I alongwith some friends of mine was having this idea of creating a very basic media player,Say it only plays mp3s(very limited GUI showing the controls of the player).The Tricky part is we wish to do it without any OS.i.e It will be loaded directly from the boot loader and we will read the file off from a pen drive.Is this a feasible project idea.Its a hobby project so there is no time limit as of now. Can someone guide me as to how to proceed?
If you want to do this from scratch, all I can say is good luck. Yu'd have to write file system drivers, sound drivers, display drivers, keyboard drivers, mouse drivers, USB drivers, etc. it would be a massive amount of work.
Instead, if you still want to write things like the mp3 codec yourself, you can, but do it on top of an existing Os. You could go with DOS if you wanted, and have at least something built in to work off of. If I were doing this, I'd be going with embedded Linux + x11. But it's your choice.
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Some background:
I am a Computer Engineering major attending school right now, and I just completed a project that created a microprocessor with a super simple instruction set that ran on an FPGA. I chose to implement a simple file storage scheme, a VGA text only display output, and a PS/2 keyboard input. I wrote two main programs, a firmware that was in ROM in the processor and a kernel that provided a bunch of library type functions, and was capable of loading and executing files from the filesystem. This project was challenging and overall a lot of fun.
My Question:
I want to do some super low level programming on a modern computer, but I can't seem to find any resources or documentation that help me get started. To be clear, I want to find the proper documentation that would help me to write a program in C, x86, or x86-64 assembly that I could compile, and format into some form of bootable data. I know this is a daunting task, and typically not something a hobbyist would take on, but I know that it's possible (Terry Davis's TempleOS).
Are there any websites or books that I can read that will contain the specifics needed to make something like this?
Look out, you might just catch the bug. OS Development, though having a very small demographic, is still quite a thriving hobby. Once you start, you may not ever give it up.
Since your subject line states 64-bit and you use the term modern hardware, be advised that modern hardware no longer has the older style BIOS, where the developer wrote the boot process which included the video out, file system in, and other standard routines. Modern hardware now uses an EFI firmware which does all of the booting for you, including the reading from the file system(s). For modern hardware, OS development really starts with the OS Loader, the part that loads the OS, and this is done in a high level language such as C/C++. Very little if any assembly at all, in fact that is its point/purpose.
Don't get too discouraged, currently a lot of computers still allow the old style boot. However, the old style boot starts in 16-bit mode, moves to 32-bit mode, then if desired, moves to long mode (64-bit). There also are emulators that you can use so you don't have to have a separate system, just to test your development. I prefer Bochs myself, but I am a little bias since I wrote some of the code for it, namely most of the (original) USB emulation.
If you wish to dip your toes into this hobby, there are numerous places to start. I personally wrote a few books on the subject. They show you how to start from when the time the POST gives up control to your boot code, up to the point of a minimal Round Robin style task/thread switching OS, with all the necessary hardware and software basics to do so. There is a forum to OS Development, along with its wiki.
Again, a project like this is not for the faint at heart, though it is an enjoyable hobby most have found to be a very good learning experience.
I want to make a sort of operating system, but with some very specific features.
The only thing i need it to do is show a video, place some text over it, accept user input and some basic file manipulation.
Something that looks like an OS'es loading screen would do.
i am, however, a complete noob to this part of programming and i have no idea where to look. Don't worry i do not need a complete explaination for every single step, but it would be nice to know in what direction i should go search.
Anyone got an idea where to start searching?
Thanks in advance ;)
Although you narrowed down your specification it's still complicated enough. Playing video involves file I/O, a file system, storage device access, buffering mechanism, memory allocation, memory management primitives, GPU access. Accepting user input requires keyboard and mouse handling which requires a working USB layer. Not to mention that you needed to make the video decoding library work with your own system, unless you want to implement that from scratch too. That might require you to have an ABI or a POSIX emulation layer. You might need to port at least one or two graphics libraries like SDL.
That's why "OS loading screen"s don't play videos :)
You might get away with using BIOS only for accessing all devices. But BIOS and VBE are usually slow and may not work well with your video playing scenario. BIOS is slowly getting pushed out of PC ecosystem in favor of UEFI too.
If you don't need a custom OS, you can trim a Linux kernel down to the parts you need to have. Even that's not a trivial thing to do though.
I am making an EEG bio-feedback'product' for a friend and I need a simple but DSP-powerful application builder.
