A simple and portable Operating System for Z80-based computers, written entirely in Z80 assembly.

Click here to have a look at the video presentation of the project on Youtube

About the project

What?

Zeal 8-bit OS is an operating system written entirely in Z80 assembly for Z80 computers. It has been designed around simplicity and portability. It is inspired by Linux and CP/M. It has the concept of drivers and disks while being ROM-able.

Why?

As you may know, this project is in fact part of a bigger project called Zeal 8-bit Computer, which, as its name states, consists of an entirely newly designed 8-bit computer. It is based on a Z80 CPU.

When writing software, demos or drivers for it, I realized the code was tied to Zeal 8-bit computer hardware implementation, making them highly incompatible with any other Z80 computers, even if the required features were basic (only UART for example).

Yet another OS?

Well, it's true that there are several (good) OS for the Z80 already such as SymbOS, Fuzix or even CP/M, but I wanted something less sophisticated: not multithreaded, ROM-able, modular and configurable. The goal is to have a small and concise ABI that lets us write software that can communicate with the hardware easily and with the least hardcoded behaviors.

While browsing the implementation details or this documentation, you will notice that some aspects are similar to Linux kernel, such as the syscall names or the way opened files and drivers are handled. Indeed, it was a great source of inspiration, but as it is a 32-bit only system, written in C, only the APIs/interfaces have been inspiring.

If you are familiar with Linux ABI/interface/system programming, then Zeal 8-bit OS will sound familiar!

Overview

Currently, once compiled, the kernel itself takes less than 8KB of ROM (code), and less than 1KB of RAM (data). Of course, this is highly dependent on the configuration. For example, increasing the maximum number of opened files, or the maximum length of paths will increase the size of the space used for data.

This size will increase as soon as more features will be implemented, for example when there will be more file systems. However, keep in mind that while writing the code, speed was more important than code size. In fact, nowadays, read-only memories are available in huge sizes and at a fair price.

Moreover, the OS can still be optimized in both speed and size. This is not the current priority but it means that we can still make it better! (as always)

To the kernel size, we have to add the drivers implementation size and the RAM used by them. Of course, this is highly dependent on the target machine itself, the features that are implemented and the amount of drivers we have.

The OS is designed to work with an MMU, thus, the target must have 4 swappable virtual pages of 16KB each. The pages must be interchangeable. More info about it in the Memory Mapping section.

Getting started

Requirements

At the moment, the project has only been assembled on Linux (Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04), it should be compatible with Mac OS and Windows as long as you have:

bash
git (to clone this repo)
make (GNU Make 4+)
python3 with pip3. Used for the menuconfig.
z88dk v2.2 (or later). Only its assembler, z80asm, is strictly required. The latest version of z80asm must be used as earlier versions don't have support for MACRO.

On Ubuntu, the following commands can be used to install the dependencies. They must be run as a user, not root!

sudo apt update
sudo apt install git python3 python3-pip
pip3 install --ignore-installed --user kconfiglib

On MacOS, the following commands can be used to install the dependencies.

brew install make
brew install binutils

For installing Z88DK, please check out their Github project.

Darwin / MacOS Requirements

Important

Use gmake instead of make whenever instructed to use make throughout.

Tip

If you need to configure the path to python3, you can set the PYTHON_BIN environment variable to the bin/ directory.

Configuring Zeal 8-bit OS

After installing the dependencies listed above and cloning this repository, the first thing to do is to configure the OS. To do so, simply execute:

make menuconfig

From there, it is possible to configure the kernel but also the target computer's options, for example for Zeal 8-bit computer, it is possible to configure where the romdisk (more about this below) will be located on the ROM.

All the options have default values, so, if you have nothing to modify in particular or you are not sure what you are doing, press S to save the current (default) configuration. The filename for the configuration will be asked, keep it as os.conf and press enter.

To exit the menuconfig, press Q key.

Or you can also run following command instead to use the default config:

make alldefconfig

If everything goes well, the following message will be shown:

Converting os.conf to include/osconfig.asm ...

Building

To build the OS (kernel + driver + target configuration), use the command:

make

After compiling, you should see the line:

OS binary: build/os.bin

Indicating that the final binary has been created. This binary only includes the kernel code and the drivers.

