Gadget: Introduction to the MicroKernel with links to various projects.

2023-12-26T22:34:42Z

Introduction to the MicroKernel with links to various projects.

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The TinyCore MicroKernel [https://github.com/ghackwrench/F256_MicroKernel github] [https://github.com/FoenixRetro/f256-microkernel FoenixRetro fork] is the kernel that is shipped with the F256 machines. It provides keyboard, mouse, and timer drivers, a SLIP/ICMP/UDP/TCP stack, and a unified file I/O system (IEC and SD) via an asynchronous (non-blocking) event-queue interface. It does not include a tty driver, but it does provide calls for blasting arrays of characters to the screen as would typically be used by full-screen text applications.

The MicroKernel is designed to provide background I/O for real-time games and applications; programs which don't want to deal with async I/O are, of course, free to just make calls and loop on the event queue until they complete.
* The kernel's [https://github.com/ghackwrench/F256_MicroKernel/blob/master/docs/README.md README.md] contains extensive documentation.
* The [https://github.com/ghackwrench/F256_Jr_Kernel_DOS F256_Jr_Kernel_DOS] project contains cc65 bindings (cc65 folder) and assembler examples (dos) for nearly all of the calls.
* The [https://github.com/ghackwrench/F256_example_tcp F256_example_tcp] project contains a minimal terminal program example which could be extended into a full-blown telnet program.
* The [https://github.com/ghackwrench/F256_wget F256_wget] project includes a DNS client and a simple http client.

The MicroKernel is not compatible with an 816 CPU running in native mode. Emulation mode (the default) is fine :).

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Gadget: Introduction to the MicroKernel with links to various projects.