64 lines
3.7 KiB
Plaintext
64 lines
3.7 KiB
Plaintext
The COMROGUE Operating System for Raspberry Pi
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Copyright (c) 2013, Eric J. Bowersox / Erbosoft Enterprises
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All rights reserved.
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See the file "COPYRIGHT" for full copyright information.
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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BACKGROUND
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The COMROGUE operating system stems from some ideas I had back when I was primarily a Windows developer working
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with COM (in the late 1990's or so). The COM concept of interfaces seemed so elegant, I wondered if it would be
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possible to do an entire operating system with a COM paradigm, that is, where every "system call" was actually a
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call to a COM interface. Some interfaces might be ones defined by the existing COM implementation (for instance,
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"file handles" would be IStream pointers, and memory might be allocated from the heap via an IMalloc interface),
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others would be entirely novel. For one reason and another, I never did much with this, though I toyed with the
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idea at one point using VirtualBox on an x86 system. The Raspberry Pi, however, offers a unique possibility, in
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that its generic hardware is much more limited in scope than a PC's, so something ike this might just be possible
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without too much fiddling with differences in hardware.
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Needless to say, this will be considered a "work in progress" for quite some time to come. :-)
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BUILDING
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You will need a cross-compiler setup on Linux; I use gcc-4.7.1 and binutils-2.22, installed in the tree
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/opt/gnuarm and with the prefix "arm-none-eabi". Other versions MAY work. The compiler tools are located
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with the variables ARMDIR and ARMPREFIX in the armcompile.mk file.
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To build the "pidl" MIDL compiler (in tools/pidl), you will need Perl and Yapp installed.
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You will also need GNU Make to execute everything (of course).
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The command "make" in the root directory of the source will build everything. The COMROGUE kernel will be in
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kernel/kernel.img when the build is finished.
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EXECUTING
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Use a blank, FAT-formatted SD card (almost any size will do; I use 2 Gb cards as they're fairly common and cheap
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these days). Download the current Raspberry Pi firmware files from https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware; the
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files you need will be bootcode.bin, fixup.dat, and start.elf in the boot/ subdirectory. Copy those three files
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to your SD card, along with the kernel.img file from COMROGUE's kernel/ directory. Insert the card into your
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Raspberry Pi and power up.
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Right now, the only output you'll see comes via the "mini-UART" serial output, which COMROGUE uses for trace output.
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To see it, you'll need a couple of parts sold by Spark Fun Electronics of Boulder, CO:
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* FTDI Basic Breakout (3.3V), https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9873
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* Jumper Wires Premium 6" M/F (10-pack), https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9140
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You'll also need a USB A-to-mini-B cable to hook the serial converter board to your PC's USB port.
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Connect jumper wires between the pins of the FTDI board and the GPIO connector on the Raspberry Pi as follows:
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* GPIO pin 6 -> GND (ground) on FTDI. (Suggested jumper wire color: black.)
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* GPIO pin 8 -> RXI (receive input) on FTDI. (Suggested jumper wire color: red, for data *R*eceived from the Pi.)
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* GPIO pin 10 -> TXO (transmit output) on FTDI. (Suggested jumper wire color: green, for data *G*oing to the Pi.)
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Connect the FTDI to your computer with the USB A-to-mini-B cable. On your PC, open Minicom and connect to port
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/dev/ttyUSB0. Set the program to 115200 baud, 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit, NO flow control (either hardware
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or software). You should see some messages from COMROGUE when you apply power to the Pi.
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FURTHER INFORMATION
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The documentation/ directory will eventually contain more documentation on how the system works/will work. In
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the meantime, I have tried to comment the code well enough to show what's going on.
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