The file named os_with_romdisk.img contains the OS binary with the generated romdisk (more about this below)

It is possible to embed any file inside the romdisk before compiling the OS thanks to the environment variable EXTRA_ROMDISK_FILES. This variable must be set with a list of absolute paths to the files to embed, for example, if you want to embed the files /home/me/documents/file.txt and /home/me/dev/mygame.bin inside the romdisk, you can set the environment variable as follows:

export EXTRA_ROMDISK_FILES="/home/me/documents/file.txt /home/me/dev/mygame.bin"

After that, it is required to recompile the OS, with make, to build the romdisk image again. The logs will show the files that will be part of the romdisk:

...
Packing the files
pack disk.img build/init.bin simple.txt /home/me/documents/file.txt /home/me/dev/mygame.bin

Flashing

Zeal 8-bit Computer

On Zeal 8-bit Computer, the file to flash is os_with_romdisk.img as it also contains the initial program that is executed after the OS finishes booting.

To flash this file, you can use Zeal 8-bit Bootloader if your board is equipped with it. Check the bootloader repository for more info about it.

Or, you can flash it directly on the 256KB NOR Flash, referenced SST39SF020, thanks to an external flasher, such as the TL866. In that case, you can use minipro program and the following command:

minipro -w -S -p sst39sf020 build/os_with_romdisk.img

Generic targets

The binary can be directly flashed to a ROM, to a NOR flash, or any other storage the target computer is using. It can also be used to boot an emulator.

For example, to flash it on a W27C020 (256KB) EEPROM, you can still use a TL866xx programmer with minipro and the following command:

minipro -w -S -p w27c020 build/os_with_romdisk.img

Of course, this is completely dependent on the target computer.

Features Overview

The kernel itself supports the following features:

Mono-threaded system, the whole CPU is dedicated to running a single program!
Up to 26 disks (A to Z)
Files
Directories
Drivers
Abstract opened "dev" which can represent an opened file, directory, or driver
Real-Time Clock
Timer (can be hardware or software timer)
Up to 16MB physical address space divided as 256 banks of 16KB (for MMU kernel)
Open, read, write seek, close, ioctl drivers
Open, read, write, seek, close, remove files
Open, browse, close, remove directories
Load raw binaries as init file. No dynamic relocation yet
Syscalls to perform communication between user programs and kernel
File systems ("rawtable" and ZealFS implemented yet)
Modular build system, simplifying adding files and targets to the compilation

The only supported target at the moment is Zeal 8-bit computer, the port is not complete yet, the implemented features are:

Video 640x480 text-mode
UART as video card replacement (text mode)
UART for sending and receiving data
MMU and no-MMU build, configurable in the menuconfig
PS/2 keyboard
I2C
EEPROM (I2C)
GPIO (partial)
Free space in ROM used as a read-only romdisk, storing init.bin binary
Linker script

TO DO

There is still some work to do on the project. Some features need to be developed on the kernel side, some things need to be documented in the project, here is a non-exhaustive list:

~~Generate header files usable by user programs for syscalls, file entries, directories entries, opening flags, etc...~~ Done, header files are available in kernel_headers directory.
~~Document clearly what each syscall does~~ Done, check ASM header file.
~~A writable file system. Currently, only rawtable (more about it below) file system is implemented, which is read-only.~~ ZealFS file system has been implemented, it supports files and directories, and is writable!
~~Make it work with MMU-less targets, and add a configuration option for this~~ Done, kernel is now compatible with MMU-less targets!
Come up with ABI and API for video, TTY, GPIO drivers, etc...
- ~~Keyboard API~~ Done
- ~~Video text API~~ Done
- GPIO API
- Video graphic API
Relocatable user programs. It is already possible to generate a relocation table when assembling a program with z88dk-z80asm.
Refactor the kernel code to have a proper memory module, with better names for the required macros.
Process all the TODO and FIXME left in the code.
Lift some restrictions that can be avoided, such as having the user's program stack pointer in the last virtual page.
List the loaded drivers from a user program.
List the available disks from a user program.
Implement a software breakpoint with a reset vector.
Optimize the code to be smaller and faster.
More things I am forgetting...

And of course, fixing bugs!

As Zeal 8-bit OS is still in beta version, you will encounter bugs, and errors, please feel free to open an issue, with a snippet of code to help reproduce it.

Implementation details

In the sections below, the word "program", also referred to as "users programs", designates software being executed after the kernel loaded it from a file and jumped to it.

Memory Mapping

Kernel configured with MMU

Zeal 8-bit OS can separate kernel RAM and user programs thanks to virtual pages. Indeed, as it is currently implemented, the kernel is aware of 4 virtual pages of 16KB.

