Phobos | An overview of PHOBOS |
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PHOBOS is a tiny operating system that runs on PC hardware. Although intended to be a demonstration system, it could be made to do real work if required. Its primary purpose, however, is to present a working operating system that is small enough for an individual to understand, and to show how various parts of the PC hardware are programmed. PHOBOS is loosely based on a much, much earlier system called DEIMOS, which was written by Brian Gilmore at the Edinburgh Regional Computing Centre. However, there are substantial differences:
The target system for PHOBOS has been kept deliberately simple. No proper memory management is used, except for the segment-based addressing provided in the real mode of the processor. Similarly, because only real mode is used, the memory usage does not exceed the approximate limit of 640KB, plus the 384KB of adapter space. Memory above 1MB is not used at all. These limitations make the system smaller and simpler, and thus easier to comprehend. A more sophisticated version may be developed in the future. The minimum hardware requirements for PHOBOS are as follows:
In its current form, PHOBOS does not support a hard disk. For development, the following environment is required. This may be on the same machine, or on a different one:
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Bob Eager
Last updated:
16 Dec 2024