🚀 go-pugleaf

Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc
Subject: 'Bare-bones' 32 bit OS
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Distribution: world
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Western Ontario, London
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Greetings:

We are developing a high-speed, multi-processor switch.  The
master processor is an 80386 and the network ports are slaved by
80186's (4 ports per 186).

Currently, as the product is still in it's early development
stage, we are surviving by running MS-DOS as the operating
system.  DOS simply does not suffice for the tasks we require
of the O/S; it's not fast enough, memory problems/limitations
etc.  Ideally, we would like to write a customized O/S for
the product but at the same time do not want to re-invent
the wheel.

The requirments for the O/S are very minimal -- bootstrap,
loader and rudimentary file system.  There is (or will be)
some sort of secondary storage (hard or floppy disk most
likely).  The only specification is that the O/S needs to
be as fast as possible. Questions I pose to the net, then, are:

1)  Is there a commercial 32 bit BIOS available for the
	386 architecture?

2)	Any sort of 32 bit 'stripped down' file system available?
	Even 'code snippets' at ftp sites would be helpful.

3)	Even better than 1) or 2) would be an actual 'bare-bones'
	32-bit OS as detailed above.

Any info/comments would be greatly appreciated!

Best regards,

Mike

PS Yes we have considered different Operating Systems (such as
OS/2 and Unix based systems) but have rejected them primarily
due to excessive overhead and royalty/licensing headaches.