The first page, page 0, shall not be switched as it contains the kernel code. This means that the OS binary is limited to 16KB, it must never exceed this size. When a user's program is being executed, any syscall will result in jumping in the first bank where the OS code resides. So if this page is switched for another purpose, no syscall, no interrupt nor communication with the kernel must happen, else, undefined behavior will occur.

The second page, page 1, is where user programs are copied and executed. Thus, all the programs for Zeal 8-bit OS shall be linked from address 0x4000 (16KB). When loading a program, the second and third pages are also mapped to usable RAM from the user program. Thus, a user program can have a maximum size of 48KB.

The fourth page, page 3, is used to store the OS data for both the kernel and the drivers. When loading a user program, this page is switched to RAM, so that it's usable by the program, when a syscall occurs, it's switched back to the kernel RAM. Upon loading a user program, the SP (Stack Pointer) is set to 0xFFFF. However, this may change in the near future.

To sum up, here is a diagram to show the usage of the memory:

*If the user program's parameters are pointing to a portion of memory in page 3 (last page), there is a conflict as the kernel will always map its RAM page inside this exact same page during a syscall. Thus, it will remap user's page 3 into page 2 (third page) to access the program's parameters. Of course, in case the parameters are pointers, they will be modified to let them point to the new virtual address (in other words, a pointer will be subtracted by 16KB to let it point to page 2).

Kernel configured as no-MMU

To be able to port Zeal 8-bit OS to Z80-based computers that don't have an MMU/Memory mapper organized as shown above, the kernel has a new mode that can be chosen through the menuconfig: no-MMU.

In this mode, the OS code is still expected to be mapped in the first 16KB of the memory, from 0x0000 to 0x3FFF and the rest is expected to be RAM.

Ideally, 48KB of RAM should be mapped starting at 0x4000 and would go up to 0xFFFF, but in practice, it is possible to configure the kernel to expect less than that. To do so, two entries in the menuconfig must be configured appropriately:

KERNEL_STACK_ADDR: this marks the end of the kernel RAM area, and, as its name states, will be the bottom of the kernel stack.
KERNEL_RAM_START: this marks the start address of the kernel RAM where the stack, all the variables used by the kernel AND drivers will be stored. Of course, it must be big enough to store all of these data. For information, the current kernel BSS section size is around 1KB. The stack depth depends on the target drivers' implementation. Allocating 1KB for the stack should be more than enough as long as no (big) buffers are stored on it. Overall allocating at least 3KB for the kernel RAM should be safe and future-proof.

To sum up, here is a diagram to show the usage of the memory:

Regarding the user programs, the stack address will always be set to KERNEL_RAM_START - 1 by the kernel before execution. It also corresponds to the address of its last byte available in its usable address space. This means that a program can determine the size of the available RAM by performing SP - 0x4000, which gives, in assembly:

ld hl, 0
add hl, sp
ld bc, -0x4000
add hl, bc
; HL contains the size of the available RAM for the program, which includes the program's code and its stack.

Kernel

Used registers

Z80 presents multiple general-purpose registers, not all of them are used in the kernel, here is the scope of each of them:

Register	Scope
AF, BC, DE, HL	System & application
AF', BC', DE', HL'	Interrupt handlers
IX, IY	Application (unused in the OS)

This means that the OS won't alter IX and IY registers, so they can be used freely in the application.

The alternate registers (names followed by ') may only be used in the interrupt handlers¹. An application should not use these registers. If for some reason, you still have to use them, please consider disabling the interrupts during the time they are used:

my_routine:
                di              ; disable interrupt
                ex af, af'      ; exchange af with alternate af' registers
                [...]           ; use af'
                ex af, af'      ; exchange them back
                ei              ; re-enable interrupts

Keep in mind that disabling the interrupts for too long can be harmful as the system won't receive any signal from hardware (timers, keyboard, GPIOs...)

Reset vectors

The Z80 provides 8 distinct reset vectors, as the system is meant to always be stored in the first virtual page of memory, these are all reserved for the OS:

Vector	Usage
$00	Software reset
$08	Syscall
$10	Jumps to the address in HL (can be used for calling HL)
$18	Unused
$20	Unused
$28	Unused
$30	Unused
$38	Reserved for Interrupt Mode 1, usable by the target implementation

User space

Entry point

When a user program is executed, the kernel allocates 3 pages of RAM (48KB), reads the binary file to execute and loads it starting at virtual address 0x4000 by default. This entry point virtual address is configurable through the menuconfig with option KERNEL_INIT_EXECUTABLE_ADDR, but keep in mind that existing programs won't work anymore without being recompiled because they are not relocatable at runtime.

