OS BUILDING

GOALS:
Fit on a floppy disk
x86 Architecture
Basic File operations (Delete, Move, Create Dir, list, run)
Simple programs running on the CPU itself

How would I go about doing this. What language should I use?

Color Forth comes with a 63KB operating system. "The current colorForth environment is limited to running on Pentium based PCs with limited support for lowest-common-denominator motherboards, AGP video, disk, and network hardware."

Charles Moore >>HATES<< large software and has a history of completely rewriting entire sytems down to the metal to make them as small as he can.

Here is the IDE hard disk driver. The ENTIRE driver:
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bsy 1f7 p@ 80 and if bsy ; then ;
rdy 1f7 p@ 8 and if 1f0 a! 256 ; then rdy ;
sector 1f3 a! swap p!+ /8 p!+ /8 p!+ /8 e0 or p!+ drop p!+ drop 4 * ;
read 20 sector 256 for rdy insw next drop ;
write bsy 30 sector 256 for rdy outsw next drop ;
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I remember reading years ago Moore's articles stating he has GUI, windows manager, networking, and all the niceties you expect in a modern OS. Since he intended to compete in that market. All in a few hundred kilobytes.

My own experience is limited to the old Sun workstation Monitor program, a Forth in a ROM chip that you could program to control the hardware.