Project updates

I reached a personal milestone today as I finally got around to implementing system calls in my operating system project.

The system call mechanism is a bit different from most operating systems, in that system call parameters are passed on the stack, instead of via the CPU's registers. This allows for a nearly unlimited amount of system call parameters, while keeping the CPU registers free for use.

But that's not the only thing I've been up to; I recently received an e-mail from SourceForge telling me that the SVN repository for another project of mine, XFX, had been updated to use SSH in addition to the normal SVN protocol, to enhance security. I tried to migrate my environment to the new SVN setup, but the software couldn't access the new repository. Rather than spending hours trying to make it work somehow, I took the easier way out and migrated the code to GitHub.

For those not in the know, XFX, shorthand for XNA For XBOX, is a clone of Microsoft's XNA framework, written in C++, to allow easy homebrew game development on the Original XBOX console.

XFX consists out of the Base Class Library, libmscorlib, libXFX, and libXFX.Game
libmscorlib provides the basic classes, like, for example, String, which, in case of XFX, is a thin, lightweight wrapper for C-style strings. libXFX contains the meat of the project, wrapping the XBOX's hardware in (relatively) easy to use classes. libXFX.Game contains XNA's Game class and associated classes. It's designed to set up a basic environment for you to build on, but not much else.

My first entry

This blog is really just about the things I make and do. I'm a software developing enthusiast, preferring the C-family of languages (C, C++ and C#) and assembly language, but I have some knowledge of VB.Net and Java as well.

Most of the stuff I write is Microsoft-oriented, meaning not just Windows, but targeted at Microsoft products in general. In my spare time, I’ve worked on little apps for the original XBOX console, Windows, Windows Phone, and the XBOX360, but more recently, I’ve started to focus on my nascent little operating system, called Altimit OS, inspired by the fictional operating system of the same name as found in the .HACK games.