
To Adam, who wanted an OS entirely in ASM...
If you haven't looked at
http://www.menuetos.net/, it's been around awhile, and it's pretty impressive.
From the website (emphasis mine):
Quote:
MenuetOS is an Operating System in development for the PC written entirely in 32/64 bit assembly language, and released under the License. It supports 32/64 bit x86 assembly programming for smaller, faster and less resource hungry applications.
....
Features
- Pre-emptive multitasking with 1000hz scheduler, multithreading, ring-3 protection
- Responsive GUI with resolutions up to 1280x1024, 16 million colours
- Free-form, transparent and skinnable application windows, drag'n drop
- IDE: Editor/Macro Assembler for applications
- TCP/IP stack with Loopback & Ethernet drivers
- Email/ftp/http/chess clients and ftp/mp3/http servers
- Hard real-time data fetch
- Fits on a single floppy
I'd imagine it's a bit difficult to program for, and completely unportable short of a line-by-line recode, but it's demonstrates what you can do when you hack away 10 or 11 layers.
Of course, on the hardware that it can't be ported to, there's a good chance that it would run faster on emulation than whatever native OS is available.