Saturday, July 31, 2004

VMX is aliiiiiiive

My assembler and vmx are slowlying being tested.
This will be the basis of my operating system.

Not bad considering all my base code is in England. This new assembler + vm was written over a period of 4 days. Guess this supplants what I have in england. Also got pages and pages of notes in freehand to transcribe onto the computer.

Compiles test.vsm

sgeorge@wolfpack ~/source/vmxvmxasm/vmxasm test.vsm test.vmx

VMXASM Jul 31 2004 20
:20:12
Pass 1
building code and label offsets
        mov r00
,0x00000000      0A 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
        call 0x00000000         08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
        
xor r00,r00             10 00 00 00
        
xor r01,r01             10 00 01 01
        system                  0D 00 00 00
        push r01                05 00 01 00
        push r02                05 00 02 00
        mov r02
,r00             09 00 02 00
        
xor r00,r00             10 00 00 00
        mov r01
1              0A 00 01 00 00 00 00 01
        system                  0D 00 00 00
        pop r02                 06 00 02 00
        pop r01                 06 00 01 00
        pop r15                 06 00 0F 00
        db 4C
,6F,6F,6B,69,6E,67,20,61,74,20,79,6F,75,20
           66
,72,6F,6D,20,74,68,65,20,56,4D,58,21,0D,00


Pass 2 
:: Building correct label offsets
Linking [MyString] at 0x00000044 to 0x00000004
Linking [PrintString] at 0x0000001C to 0x0000000C
done
!
Create Image
Relocation 0x00000004

Now runs test.vmx in the VM

sgeorge@wolfpack ~/source/vmxvmx/vmx test.vmx

main
.c Startup main.c Jul 31 2004 20:17:28
cpu
.c VMInitialising.
mem.c Freeing All VM memory pages
mem
.c Initialising memory pages
mem
.c Allocating 16 x 16kb pages
mem
.c Allocated 16 x 16kb pages
cpu
.c Setting Dummy system handler
cpu
.c Setting VM System Call pointer 0x004010F0
cpu
.c Issuing VMReset
cpu
.c Setting VM System Call pointer 0x004020B0
main
.c Loading File test.vmx at 0x00000000
main
.c VMX executable v1.1
main
.c Loading 00000062 at 0x00000000
main
.c Doing relocations
main
.c Relocating 0x00000004

Looking at you from the VMX
!
sys.quit

cpu
.c VMShutdown
mem
.c Freeing All VM memory pages
main
.c Shutdown

Posted by Stu on 07/31 at 11:28 AM Permalink to this post.
Filed Under : Development
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Athene

Ive been poking around with the windows installable version of Athene and Ive decided I really dont like DML (dynamic markup language). Its a cool idea to be able to write full GUI programs with some tiny amount of XML. To me, it looks worse than perl. Maybe to store a user interface description layout in XML is one thing. To use it to program applications is another.

I have a full OEM CD of Athene coming in the mail, and if I do any development for it, they will be native applications, not DML apps.

Posted by Stu on 07/31 at 04:43 AM Permalink to this post.
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QEmu, a much better Bochs alternative

I have been using and testing QEmu lately, instead of Bochs, and its amazing. QEmu has come a long way very quickly. Right now its installing my BeOS 4.5 CD and its not having any difficulty at all. Something VMWare Workstation and Bochs couldnt do.

Im running a nightly build (20040730). When it gets a nice windows interface (assuming...), it will be quite kickass and make Bochs obsolete. I think bochs is already obsolete pretty much already anway.

QEmu already has a working PCI interface which is a godsend to hobbyist osdevelopers, which is another thing Bochs lacks.

QEmus biggest boast is its multi architecture emulation. Currently it can emulate x86-32, PowerPC-PREP, PowerPC-PowerMac.

Aside from architectures it can run Linux binaries (from inside linux) of several platforms, Linux X86, Linux Sparc V8, Linux ARM, Linux PowerPC.

Until I get back to England and test it on my laptop, I cant really tell how good or bad QEmu’s built in NE2000 support is. I know Bochs really sucks for inbuilt NIC’s. You have to have external tools and such. Its a real PITA. Im hoping QEmu has it all native.

It will be nice and speedy for testing my osdev stuff. But I dont know yet if I will give up my paid for and highly prized VMWare Workstation. Put the VMWare front end on QEmu and Ill think about it. What would be best for *me* would be if QEmu supported VMWare disks nativly. I know bochs can convert VMWare 3 images to flat style images..  If the format for VMWare 4 disks were known, I wouldnt mind hacking in support to make them native in QEmu. Then I wouldnt need to faff about and have two separate setups with VMware, and QEmu for testing…

QEmu homepage here

QEmu Nighlty Windows Build here (choose build you want).

QEmu Windows info and Tips here

The Morphix QEmu WIKI is here

Posted by Stu on 07/31 at 04:29 AM Permalink to this post.
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Friday, July 30, 2004

Banana Cake

Cooked up a storm yesterday. Aside from bread, I also made a banana cake.

Ingrediants

  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 3 mashed bananas
  • 1 teaspoon each of bi-carb soda + baking powder
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1+1/2 cups self raising flower
  • 1 egg
  • milk

    method

  • Cream the butter and suggar.
  • Add egg and mashed bananas and mix it all up
  • Add flour, bicard soda and baking powder and mix well.
  • add 2 tablespoons of milk

    baking
    Whack it in a moderate oven for about 35-40 minutes.

    mmmmmmmmmmmmm banana cack is awesome!