Program parameters

As described below, the exec syscall takes two parameters: a binary file name to execute and a parameter.

This parameter must be a NULL-terminated string that will be copied and transmitted to the binary to execute through registers DE and BC:

DE contains the address of the string. This string will be copied to the new program's memory space, usually on top of the stack.
BC contains the length of that string (so, excluding the NULL-byte). If BC is 0, DE must be discarded by the user program.

Syscalls

The system relies on syscalls to perform requests between the user program and the kernel. Thus, this shall be the way to perform operations on the hardware. The possible operations are listed in the table below.

Syscall table

Num	Name	Param. 1	Param. 2	Param. 3
0	read	u8 dev	u16 buf	u16 size
1	write	u8 dev	u16 buf	u16 size
2	open	u16 name	u8 flags
3	close	u8 dev
4	dstat	u8 dev	u16 dst
5	stat	u16 name	u16 dst
6	seek	u8 dev	u32 offset	u8 whence
7	ioctl	u8 dev	u8 cmd	u16 arg
8	mkdir	u16 path
9	chdir	u16 path
10	curdir	u16 path
11	opendir	u16 path
12	readdir	u8 dev	u16 dst
13	rm	u16 path
14	mount	u8 dev	u8 letter	u8 fs
15	exit	u8 code
16	exec	u16 name	u16 argv
17	dup	u8 dev	u8 ndev
18	msleep	u16 duration
19	settime	u8 id	u16 time
20	gettime	u8 id	u16 time
21	setdate	u16 date
22	getdate	u16 date
23	map	u16 dst	u24 src
24	swap	u8 dev	u8 ndev

Please check the section below for more information about each of these call and their parameters.

NOTE: Some syscalls may be unimplemented. For example, on computers where directories are not supported,directories-related syscalls may be omitted.

Syscall parameters

In order to perform a syscall, the operation number must be stored in register L, the parameters must be stored following these rules:

Parameter name in API	Z80 Register
u8 dev	`H`
u8 ndev	`E`
u8 flags	`H`
u8 cmd	`C`
u8 letter	`D`
u8 code	`H`
u8 fs	`E`
u8 id	`H`
u8 whence	`A`
u16 buf	`DE`
u16 size	`BC`
u16 name	`BC`
u16 dst	`DE`
u16 arg	`DE`
u16 path	`DE`
u16 argv	`DE`
u16 duration	`DE`
u16 time	`DE`
u16 date	`DE`
u24 src	`HBC`
u32 offset	`BCDE`

And finally, the code must perform an RST $08 instruction (please check Reset vectors).

The returned value is placed in A. The meaning of that value is specific to each call, please check the documentation of the concerned routines for more information.

Syscall parameters constraints

To maximize user programs compatibility with Zeal 8-bit OS kernel, regardless of whether the kernel was compiled in MMU or no-MMU mode, the syscalls parameters constraints are the same:

Any buffer passed to a syscall shall not cross a 16KB virtual pages

In other words, if a buffer buf of size n is located in virtual page i, its last byte, pointed by buf + n - 1, must also be located on the exact same page i.

For example, if read syscall is called with:

DE = 0x4000 and BC = 0x1000, the parameters are correct, because the buffer pointed by DE fits into page 1 (from 0x4000 to 0x7FFF)
DE = 0x4000 and BC = 0x4000, the parameters are correct, because the buffer pointed by DE fits into page 1 (from 0x4000 to 0x7FFF)
DE = 0x7FFF and BC = 0x2, the parameters are incorrect, because the buffer pointed by DE is in-between page 1 and page2.

Syscall `exec`

Even though Zeal 8-bit OS is a mono-tasking operating system, it can execute and keep several programs in memory. When a program A executes a program B thanks to the exec syscall, it shall provide a mode parameter that can be either EXEC_OVERRIDE_PROGRAM or EXEC_PRESERVE_PROGRAM:

EXEC_OVERRIDE_PROGRAM: this option tells the kernel that program A doesn't need to be executed anymore, so program B will be loaded in the same address space as program A. In other words, program B will be loaded inside the same RAM pages as program A, it will overwrite it.
EXEC_PRESERVE_PROGRAM: this option tells the kernel that program A needs to be kept in RAM until program B finishes its execution and calls the exit syscall. To do so, the kernel will allocate 3 new memory pages (16KB * 3 = 48KB) in which it stores newly loaded program B. Once program B exits, the kernel frees the previously allocated pages for program B, remaps program A's memory pages, and gives back the hand to program A. If needed, A can retrieve B's exit value.

