of weasels.  We've seem some functional but limited
images down as low as 800K or so, but most are much larger than a floppy or
two will hold.

> 3. DOS, while meeting the first two requirements, remains so increadibly
> easy to install and manage that any 10 year old on the face of the
> planet could get it working in less than an hour with only a 20 kilobyte
> tutorial.

I assume the tutorial doesn't have any graphics!

> Now about supporting sphere itself: As an OS it will need to be able to
> establish and manipulate MVMs, modified virtual machines. Basicly these
> will be subsets of the global Squeak VM which will be able to create
> modified modified virtual machines or subordinant Modified virtual
> machines as a subset of themselves... These will include memory,
> namespaces, and special properties, whatever the parent decides...

Wow, sounds like you've got it pretty well worked out! I can't wait to try
it!  When do you think it will be done?

> I want to finish the textbook that I am currently reading, then I will
> turn my attention to Squeak and this other lingo called 'Joy'.

Sorry, I'm not familiar with "Joy", so there's nothing disapprobative I can
say about it.

Good luck!

-- Duane