Ace OS is developed and maintained by me (Samuel). I started this OS project in the mid of 2001. However, the actual coding was started only after May 2002. I initially named the project as PT-OS. In May 2002, I renamed the project as Ace OS. I picked the name Ace from a dictionary by randomly selecting a word.
I like C language from the very beginning, because of its ability to directly communicate with the hardware, system software and firmware. The first C complier I worked was Borland's TurboC. I impressed by BIOS direct disk handling functions and tried to make a Disk Utility Program. It works well and reports bad sectors in disks. However, I do not know what FAT is and how the files are organized in Disk, at that stage. Therefore, the Disk Utility done by me serves just as Surface Scan Program. I searched for documents related FAT on the internet, but I failed for more than 2 months, because I do not know how to search on internet effectively. I finally downloaded the FAT specification from the Microsoft's website. I read and found it is not very difficult to walk through FAT structure. So I started working on a FAT Walker program using Turbo C++. And that was first module from which Ace begins. Ace still have the same FAT.c file.
In the end of year 2000, I purchased a old 486 machine and decided to make program which is self bootable and independent to any system software. Shortly I realized that C and any high level language are not suitable for this kind of job. Because my aim is to create a boot sector rather than an operating system. I switched to MASM for its wonderful documentation; with that documentation, I learned assembly language. In the beginning of 2001, I succeeded in boot program. However I was unable to proceed because I was confused very much by lot of things such as XMS, HMA, DMA and Protected Mode. Therefore, I slow down the Boot Sector program and keen to develop to other projects such as Graphics, Sound Card etc. Since programming hard disk is much more easier it started doing it and ended up with low level formatting a hard disk.
In the mid of 2001, I decided to write a Kernel rather than a Boot Sector program. So I started reading Intel's processor manuals. I personally feel Intel's system programming document is a better source for understanding protected mode. After that I started the Ace OS project. In the initial stage the development was very fast but the progress is very slow. Now the development is very slow but the progress is impressive.
I want to thank all the members of the group alt.os.development. Because when I get a doubt, the first thing I do is searching alt.os.development.
Ace OS 2
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