Developing a non-x86 Operating system [closed]

Question

I have to choose a thesis topic soon and I was considering implementing an operating system for an architecture that is not x86 (I'm leaning towards ARM or AVR). The reason I am avoiding x86 is because I would like to gain some experience with embedded platforms and I (possibly incorrectly) believe that the task may be easier when carried out on a smaller scale. Does anyone have any pointers to websites or resources where there are some examples of this. I have read through most if not all of the OSDev questions on stack overflow, and I am also aware of AvrFreaks and OSDev. Additionally if anyone has had experience in this area and wanted to offer some advice in regards to approach or platform it would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

Developing an (RT)OS is not a trivial task. It is very educational though. My advice to you is to start hardware independent. PC is a good starting point as it comes with plenty of I/O possibilities and good debugging. If you create a kind-of-virtual machine application, you can create something with simple platform capabilities (console output, some buttons/indicators are a good start). Also, you can use files for instance, to output timing (schedules) If you start on 'bare metal' you'll have to start from scratch. Debugging on a LED (on/off/blinking) is very hard and time consuming. My second advice is to define your scope early: is it the scheduler, the communication mechanisms or the file systems you're interested at... ? Doing all can easily end up in a life long project.

Samek, Miro, Practical UML Statecharts in C/C++ contains some interesting sections on a microkernel. It's one of my favorite books. Advanced PIC Microcontroller Projects in C: From USB to RTOS with the PIC 18F Series seems to cover some of your interests; I haven't read it yet though. Operating Systems: Internals and Design Principles may also bring good insights. It covers all aspects from scheduler to network stack. Good luck!

Answer 2

Seems like you should get a copy of Jean Labrosse's book MicroC/OS.

It looks like he may have just updated it too.

http://micrium.com/page/press_room/news/id:40

http://micrium.com/page/home

This is a well documented book describing the inner workings of an RTOS written in C and ported to many embedded processors. You could also run it on a x86, and then cross compile to another processor.