Basic OS development with Visual Studio

Recently I came across an add-on for Visual Studio 2013 named Cosmos, which lets you use C# or Visual Basic to develop a fully independent OS. I have been working on one now for a couple of weeks. Sadly, Cosmos is still in early development stages, but it is still possible to make basic graphical OS’s. This post uses C#, but it is just as easy to use Visual Basic. My current code is:

Source code

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using Sys = Cosmos.System;
using Cosmos.Hardware;
using Cosmos.Hardware.BlockDevice;
 
namespace CosmosOS
{
    public class Kernel : Sys.Kernel
    {
        protected override void BeforeRun()
        {
            while (true)
            {
                Run();
            }
        }
 
        protected override void Run()
        {
            string input = Console.ReadLine();
            string input1 = input.ToLower();
            if (input1 == "shutdown" || input1 == "quit" || input1 == "exit") Shutdown();
            else if (input1 == "reboot" || input1 == "restart" || input1 == "reload") Reboot();
 
            else Console.WriteLine("Command \"" + input1 + "\" not recognized!");
        public void Shutdown()
        {
            this.Stop();
            Cosmos.Core.Bootstrap.CPU.Halt();
        }
        public void Reboot()
        {
 
        }
        public static void WriteData(byte[] aData, ulong block)
        {
            if (BlockDevice.Devices.Count &gt; 0)
            {
                for (int i = 0; i &lt; BlockDevice.Devices.Count; i++)
                {
                    var xDevice = BlockDevice.Devices[i];
                    if (xDevice is Partition)
                    {
                        xDevice.WriteBlock(block, 1, aData);
                    }
                }
 
            }
 
        }
        public static byte[] ReadData(ulong block)
        {
            byte[] aData = new byte[] { 1 };
            if (BlockDevice.Devices.Count &gt; 0)
            {
                for (int i = 0; i &lt; BlockDevice.Devices.Count; i++)
                {
                    var xDevice = BlockDevice.Devices[i];
                    if (xDevice is Partition)
                    {
                        aData = xDevice.NewBlockArray(1);
                        xDevice.ReadBlock(block, 1, aData);
                    }
                }
 
            }
            return aData;
        }
    }
}

Lets go over some of this code.

Source code

protected override void BeforeRun()
        {
            while (true)
            {
                Run();
            }
        }

This Run function is looped by default anyway, but it loops slightly faster when this code is put in BeforeRun.

Source code

protected override void Run()
        {
            string input = Console.ReadLine();
            string input1 = input.ToLower();
            if (input1 == "shutdown" || input1 == "quit" || input1 == "exit") Shutdown();
            else if (input1 == "reboot" || input1 == "restart" || input1 == "reload") Reboot();
 
            else Console.WriteLine("Command \"" + input1 + "\" not recognized!");

This is fairly trivial code for a command-line OS, simple input.

Source code

public void Shutdown()
        {
            this.Stop();
            Cosmos.Core.Bootstrap.CPU.Halt();
        }
        public void Reboot()
        {
 
        }

This is my own shutdown code. I have yet to figure out reboot, though.

Source code

public static void WriteData(byte[] aData, ulong block)
        {
            if (BlockDevice.Devices.Count &gt; 0)
            {
                for (int i = 0; i &lt; BlockDevice.Devices.Count; i++)
                {
                    var xDevice = BlockDevice.Devices[i];
                    if (xDevice is Partition)
                    {
                        xDevice.WriteBlock(block, 1, aData);
                    }
                }
 
            }
 
        }
        public static byte[] ReadData(ulong block)
        {
            byte[] aData = new byte[] { 1 };
            if (BlockDevice.Devices.Count &gt; 0)
            {
                for (int i = 0; i &lt; BlockDevice.Devices.Count; i++)
                {
                    var xDevice = BlockDevice.Devices[i];
                    if (xDevice is Partition)
                    {
                        aData = xDevice.NewBlockArray(1);
                        xDevice.ReadBlock(block, 1, aData);
                    }
                }
 
            }
            return aData;
        }

I got this code from a forum and modified it a little to make it work – it writes arrays of bytes to the hard disk. Sadly the built-in FAT fileystem can currently only read files, so you will have to make your own.

This is a fun tool to just play around with, although it is extremely limited at the moment.
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Devon and Cornwall GNU/Linux Users Group

Basic OS development with Visual Studio

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