    Posted by Stu on 07/30 at 01:30 AM Permalink to this post.
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  • Thursday, July 29, 2004

    Bread

    Made some more bread tonight, and I wast very scientific about it as I was the last lot. All my measure ments tonight were ‘near enough’ and ‘thats as much of that as Im adding’ type stuff. I also took all the sugar out, bar a little bit to kickstart the yeast.

    I also used less flour as well, and they came out superb!!

    Some pics inside…

    image

    image

    image

    Posted by Stu on 07/29 at 03:44 PM Permalink to this post.
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    Athene 4

    Have been looking at Athene a tonight. It reminds me of BeOS a great deal indeed. Its nice to see someone using the SNAP toolkit from Scitech.

    There is a lot of unanswered questions tho. The website is not very forthcoming. Will it run on my laptop? can I upgrade the linux kernel? can I run it under FreeBSD 5 with UFS2? What about JFS?

    It can run standalone, and again, doesnt tell you what the default filesystem it installs is.

    We will see what they post in their forums and if they answer my questions or not.

    I have downloaded the SDK, hopefully it will be fully featured enough for some development!!

    Looks like the kiwis have something interesting going on tho..

    Posted by Stu on 07/29 at 12:30 PM Permalink to this post.
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    Friday, July 23, 2004

    USB Drives

    Things for me to read and take notice of later.

    Ars Technica Review of USB Pen Drives

    Boot From USB Part 1

    Boot From USB Update to Part 1

    Boot From USB Addendum

    Posted by Stu on 07/23 at 01:06 PM Permalink to this post.
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    Thursday, July 22, 2004

    Bread

    Tonight I did several things. 1 was to eat steak. mmmmmmm steeeak. Now that Ive started eating meat again, its going well… better than I expected anyway.

    Secondly, tonight I made bread. I halfed the recipie and made 3 loaves. It came out a bit heavy.. but ok. No crunchy crust. Cooked right through tho.. Not quite sure what I did wrong…

    anyway, I am learning.....

    Bought some christmas presents today too.. so thats something else I have lessened. Only a few more to buy and I’ll be done with xmas shopping! whooooooo

    My uncle came home from hols so we are going out to the farm on sunday…

    Busy Busy Busy

    Posted by Stu on 07/22 at 02:15 PM Permalink to this post.
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    Saturday, July 17, 2004

    Cat n Girl do Pretty in Pink

    One of my fav online comics, Cat and Girl…

    here

    Posted by Stu on 07/17 at 05:57 AM Permalink to this post.
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    Thursday, July 15, 2004

    Way back in the dreamtime…

    Quite often people have a past they dont want others to know about. I was one of those people.

    Long before I was galavanting around the world, I was known throughout Australia. The quintasential magazine coverboy and wearer of khaki, often I was found in the wilds, roughing it in the mud with the animals.

    Most people dont know this, but I was approached to do a TV show. In the end I lost out to some fella called Steve. Apparently they didnt like the scarf. I did get the magazine cover tho.

    Crikey mate! lookout! there could be crocs in there.
    (May 1984, Scout magazine).
    image

    Posted by Stu on 07/15 at 08:14 AM Permalink to this post.
    Filed Under : Camping / Hiking
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    Wednesday, July 14, 2004

    Home Again Home Again

    Aaargh. Internet Explorer crashed and I lost a big entry :(

    So I survived the 23+ hour flight. Landed in Melbourne on Friday morning, via Los Angeles from New York. Delayed on the runway in New York for 2 hours. They held the plane in LA for an hour. Arrived in Melbourne an hour late. Got out of customs an hour after that!

    Supposed to land at 8, was out at 10am.

    Its kind of strange being back home. Joy is not by my side and it feels very strange to be single without being single. I dont like not having her here.

    On other news, I have 12000 spam emails in one of my accounts! (3 months unchecked usage).

    I have cooked dinner two nights in a row, and tomorow I will tackle making oatmeal breadrolls. We will see what my breadmaking skills are like I guess! Should be fun.

    One thing I really HATE about being home is all the fuss that is being made. I hate being the center of the fuss and that my mum is fussing over me all the time. I know she loves me home and hasnt seen me in year but it drives me crazy, and If i were to say something I would hhurt her feelings, so I just go along with it. I will be leaving in a few weeks and wont see them again till next year for the wedding so whats a couple of weeks eh?

    But the sooner I go back to england, the sooner I need to find a job. Kind of putting it off I guess hehehehe…

    Got my mum to shave my head tonight. a #0. With her being a Professional Hairdressor, I expected a top notch job and I think I pretty much got what I expected…
    image

    These are my swords from kungfu, they are a pair of custom made butterfly swords. The blade length is the same length from my wrist to my elbow.
    image

    Posted by Stu on 07/14 at 09:54 AM Permalink to this post.
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    Friday, July 02, 2004

    Shots of the Wedding location

    Here are some shots of the wedding location. This is a house that dates from the pre civil war era, built sometime in the 1780’s.

    (There are 6 photos, each might take a bit to load).

    River Bank 1
    image

    River Bank 2
    image

    Small Pergola
    image

    Front of house
    image

    Medieval Medicinal Herb Garden
    image

    Medieval Medicinal Herb Garden
    image

    Posted by Stu on 07/02 at 02:34 AM Permalink to this post.
    Filed Under : The Wedding
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