The depth of the execution tree is defined in the menuconfig, thanks to option CONFIG_KERNEL_MAX_NESTED_PROGRAMS. It represents the maximum number of programs that can be stored in RAM at one time. For example, if the depth is 3, program A can call program B, program B can call program C, but program C cannot call any other program. However, if a program invokes exec with EXEC_OVERRIDE_PROGRAM, the depth is not incremented as the new program to load will override the current one. As such, if we take back the previous example, program C can call a program if and only if it invokes the exec syscall in EXEC_OVERRIDE_PROGRAM mode.

Be careful, when executing a sub-program, the whole opened device table, (including files, directories, and drivers), the current directory, and CPU registers will be shared.

This means that if program A opens a file with descriptor 3, program B will inherit this index, and thus, also be able to read, write, or even close that descriptor. Reciprocally, if B opens a file, directory, or driver and exits without closing it, program A will also have access to it. As such, the general guideline to follow is that before exiting, a program must always close the descriptors it opened. The only moment the table of opened devices and current directory are reset is when the initial program (program A in the previous example) exits. In that case, the kernel will close all the descriptors in the opened devices table, reopen the standard input and output, and reload the initial program.

This also means that when invoking the exec syscall in an assembly program, on success, all registers, except HL, must be considered altered because they will be used by the subprogram. So, if you wish to preserve AF, BC, DE, IX or IY, they must be pushed on the stack before invoking exec.

Syscall documentation

The syscalls are all documented in the header files provided for both assembly and C, you will find these header file in the kernel_headers/ directory, check its README file for more information.

Drivers

A driver consists of a structure containing:

Name of the driver, maximum 4 characters (filled with NULL char if shorter). For example, SER0, SER1, I2C0, etc. Non-ASCII characters are allowed but not advised.
The address of an init routine, called when the kernel boots.
The address of read routine, where parameters and return address are the same as in the syscall table.
The address of write routine, same as above.
The address of open routine, same as above.
The address of close routine, same as above.
The address of seek routine, same as above.
The address of ioctl routine, same as above.
The address of deinit routine, called when unloading the driver.

Here is the example of a simple driver registration:

my_driver0_init:
        ; Register itself to the VFS
        ; Do something
        xor a ; Success
        ret
my_driver0_read:
        ; Do something
        ret
my_driver0_write:
        ; Do something
        ret
my_driver0_open:
        ; Do something
        ret
my_driver0_close:
        ; Do something
        ret
my_driver0_seek:
        ; Do something
        ret
my_driver0_ioctl:
        ; Do something
        ret
my_driver0_deinit:
        ; Do something
        ret

SECTION DRV_VECTORS
DEFB "DRV0"
DEFW my_driver0_init
DEFW my_driver0_read
DEFW my_driver0_write
DEFW my_driver0_open
DEFW my_driver0_close
DEFW my_driver0_seek
DEFW my_driver0_ioctl
DEFW my_driver0_deinit

Registering a driver consists in putting this information (structure) inside a section called DRV_VECTORS. The order is very important as any driver dependency shall be resolved at compile-time. For example, if driver A depends on driver B, then B's structure must be put before A in the section DRV_VECTORS.

At boot, the driver component will browse the whole DRV_VECTORS section and initialize the drivers one by one by calling their init routine. If this routine returns ERR_SUCCESS, the driver will be registered and user programs can open it, read, write, ioctl, etc...

A driver can be hidden to the programs, this is handy for disk drivers that must only be accessed by the kernel's file system layer. To do so, the init routine should return ERR_DRIVER_HIDDEN.

Virtual File System

As the communication between applications and hardware is all done through the syscalls described above, we need a layer between the user application and the kernel that will determine whether we need to call a driver or a file system. Before showing the hierarchy of such architecture, let's talk about disks and drivers.

