ThisIsNotDOS

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

ThisIsNotDOS: / Just enough OS to load something more interesting.

A mini dos for propeller configurations with TV & keyboard or NES.

Requirements:

* TV/Video connection
* SD interface (using FATEngine by Kye)
* Keyboard or NES interface


Type HELP for a brief list of commands:

======= NES-to-KEY howto: =======

[select] activate/deactivate NES-to-Key mode
[up] space [down] backspace
[right/left] select characters
[a] type character
hit enter

Let me know if it works for you.

OBC

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

Couldn't leave it alone for the night without adding CD {folder} and CD .. support..

OBC

Cluso99

OBC: Good on you. We will get that elusive Prop OS running properly yet

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

Spruced it up a little and gave it a name.

OBC

Dr_Acula

KyeDOS for TV. Excellent!

@Cluso99

We will get that elusive Prop OS running properly yet

I guess it depends on your definition of an operating system, but I think we might already have one. We certainly now have command line programs that boot up from eprom and display a prompt, on TV and VGA. Then you type something, and that can run any binary program you like, as well as do directory listings etc.

To me, that is an operating system, because any "command" can be added as a new binary program.

I guess what isn't quite the same as CP/M and MSDOS is those programs had some built in function calls that did things like talk to the disk drive and serial ports. This was necessary for CP/M because it ran on many different types of hardware, so someone had to write the low level hardware interface code. But the propeller hardware is pretty much the same for all of us (maybe pins are different), so the equivalent of CP/M BIOS calls are the objects in the Obex. You might use them slightly differently, ie CP/M had the serial driver code stay resident all the time, whereas on the propeller, you might copy and paste the same serial code into multiple binary functions. In practice I think you use both in a similar way, in CP/M you call a particular BIOS call (a number of which happen to be the same numbers as the ones in MS DOS), and on the propeller, you drop in the same Obex code.

So there is my little argument saying that we now have an operating system for the Propeller.

FWIW I no longer download anything to the EEPROM on my boards. I have KyeDOS permanently installed (and I'd use OBC's system if I was using a TV), and for Spin development I use F10 and then when it is working, compile to a binary and xmodem it to the sd card. And for Catalina, there are similar ways to download to ram for development and then copy to SD card.

So no matter what bugs I might download to the propeller, if I push the reset button it is back to a familiar command prompt.