baldr wrote:

Tomasz Grysztar,

My REXX reference was about russian VM/CMS analogue running on russian IBM System/360 analogue («СВМ» and «ЕС-1022» in russian, respectively). I remember striking similarity of it with PL/I which I was learning using pen-and-paper method several years earlier.

REXX existed well before OS/2, beginning since at least 1980 or so (in various forms). TRL2 was finalized in 1990, ANSI in 1996, ooREXX and NetRexx are separate, mostly later. (IBM did include Rexx since OS/2 1.3 and PC-DOS 7 had it too I think, but Amiga had its own clone too.)

REXX originated on mainframes as both an easier PL/I and as a more advanced / cleaner / simpler EXEC replacement.

I've only weakly dabbled in it off and on for a few months, so I'm no expert. But everything's a string, arbitrary precision arithmetic, minimal sigil usage, no reserved words, nested comments, and obviously tightly bound to the system shell (aka glue or macro), can be embedded in apps (e.g. THE editor), etc. Oh, and built-in debugger. Oh, almost forgot, INTERPRET keyword for fancy stuff.

But yeah, I'm sure somebody will marginalize it as "yet another" scripting langauge (Awk, Perl, Python, Ruby, Scheme). Oh well, they all have their uses, I guess.

Actually, it sounds pretty cool. What other scripting language/shell has arbitrary precision arithmetic?

but just imagine, it works at boot time on my netbook, using a wireless keyboard+mouse set. it is simply incredible how ASM can give very small drivers

The USB HID class describes devices used with nearly every modern computer. Many predefined functions exist in the USB HID class. These functions allow hardware manufacturers to design a product to USB HID class specifications and expect it to work with any software that also meets these specifications.

The same HID protocol is used unmodified in Bluetooth human interface devices. The Bluetooth profile specification only points readers to the USB HID documentation. In this sense those devices also belong to the USB HID class.

maybe this topic can be renamed rewrite DOS in asm with fasm...
and i think it is currentlly well advanced.

then, why not a challenge, write a minimalistic DOS clone, containing everything in 64kB, everything, means everything. no external files, or if external files (mousedrv.com, etc...) should enter the 64KB limit.

the main DOS is a really simple thing with a few possibilities.

the rest can be up to as many bytes you want.

but the DOS clone itself, able to call .com and .exe files, should be very little. because after, there will be integration of many things, like mouse driver, different file systems, other things.

maybe DOS that is apparented to INT21h can be expanded, with intXX, maybe a protected mode dos can be fun too.

Quote:

but just imagine, it works at boot time on my netbook, using a wireless keyboard+mouse set. it is simply incredible how ASM can give very small drivers

If your wireless set is through USB, the only reason you get that working at boottime is because your BIOS has a small USB stack and is emulating PS/2 connection with that. As soon as you switch to pmode, no-go... unless of course you do insanely slow ring switching, which isn't something you'll want under a real OS - thus the need for a full USB stack.