[CDG5] Musings on v2 NanoKernel

[Elliot Nunn]

I think that Apple's "microkernel phase" might have started even
earlier. The ERS appendix in that patent application seems to have a
revision history dating back to 1992, and it discusses NuKernel on 68k
as well as PowerPC.

By the way, has anyone on our list ever *seen* a working NuKernel
system? Either Copland, or something more exotic like the early BlueBox.

Calling MPFindVictimPage with (r3 | r4) != 0 zeroes
KDP.VMMaxVirtualPages. This enables an alternative page fault resolution
code path in NKInterrupts.s, and enables the alternative VM call table.
(These refer to the powermac-rom tree, which I *still* intend to replace
with an improved NanoKernel tree.)

To me toddp.com seems to be up still. But fear not, the SuperMario
sources are ineradicable.

> On 29 Mar 2019, at 8:47 pm, Max Poliakovski <maximumspatium at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Elliot,
> 
> I already suspected that Nanokernel v2 could include ideas/pieces from the abandoned NuKernel. It's interesting that the first modernization ideas for the OS/kernel date back to 1994, just right after the official release of the first Power Macs (6100, 7100 and 8100). Another interesting point is that NuKernel working group doesn't include Gary Davidian that wrote the NK v1.
> 
> What is this "alternate" Virtual Memory API? Anything that goes though "sc" and not through the 68k-ish _VMDispatch (0xFE0A)?
> 
> BTW: the server http://toddp.com/ that hosted the leaked "System 7.1" source code (that's actually the ROM source for the pre-TNT machines) is down. I hope you've managed to save its content...
> 
> Cheers
> Max
> 
> Am Do., 28. März 2019 um 05:54 Uhr schrieb Elliot Nunn <elliotnunn at fastmail.com>:
> When we get back to reversing the "alternate" Virtual Memory API exposed
> by the v2 NanoKernel, this might be informative:
> 
> https://patents.google.com/patent/US5590334
> 
> The entire External Reference Specification for NuKernel (c 1993) is
> included as an appendix. It seems that the later additions to the
> kernel, which were under-utilised by Mac OS 9, were an increasingly
> faithful replication of NuKernel mechanisms.
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