okay dammit.. its been a freakin week now and I can't figure out how the hell you are supposed to begin to LEARN howto make an OS.. I can't even find out howto eneract with damn hardware! i keep hearing people say they would (or have) make an os in c.. an os in asm.. HOW!??!! I just need some damn help with this bs.. i know it isn't an easy task.. but i've got to find out where to start at least (and try to avoid telling me "it's very pobbible" just tell me how!)

http://gaztek.sourceforge.net/ have a look at the OSDev section, and look at the GazOS source. It should be helpful (although I really don't see why we need yet another scaled down unix-clone)... I wouldn't bother unless you have something really special not already implemented by another OS.

First learn how a computer works below the relative beauty of windows. Like how to reprogram the system timer and it's interrupts, using a mouse and keyboard and the well-known mode 13h. That'll give you some insights on how the hardware is handled. Ofcourse don't use the windows API's for this. Use Dos. There are plenty ot tutorials about this.

RedX

better yet; if you have a spare 486 (or better) lying around, slap a small linux distro and use command line mode. That will teach you more as you can deal dirrectly with the kernel, recompile it, look at its source ect. And if you want to go into windows(not os, but dir listings)/user interfaces, then you can see how Xfree86 works and also how the window manager overlays work also.

Thanks alot. Will learning asm help? (or is C good enough)

most low-level tasks such as addressing hardware directly from the BIOS (yes you will have to use things like IRQ, interupts ect) will have to be done is ASM. I know making and OS is a cool thing.... but dont you think its a little over your head?

Yeah, im planning to get it under my head.

Well i would compare a basic OS (a very basic one) to a basic game

You won't just need to learn ASM either, you will need to know how to use it to manipulate the BIOS in order to do things.

2 great sites that i found that you may want to look at are:

http://www.mega-tokyo.com/os/os-faq.html (OS FAQ)
and
http://www.fys.ruu.nl/~mjanssen/ (how to make os)

I've written many hardware related programs before, mostly just to test those things like IRQ's and such and I have only use assembly to write a fast routine to plot pixels. all other code was in C++.

RedX

Go to http://www.menuetos.org/ to see a nice 32-bit operating system...written entirly in assembly (I first used it way back when all it did was boot and say "Hello"...). I talked to the guy who is writing it once, and apparantly you can very easily write assembly programs for it because of the large library of assembly routines Menuet comes with. Best of all, the source is GPLed so you can read it.