Here is my situation:
I have built the HW to measure the brainwave signals and need to create a user panel for my friend to use it. The HW sends a stream of ascii out a serial port. The data packets send the amplitude value at a rate of 250 packets per second. Brain waves of interest are below 30 HZ so this is more than fast enough sampling.
I am prototyping the DSP user panel in LabVIEW which makes it incredibly easy to do sophisticated DSP with a custom control panel. However, my friend just wants a plug and play product and I can hardly install LabVIEW on his PC, so here is my challenge: I am wondering if there is a design application that I can use to create the final application for him.
I have no problem if it is text based but I don't have the capacity to sit down with a full-on programming language to make the front panel controls, internal DSP and serial port processor, so the application would hopefully provide the designer easy to tool-up GUI and easy to access DSP library. I am up to coding stuff to interpret the serial data format and manage the general flow of the data to get it processed and sent to the front panel, but all the fussy details of setting up some programming IDE and installing a bunch of libraries to make the front panel is more than I can take on right now.
BTW, I also put this together in a private edition of Matlab but again that is no good for my friend.
Any ideas? I know there are high-level application builders around but they usually target beginners. I am so spoiled by Labview! I have no problem with the actual coding like in C, Basic, or maybe Python, it's all the environment-building I don't want to get pulled into.
If you want a stand alone executable, you can use LabVIEW's application builder to create one. The app builder ships with LV pro, but can be purchased separately for cheaper versions. This won't let your friend modify the code, but I understand that's what you want.
There are also numerous ways to create plugin systems, if that's needed in your case. You can find various tutorials on that.
Be aware that some toolkits and modules require that you purchase distribution licenses as well. You would need to check whether you're using such a module.
I'm not planning on doing this right now, as I don't have the experience in this area to even attempt it at the moment, but I'm curious about something.
If implementing an operating system from scratch, what would it take to build an application like VirtualBox? Not necessarily as user friendly with a nice GUI or anything, but something that is capable of launching other operating systems and allowing you to interact with them?
I've got an idea rolling around in my head about an operating system that uses virtualization for a few key things (probably ideas out there like this already), and I'm just curious what it would take to build it.
There is a version of VirtualBox that is open source. If you want to know what it would take, checking out their source would be a very good start. Also, check out Xen (open source as well).
I am pretty dissatisfied with all the available media players, and I was also looking for a major project to really get into programming. so I am thinking of writing my own media player . Or to be more accurate a gui-frontend for mplayer (something similar to smplayer). How hard would this be.? I have plenty of time (months), and am willing to learn anything.
I practically don't have any knowledge of any windows/gui libraries . My programming experience : tried lots of different languages, wrote a couple of websites in php, lots of practice in java (although did nothing major) . Thats all
Can someone provide some guidance, about where to get started. what all to read. Which language should be used. is C#/.net a good language for this? since I am no expert in any language and have dabbled in plenty of different languages , I think I can pick up any language. Though My main concern is my lack of any practical knowledge . So guide me please.
Lastly my preference is windows (haha whatever), so thats what my target is and thats where I'll doing my coding.
To sum it up I want to create a guifrontend for mplayer that would work in windows.
Thanks
Edit: by mplayer I mean mplayer (the linux one) , and not WIndows media player.
One good place to start could be looking at how the code for gmplayer works - gmplayer is the graphic frontend for mplayer on Linux. It could be that all you really need to do is port the gmplayer code to Windows, then you get a fully integrated GUI instead of just a frontend.
Also, feature request: a nice friendly UI for putting video / audio effects on the output stream (it is so hard to use in the CLI version that most mplayer users probably don't even know it is in there).
I know what I'm going to recommend you is not what you're looking for, BUT:
I'd create a front-end for VLC, which uses Qt, a GUI framework which is extremely usable and easy to start with, in C++.
From my experience as an user, VLC is also more stable and has more features.
Start by copying a working implementation. As you mentioned, SMPlayer exists as a working example of what you want. I'd recommend starting by either hacking it to work better (the playlist really needs more intuitive controls, and multiple monitor support in Windows was nonexistent last time I tried it) or trying to duplicate it in your language of choice.
The benefits of hacking on an existing probject include: the existing codebase works, the margin of work required to make a noticeable change is much smaller, and the existing developers are able to help you come to speed with internals. Also, learning the project's language (C++) would be useful, though it may not be worth the effort if it's more interesting to copy its features in your favorite language.
C# is great for creating any desktop gui quickly. Best way to start with the gui design is to play a bit with the drag/drop components available in visual studio. For the functionality you can use this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd564585%28VS.85%29.aspx .