Hi, I think the work Daniel1981 has done on HeinanOS is amazing, the project has in my opinion a healthy positive future, I wish Daniel1981 all the best with it.

I'm no developer, and I know something like what Daniel1981 has done doesn't happen overnight, what I would like to ask is, where would someone like myself start out in this area, can building an OS from scratch have support for MS Windows Applications? The type of MS Applications I'd like to support are the MS Windows XP ones.

I've seen the ReactOS project, and tried it out, but from my experience in trying the ReactOS it's very unstable.

I would like to be able to make releases as well.

Thank You for reading my post,
Happy New Year.
All The Best.

AlexJ

This might be usefull: http://www.instructables.com/id/Create-your-own-operating-system/

http://www.osdever.net/ is the site I used for alot of reference while working on LucOS.

This is an interesting read, Thank You.

To get it to the level of even partial windows NT binary compatibility has taken a long time for many ReactOS developers. If you want to start, at the bare minimum you need to learn the assembly language of the platform the OS is intended for, and C is very useful, but you will be writing your own functions. You will also need to know about things such as GDTs, IDTs and how the system [processor, memory, graphics etc.] works, and it is probably helpful to plan the OS so it can be easily ported to another architecture. If you know C# or Visual Basic .NET [or indeed any other language on the .NET Framework] you could start out with Cosmos, which can be found at http://cosmos.codeplex.com/. If you have any questions PM me and I'll try to help you but I'm only really starting out myself!

Good luck!

Indeed, COSMOS is a great place to start a code managed os.

BTW, please look at your private messages.

Building a Custom OS from scratch to have MS Windows Application Support, would the Custom OS become vulnerable to the same attacks, (Virus's, Malware)?

In theory, if those holes existed in the OS, yes.

Hi Daniel1981, I have looked at my private messages, I replied to your last one, Thank You, AlexJ.

Some more stuff.
Tools (on Windows):
- nasm, the Netwide Assembler, or other assembler
- a C compiler, I would recommend djgpp [includes binutils etc] but this won't run on x64 windows.
- an emulator like Bochs or Qemu, VMware also works but is a bit fiddly to use when the OS is being recompiled every few minutes
- For Cosmos, MS Visual Studio 2008 / 10 [or c# express]

You can write your own boot loader. The boot sector is written in assembler, and when compiled:
- Must be loaded to the memory location 7C00 [hex, useful to understand ]
- Must be the first 512 bytes of a disk, 510 of which are code, and the last 2 must be AA 55

I'll provide a code sample of the above shortly, I have a few functions that can be useful, one of them I will admit to copying off the web but I did write the rest myself

Thank You Very Much .

my network cable is rubbish. will post shortly.

Anyway, this bootsector, when compiled, can be booted like a floppy image from an emulator, or written using something like rawrite.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/X86_Assembly <-- also, that's quite a good book to refer to

And Daniel1981, just tried HeinanOS, I like it
I want to get Fat32 access working but I can't find a way D:

That's because it only supports FAT16

However, you are more then welcome to improve HeinanOS!

All you need to do, is to join the project in heinanos.codeplex.com, and once I will approve you, you will have access to the source code.

I was just wondering, how does HeinanOS and ReactOS remain legal from intellectual property rights and trademark infringement of Microsoft?

I know HeinanOS and ReactOS don't copy/paste source code from Microsoft, so because source code isn't copied, is that how HeinanOS and ReactOS remain legal?

I started reading a neat guide here http://www.brokenthorn.com/Resources/OSDev1.html. I started, then stopped. Eventually I would likae to make a project.

Can Cosmos read and write to files yet?

Well for starters, you can use suse-studio, then later build on from that.

Can you make one with visual basic instead of C#?

If you want vb.net instead of c# (or viceversa) just use a language converter:
http://www.developerfusion.com/tools/co ... arp-to-vb/
or
http://converter.telerik.com/
or
http://www.carlosag.net/tools/codetranslator/