| written by Alex on Feb 10, 2010 23:15 |
 | |  | | ![]() I'm writing this in consequence of realizing several visitors were looking for the URL http://anywherebb.com/hactar.html and had been, so far, welcomed by a "404 Not Found" error message, reflecting that, essentially, Hactar is no longer actively developed or distributed here. It has been so for almost a year, but given the requests still coming for the page at the aforementioned address, I've decided to write this thread and direct such requests here, where you can learn about what happened to Hactar.
What happened is that Hactar was discontinued but left a "son". Many parts and key concepts of its small, compact kernel, were adopted into another kind of kernel. Specifically, a thing called a Run-Time Kernel for the L.in.oleum programming language. In turn, L.in.oleum is a cross-platform assembler. The Run-Time Kernel is now immediately useable for compiling and running L.in.oleum applications on top of an IBM-compatible PC's standard BIOS and chipset.
Moreover, the Run-Time Kernel assembly source code (written in Borland TASM) was released as free sowftare under the GNU Lesser General Public License. You can get it by dowloading L.in.oleum:
http://anynowhere.com/zips/linoleum200.zip (about 8 MB)
And then browsing to one of those paths:
- source/sys/pcbios/00/00IDE.asm (IDE boot version, i.e. HDD boot)
- source/sys/pcbios/00/00ISA.asm (ISA boot version, i.e. floppy boot)
depending on which kind of "kickstart code" you need to load the system boot sector. The kernel includes a Master Boot Record capable of multiboot (providing the operating systems to transfer control to can be chainloaded by loading a single boot sector, i.e. Linux would probably not work, but DOS and Windows should). It then includes a 32-bit flat-mode memory extender fitting in its own sole system boot sector. The kernel code then amounts only 8 KiB. It's designed to be used in place of a standard L.in.oleum Run-Time Module, but nothing forbids altering it to work as a kernel for other purposes. You can find much more technical informations on its inner workings by watching at diagrams provided in the same archive, under the path:
There's a Linoleum application designed and ready to run on top of it (and thus called a "core application") in examples/applications/ core applications/dawn. It can be installed by compiling and running its own installer, which facilitates the process at least in case of USB pendrives and other kinds of enhanced removable media that can emulate a HDD boot. Technically, the "Dawn" core application interfaces with the kernel by means of a library, namely main/lib/core/pcbios.txt.
Have fun,
Alessandro Ghignola | |  | |  |
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└> last changed by Alex on November 30, 2010 at 20:31
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