Innovation Science

This Time It's Bad The filesystem driver for COSMOS is, as we all know, very unstable. However, it's come to the point where not even the user can manually create directories or files. As such, I have to halt DremDOS development once again for a while. Once the filesystem driver is more stable, I can continue. I might push what I have now to the repository, but don't count on it. Other Projects to Get Excited About Luckily, DremDOS isn't my only project I'm working on right now. I will start posting periodic updates for my other projects such as DremJS, OTNServer, and a silly new Linux distribution that will use DremJS instead of a traditional window manager (more on this later). Don't expect a weekly update, though, as I've been too busy to program for often days at a time. The Future of DremJS So far, I have a roadmap for DremJS leading up to 0.2.0b. There are many fun little (and big) features to play with in the next 3 updates! Some of these features are...

GUI, Anyone? This week, I finally got the Dev Kit to install! That means I finally got the thing I was most interested in: canvas! Because of that, I mainly focused on reimplementing and improving the experimental GUI (which currently has no name). I also thought I had to reimplement the mouse driver, however I was able to just use the one made by SparrOSDeveloperTeam with some minor modifications. GUI With Application Drawer Open TestApp Open Currently, the GUI is pretty useless. However, I'm going to be improving upon it in version 0.0.3. I'm not very great with graphics so that took me the entire week to build. Other Changes Other than that, I haven't really changed anything except make it so Setup crashes DremDOS if it's called even though DremDOS is already set up. Oh, and I made it so it makes little beepy sounds as it progresses for no reason other than it making me happy. Considering I'm going to be going to work in under an hour as of ...

That Took Way Too Long My laptop finally came in! Because of that, I can finally continue developing DremDOS. A few features and tweaks have already been implemented. For example, a better crash system has been developed. Details of the crash system can be found below, but in short, it basically allows DremDOS to be able to determine where the crash comes from and the type of crash that occurred. However, the crash handler is still only able to be called directly. I believe the only way I could change this is by modifying the crash handler in COSMOS itself. However, I don't have any experience working that close to the metal and don't know assembly. The Crash Code System The crash code system is fairly simple - an 8 character code (0-F) with certain characters allocated in sectors for specific purposes. Crash code layout: [00][00][000][0] First Sector The first sector defines where the crash came from. As of the time of writing, there are two possibilities: 00...

I Can't Develop DremDOS Right Now My laptop finally broke down to the point where it is very hard to use. I preordered a laptop from Newegg, but it will be out of stock for a while due to COVID-19. DremDOS is not at all dead, but until I get my new laptop, it will have to be dormant. This is probably for the best as well because this will allow us to migrate to either Dev Kit or Aura Operating System's COSMOS fork , both of which don't want to work with Visual Studio 2019, which I made the mistake of using.  In the meantime, I'm going to start merging the DremDOS blog and Innovation Inc. blog together. It doesn't make much sense to have them apart. This should be a fairly short process. The current Innovation Inc. blog will be shut down, and this one will be renamed. This should take a day.

Setup Is Almost Done One of the big things I was wanting to work on for 0.0.2 was a setup program. On startup, DremDOS will check if the file at 0:\dremdos\done.txt exists. If it doesn't, it will run the setup program. The setup program currently does the following: Delete all files on the hard disk Although implemented this is disabled at this point in time. It doesn't work due to a bug in the current user kit that isn't present in the current dev kit. I'll fix it once I have a new machine in (hopefully) under a week. Create new folders 0:\dremdos\ - holds important stuff for DremDOS (configs and stuff). Currently only used for done.txt 0:\home\ - holds user information (multiuser not yet implemented) Write the done.txt file This file serves two functions Tell DremDOS not to run setup again Tell DremDOS what user account to log in to (currently only automagically changes directory to user's home directory. This will be changed once multiuser...

Finally Some Real Progress! I've made a good amount of progress this week. Not as much as I'd like, but still pretty decent! First off, I commented the code. I know! Super exciting! But more importantly, I started work on the Text Desktop Environment, or as I like to call it, the Textop (I know very clever). Textop Progress So far, the Textop can't do much as it is impossible (as far as I can tell) to detect left and right clicks. This should be possible in the Dev Kit, so once I get a new laptop some time in the beginning of May, this will be fixed. Thus, I think DremDOS 0.0.2 will probably be done sometime in the middle of May. Here is a list of currently implemented features for Textop I reused the mouse driver from SparrOSDeveloperTeam to be able to be used with text.  However, the screen will need to be refreshed each mouse update with Console.Clear() or else the mouse will leave behind a trail. The "pseudo-screen-blanking" feature is al...

It's Going to Be a While Before We Get 0.0.2 Let me just start out by saying 0.0.2 is going to be a very large update and so far it's hardly been worked on because I'm busy with real-life stuff (switching to online schooling due to COVID-19, other projects, family stuff, etc). To get an idea of how a project is coming along, you can take a look at  the master to-do list . There, I will add planned features and move them to the "Done" section when they are done. The less planned features there are, the closer to a release it is! What Features Are Currently Planned? At the time of writing, the following features are planned: A more complex text editor that's bearable to use A more user-friendly text UI DremDOS will still boot to the normal command line, but you can start the text UI by typing 'textui'. User accounts Currently, encryption of passwords is not planned. Please do not use any passwords used for any online accounts in Dr...