Omega Progress: Dec. 20th, 2009

Oops, I guess I should have written you guys sooner. Everything has been kind of hectic lately. I have been a little side tracked by a new "personal" project that sort of took my attention away momentarily. I got it back and I started working on Omega again, in full force. The kernel is bigger, back to ~40KB, which is a downer. I am seriously going to optimize the code as much as possible (by hand) where ever possible, to get it back down to at least ~36KB, smaller is better.

I have just about finished the NTFS driver, it has only one flaw that I have noticed; thus far, and I do not project it will cause too much of a strain to fix, but I have been putting it off to accomplish the less complex, yet more tedious aspects of the total design. I just about have the GUI in full operational mode and my "TODO" list is getting dramatically smaller everyday. It shouldn't be much longer, so keep checking back for all the latest. TFR

Omega Progress: Nov. 21st, 2009

Wow, I have really been in the zone lately. It's funny, because the more I work on the existing code, the smaller it becomes. In fact, the kernel was ~60KB and is now ~40KB. I wish I could get it down to around 20KB, because, of course, smaller is better.

I already have the new GUI drawn and the menu absolutely perfected. I am now, finally, working on the NTFS driver, which means, I am right on schedule. I haven't been real motivated to devote the amount of time needed to take full advantage of the MFT, but that hasn't stopped me from being progressive. I have kind of been working around it until now, and that has kind of forced me to pay very close attention to the more mundane aspects of the total design. Now that I am back to the NTFS driver, I intend to zoom right through it. Even after the NTFS driver is totally complete, I still have a massive hill to climb, and I need to not rush through the code, but at least get it done quickly... we'll see.

So, that's the latest from me about the Omega CE development. I hope you keep checking back for all the latest. Take care.

Omega Progress: Oct. 31st, 2009

Happy Halloween. Omega is coming along slowly but surely. The new driver is complete and right now I am opening the door to foreign languages. Next, I plan to begin work on developing the GUI to be more intuitive and user friendly. I think a full-scale redo is in order and that may push back the deadline a bit, but all the improvements will be well worth the wait. Once the GUI is done, I'll really start to hammer down and get this thing wrapped up. I am still optimistic about January 2010. So keep checking back for all the latest.

Omega Progress: Oct. 23rd, 2009

So, we have been well on our way, working hard at finalizing the Omega CE product. The new driver is about 80% complete and to standard, which is great! Can't wait to get this one done as it has been quite frustrating at times to work with. Once this driver is complete, we need to integrate it with another already existing driver, then test. Next we need to further enhance the GUI and I am projecting a dramatic change to that, so much that you might call it brand new. We are projecting to be complete with the first version of the Omega CE product by January 2010. I will, of course, continue to update this blog with all the latest Omega Progress news.

Omega Progress: Sept. 22nd, 2009

Hello everyone, it has been a nice vacation, but it is time to get back to work. Oct. 1st, 2009, is the official day that we will continue our development of the Omega product, all the way to its completion.

Omega CE Beta 2.0 is Done!!

As promised, Omega CE Beta 2.0 has been finalized and published today! Thanks to everyone for being so patient with us as we continuously set back the ETA. I assure you that the wait was well worth it. Go find out why: Omega CE Beta 2.0

Omega Progress: June 18th, 2009

For those of you anticipating the release of Omega Beta 2.0, I am sorry to inform you that our expected ETA (June 15th, 2009) must be pushed back again. The reason is that we are still working out the kinks, if you will. We are trying to ensure compatibility across a wide spectrum of available hardware and this sort of thing takes time. More time than I initially imagined, so the new ETA will be set for July 15th, 2009. I am sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at james@blacklistsoft.com.

Omega Progress: May 15th, 2009

So, a few hours became a few more hours than I initially had hoped. I am finally in the "clean up" phase of development. Right now, I am just going around through all of the code and fixing what needs fixed; basically, tightening up all the loose ends and optimizing what I can. As for the original estimated release date of the new Omega (May 15th), that date obviously needs to be set back a little. How about June 15th? Keep checking back for further updates.

Omega Progress: April 18th, 2009

Finally, I am literally just a few hours away from being done. I decided, due to the lack of available hardware to test this on, to offer this new version as Beta 2.0. I plan to keep Omega; in its newest form, beta for at least 3 months before I finalize it. This should give us enough time to gather enough information to determine the overall friendliness and effectiveness of Omega on a wide array of systems. Of course as a beta version, Omega will be offered up for free under the Freeware license. I estimate the release date to be approximately any date between May 1st and May 15th of 2009. I will make sure to update this post if the dates change.

Omega Progress: March 22nd, 2009

All is moving along quite nicely. I have finished the Arial font type and it is working well. I have been working on the menus and have just about completed those. I will be using the interpolation formula to create shadow effects to further enhance the menus and cursor. I still need to add life to the scroll bar and I still need to integrate the back-end to the new front-end. As soon as I have done that, I will begin developing support for the FAT32 and EXT2 file systems.

I have decided against allowing the user to choose a screen resolution at start up, so the first major release will default to 800x600x16M resolution. I plan to eventually allow the loader to choose the "best" available resolution in the near future. I still need to draw a few more controls/images and add full interactive support to each of them as well. I have a tough hill to climb before I will be done with the first major release, but the hardest part is already over.

Omega Progress: Feb. 27th, 2009

I have just about finished building the desktop and I have just now begun to fully support the Arial font type. I am also currently developing support for 24-bit image display and graphical cursor display with mouse synchronization. I have already further developed the boot loader which now provides the end-user the choice to boot into a desired resolution. Right now the choices are 80x25 (8/8-bit CUI), 800x600 (24-bit GUI), or 1024x768 (24-bit GUI).

Omega Progress: Feb. 22nd, 2009

After about 3 solid days of reading specifications and banging out code, I finally have a working VBE 2.0 protected mode driver! I am so excited to have finally seen my first pixel on screen after so many days of failed attempts. It was much more difficult to write this driver than I originally thought, so this one felt a bit rewarding to me when I saw it work for the first time. Now that I have a working graphics driver, I can begin developing the graphics library and designing the GUI!! The real fun begins now.

Omega Progress: Feb. 17th, 2009

I still haven't finished the graphics driver to support higher resolutions, because I was sidetracked by this terribly mundane yet essential PS/2 mouse driver. I have just completed it and it works on both real hardware and emulated hardware. It is amazing to see the mouse finally working. Right now I am just printing a dot in place of a modern cursor and it is pretty cool to see it moving around the screen in sync with my PS/2 mouse. I believe the USB mouse emulates a PS/2 mouse but works using a different IRQ, so I may also take more time to further develop the mouse driver to support the USB mouse as well. All this by the first major release. I hope.

Omega Update: Feb. 8th, 2009

I fixed a bug that would cause Omega to freeze when using the -find command. I also further developed the -find command's output to include the object type. I plan to release the new update as soon as I can find an opportunity to address a few other possible and known problems, thoroughly test the changes, and update our website. In the meantime, please keep sending me your detailed reports and feedback. Thanks to everyone who has been helping to test and improve the Omega Windows Recovery Agent!

Omega Progress: Jan. 31st, 2009

For a while we have been contemplating higher resolution graphics to support a GUI. The first step is to build a custom malloc function which I did do last night. I still need to build a way to free the memory after allocation. I am going to start work on that later today. I hope to have that bit complete by tonight. I also cleaned up the boot loader last night and prepared it to support VESA mode switching.