Architecture of the VFS

The different layers can be seen like this:

flowchart TD;
        app(User program)
        vfs(Virtual File System)
        dsk(Disk module)
        drv(Driver implementation: video, keyboard, serial, etc...)
        fs(File System)
        sysdis(Syscall dispatcher)
        hw(Hardware)
        time(Time & Date module)
        mem(Memory module)
        loader(Loader module)
        app -- syscall/rst 8 --> sysdis;
        sysdis --getdate/time--> time;
        sysdis --mount--> dsk;
        sysdis --> vfs;
        sysdis --map--> mem;
        sysdis -- exec/exit --> loader;
        vfs --> dsk & drv;
        dsk <--> fs;
        fs --> drv;
        drv --> hw;

Loading

Disks

Zeal 8-bit OS supports up to 26 disks at once. The disks are denoted by a letter, from A to Z. It's the disk driver's responsibility to decide where to mount the disk in the system.

The first drive, A, is special as it is the one where the system will look for preferences or configurations.

In an application, a path may be:

Relative to the current path, e.g. my_dir2/file1.txt
Absolute, referring to the current disk, e.g. /my_dir1/my_dir2/file1.txt
Absolute, referring to another disk, e.g. B:/your_dir1/your_dir2/file2.txt

File systems

Even though the OS is completely ROM-able and doesn't need any file system or disk to boot, as soon as it will try to load the initial program, called init.bin by default, it will check for the default disk and request that file. Thus, even the most basic storage needs a file system, or something similar.

The first "file system", which is already implemented, is called "rawtable". As its name states, it represents the succession of files, not directories, in a storage device, in no particular order. The file name size limit is the same as the kernel's: 16 characters, including the optional . and extension. If we want to compare it to C code, it would be an array of structures defining each file, followed by the file's content in the same order. A romdisk packer source code is available in the packer/ at the root of this repo. Check its README for more info about it.
The second file system, which is also implemented, is named ZealFS. Its main purpose is to be embedded in very small storages, from 8KB up to 64KB. It is readable and writable, it supports files and directories. More info about it in the dedicated repository.
The third file system that would be nice to have on Zeal 8-bit OS is FAT16. Very famous, already supported by almost all desktop operating systems, usable on CompactFlash and even SD cards, this is almost a must-have. It has not been implemented yet, but it's planned. FAT16 is not perfect though as it is not adapted for small storage, this is why ZealFS is needed.

Supported targets

Relation with the kernel

The Zeal 8-bit OS is based on two main components: a kernel and a target code. The kernel alone does nothing. The target needs to implement the drivers, some MMU macros used inside the kernel and a linker script. The linker script is fairly simple, it lists the sections in the order they must be linked in the final binary by z80asm assembler.

The kernel currently uses the following sections, which must be included in any linker script:

RST_VECTORS: contains the reset vectors
SYSCALL_TABLE: contains a table where syscall i routine address is stored at index i, must be aligned on 256
SYSCALL_ROUTINES: contains the syscall dispatcher, called from a reset vector
KERNEL_TEXT: contains the kernel code
KERNEL_STRLIB: contains the string-related routines used in the kernel
KERNEL_DRV_VECTORS: represents an array of drivers to initialize, check Driver section for more details.
KERNEL_BSS: contains the data used by the kernel code, must be in RAM
DRIVER_BSS: not used directly by the kernel, it shall be defined and used in the drivers. The kernel will set it to 0s on boot, it must be bigger than 2 bytes

Zeal 8-bit Computer

As said previously, Zeal 8-bit Computer support is still partial but enough to have a command line program running. The romdisk is created before the kernel builds, this is done in the script.sh specified in the target/zeal8bit/unit.mk.

That script will compile the init.bin program and embed it inside a romdisk that will be concatenated to the compiled OS binary. The final binary can be directly flashed to the NOR Flash.

What still needs to be implemented, in no particular order:

~~UART driver~~ Done
~~I2C driver~~ Done
- ~~EEPROM driver~~
- ~~RTC driver~~
Video API
- ~~Text mode~~ Done (ABI/API implemented)
- Graphic mode
GPIO user interface/API
Sound support
Hardware timers, based on V-blank and H-blank signals
SD card support (Not implemented in hardware yet)

TRS-80 Model-I

A quick port to TRS-80 Model-I computer has been made to show how to port and configure Zeal 8-bit OS to targets that don't have an MMU.

This port is rather simple as it simply shows the boot banner on screen, nothing more. To do so, only a video driver for text mode is implemented.

