Very good and interesting post... I +1'ed it!

[Lots of text]

The point with the simple system is that everything you learn is actually directly applicable on the more complex x86 system.
Sure, ports memory areas and bitpatterns isn't the same, but thats not really the interesting part of it...
Thats just whatever the hardware is right now, and should (mostly) be handled by drivers, working as plugins to abstract hardware so the OS doesn't have to care about those details.

With simpler hw you can focus better on the actual OS programming problems.
Then when you've got those down, you can move onto more complex hardware.
Doing it on an actual physical device is a bit more rewarding imo.

My first programming steps was taken on a hacked Texas Instruments calculator, running z80 (Ti83) and 68000 (TI89) assembler.
There wasn't even a c-compiler available, very good experience for learning how a computer system works

Old iPods are also fun hardware, its basically a SoC with a nice screen and some buttons, and they are pretty easy to upload your own bootloader and code to, I've played a bit with my old (2006) iPod NANO and installed linux on it. (and run some OS-less code too)

So theres lots of options if you dont want to spend money on a beagle board, though with those you get the advantage of good documentation and a big community.

OP: Sorry for all this off topicness

Very good and interesting post... I +1'ed it!

[Lots of text]

The point with the simple system is that everything you learn is actually directly applicable on the more complex x86 system.
Sure, ports memory areas and bitpatterns isn't the same, but thats not really the interesting part of it...
Thats just whatever the hardware is right now, and should (mostly) be handled by drivers, working as plugins to abstract hardware so the OS doesn't have to care about those details.

With simpler hw you can focus better on the actual OS programming problems.
Then when you've got those down, you can move onto more complex hardware.
Doing it on an actual physical device is a bit more rewarding imo.

My first programming steps was taken on a hacked Texas Instruments calculator, running z80 (Ti83) and 68000 (TI89) assembler.
There wasn't even a c-compiler available, very good experience for learning how a computer system works

Old iPods are also fun hardware, its basically a SoC with a nice screen and some buttons, and they are pretty easy to upload your own bootloader and code to, I've played a bit with my old (2006) iPod NANO and installed linux on it. (and run some OS-less code too)

So theres lots of options if you dont want to spend money on a beagle board, though with those you get the advantage of good documentation and a big community.

OP: Sorry for all this off topicness
The UI isn't really part of the OS, its just another program running, I guess thats why this thread derailed (in technical terms. it is part of the "product" that is marketed though)
But obviously OS programming is an interesting topic!
I'd also recommend flash for UI prototyping, it seems the standard goto for UX (user experience) designers.

Very good and interesting post... I +1'ed it!

[Lots of text]

The point with the simple system is that everything you learn is actually directly applicable on the more complex x86 system.
Sure, ports memory areas and bitpatterns isn't the same, but thats not really the interesting part of it...
Thats just whatever the hardware is right now, and should (mostly) be handled by drivers, working as plugins to abstract hardware so the OS doesn't have to care about those details.

With simpler hw you can focus better on the actual OS programming problems.
Then when you've got those down, you can move onto more complex hardware.
Doing it on an actual physical device is a bit more rewarding imo.

My first programming steps was taken on a hacked Texas Instruments calculator, running z80 (Ti83) and 68000 (TI89) assembler.
There wasn't even a c-compiler available, very good experience for learning how a computer system works

Old iPods are also fun hardware, its basically a SoC with a nice screen and some buttons, and they are pretty easy to upload your own bootloader and code to, I've played a bit with my old (2006) iPod NANO and installed linux on it. (and run some OS-less code too)

So theres lots of options if you dont want to spend money on a beagle board, though with those you get the advantage of good documentation and a big community.

Very good and interesting post... I +1'ed it!

[Lots of text]

The point with the simple system is that everything you learn is actually directly applicable on the more complex x86 system.
Sure, ports memory areas and bitpatterns isn't the same, but thats not really the interesting part of it...
Thats just whatever the hardware is right now, and should be handled by drivers, working as plugins to abstract hardware so the OS doesn't have to care about those details.

With simpler hw you can focus better on the actual OS programming problems.
Then when you've got those down, you can move onto more complex hardware.
Doing it on an actual physical device is a bit more rewarding imo.

My first programming steps was taken on a hacked Texas Instruments calculator, running z80 (Ti83) and 68000 (TI89) assembler.
There wasn't even a c-compiler available, very good experience for learning how a computer system works

Old iPods are also fun hardware, its basically a SoC with a nice screen and some buttons, and they are pretty easy to upload your own bootloader and code to, I've played a bit with my old (2006) iPod NANO and installed linux on it. (and run some OS-less code too)

So theres lots of options if you dont want to spend money on a beagle board, though with those you get the advantage of good documentation and a big community.

Very good and interesting post... I +1'ed it!

[Lots of text]

The point with the simple system is that everything you learn is actually directly applicable on the more complex x86 system.
Sure, ports memory areas and bitpatterns isn't the same, but thats not really the interesting part of it...
Thats just whatever the hardware is right now, and should be handled by drivers, which is OS plugins to abstract hardware so the OS doesn't have to care about those details.

With simpler hw you can focus better on the actual OS programming problems.
Then when you've got those down, you can move onto more complex hardware.
Doing it on an actual physical device is a bit more rewarding imo.

My first programming steps was taken on a hacked Texas Instruments calculator, running z80 (Ti83) and 68000 (TI89) assembler.
There wasn't even a c-compiler available, very good experience for learning how a computer system works

Old iPods are also fun hardware, its basically a SoC with a nice screen and some buttons, and they are pretty easy to upload your own bootloader and code to, I've played a bit with my old (2006) iPod NANO and installed linux on it. (and run some OS-less code too)

So theres lots of options if you dont want to spend money on a beagle board, though with those you get the advantage of good documentation and a big community.

Very good and interesting post... I +1'ed it!

[Lots of text]

The point with the simple system is that everything you learn is actually directly applicable on the more complex x86 system.
You just can focus better on the actual OS programming problems.
Then when you've got those down, you can move onto more complex hardware.
Doing it on an actual physical device is a bit more rewarding imo.

My first programming steps was taken on a hacked Texas Instruments calculator, running z80 (Ti83) and 68000 (TI89) assembler.
There wasn't even a c-compiler available, very good experience for learning how a computer system works

Old iPods are also fun hardware, its basically a SoC with a nice screen and some buttons, and they are pretty easy to upload your own bootloader and code to, I've played a bit with my old (2006) iPod NANO and installed linux on it. (and run some OS-less code too)

So theres lots of options if you dont want to spend money on a beagle board, though with those you get the advantage of good documentation and a big community.