Hello,
I've been doing some thinking about KnightOS and other 3rd party OSes, and thought it would be a good idea to find a way to identify them uniquely. I propose that any 3rd party OS should use the first 8 bytes of page 00 the same way that I do - the first three bytes jump to the OS like normal, and the remainder are used for the metadata. Here's my code from KnightOS:

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The first two bytes are your magic numbers (something unique to your OS). In this case, "KK" is short for "Knight Kernel." GlassOS could use "Gl" for example. 0x0005 should then have the version of that OS. The version is stored in the 8xu file, but not on the calculator itself. Major, then minor, very simple. $0007 should finally have some information about the OS's intended audience. The explanation for that is here:

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If anyone can think of something to do with bits 6 and 7, present your arguments. They could alternatively just be specific to that OS.
After this is $0008, which you should use for RST $08 like normal.

Thoughts?

The version actually is stored on the calculator itself. The OS header is stored at 7A:4000h, and the validation signature is stored at 7A:4100h. The boot code writes these during the OS receiving process, so you can guarantee it'll be there.

I would recommend instead throwing whatever you want into the OS header as unused fields. There are field-parsing routines built into the boot code that let you quickly get information out of there.

Oh, that makes sense. I'll leave this code in KnightOS (I have nothing to do with it), but I'll also add some stuff to the header.

TIOS has fields like on ROM 0, right?

GlassOS wouldn't put anything in that field as it doesn't care what hardware (it will, but for now, I only have it working on the ti84pse) it runs on. However, an OS name should work, and other simple things.

USB is a different story... it sends meta-data to the PC (the protocol, specifically).


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at 0x06 would be
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