To have a more interesting port, the following features would need to be implemented:

Keyboard
A disk to store the init.bin/romdisk, can be read-only, so can be stored on the ROM
A read-write disk to store data, can be a floppy disk driver using ZealFS filesystem

Agon Light

A port to the eZ80 powered Agon Light, written and maintained by Shawn Sijnstra. Feel free to use that fork for Agon specific bugs/requests. This uses the non-MMU kernel, and implements most of the features that the Zeal 8-bit computer implementation supports.

This port requires a loader for the binary to be stored and executed from the correct location. The binary is OSbootZ, available here.

Note that the port uses terminal mode to simplify keyboard I/O. This also means that the date function is not available.

Other notable features:

Timed interrupts are used from the VBLANK timer, assumed to be 60Hz
Coloured text is supported, using ANSI compatible control codes
Keyboard input is supported in cooked and raw mode (as best as can be done in terminal mode)
ROMDISK is supported and mounted Read-Only
A ZealFS image for read/write can be loaded into memory and later (after reboot to MOS) saved back to SDCard

Porting to another machine

To port Zeal 8-bit OS MMU version to another machine, make sure you have a memory mapper first that divides the Z80's 64KB address space into 4 pages of 16KB for the MMU version.

To port no-MMU Zeal 8-bit OS, make sure RAM is available from virtual address 0x4000 and above. The most ideal case being having ROM is the first 16KB for the OS and RAM in the remaining 48KB for the user programs and kernel RAM.

If your target is compatible, follow the instructions:

Open the Kconfig file at the root of this repo, and add an entry to the config TARGET and config COMPILATION_TARGET options. Take the ones already present as examples.
Create a new directory in target/ for your target, the name must be the same as the one specified in the new config TARGET option.
Inside this new directory, create a new unit.mk file. This is the file that shall contain all the source files to assemble or the ones to include.
Populate your unit.mk file, to do so, you can populate the following make variables:
- SRCS: list of the files to be assembled. Typically, these are the drivers (mandatory)
- INCLUDES: the directories containing header files that can be included
- PRECMD: a bash command to be executed before the kernel starts building
- POSTCMD: a bash command to be executed after the kernel finishes building
Create the assembly code that implements the drivers for the target
Create an mmu_h.asm file which will be included by the kernel to configure and use the MMU. Check the file target/zeal8bit/include/mmu_h.asm to see how it should look like.
Make sure to have at least one driver that mounts a disk, with the routine zos_disks_mount, containing an init.bin file, loaded and executed by the kernel on boot.
Make sure to have at least one driver which registers itself as the standard out (stdout) with the routine zos_vfs_set_stdout.

Version History

For the complete changelog, please check the release page.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to fix any bug that you may see or encounter, or implement any feature that you find important.

To contribute:

Fork the Project
Create your feature Branch (optional)
Commit your changes. Please make a clear and concise commit message (*)
Push to the branch
Open a Pull Request

(*) A good commit message is as follows:

Module: add/fix/remove a from b

Explanation on what/how/why

For example:

Disks: implement a get_default_disk routine

It is now possible to retrieve the default disk of the system.

License

Distributed under the Apache 2.0 License. See LICENSE file for more information.

You are free to use it for personal and commercial use, the boilerplate present in each file must not be removed.

Contact

For any suggestion or request, you can contact me at contact [at] zeal8bit [dot] com

For feature requests, you can also open an issue or a pull request.

Footnotes

They shall not be considered as non-volatile nonetheless. In other words, an interrupt handler shall not make the assumption that the data it wrote inside any alternate register will be kept until the next time it is called. ↩

Files

README.md

Latest commit

History

README.md

File metadata and controls

Table of Contents

About the project

What?

Why?

Yet another OS?

Overview

Getting started

Requirements

Darwin / MacOS Requirements

Configuring Zeal 8-bit OS

Building

Flashing

Zeal 8-bit Computer

Generic targets

Features Overview

TO DO

Implementation details

Memory Mapping

Kernel configured with MMU

Kernel configured as no-MMU

Kernel

Used registers

Reset vectors

User space

Entry point

Program parameters

Syscalls

Syscall table

Syscall parameters

Syscall parameters constraints

Syscall exec

Syscall documentation

Drivers

Virtual File System

Architecture of the VFS

Disks

File systems

Supported targets

Relation with the kernel

Zeal 8-bit Computer

TRS-80 Model-I

Agon Light

Porting to another machine

Version History

Contributing

License

Contact

Footnotes

Syscall `exec`