SOL_OS - How to use

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Hardware requirements

Before you can use/test this OS you must have at least this hardware:

• Pentium Class IBM compatible PC
  386 and 486 should work also but very slowly
• VESA 2.0 compatible video board - with LFB mandatory
• PS/2 Compatible mouse
• Ability to boot from 1.44M floppy (A:) Drive
• 8 Megabytes of RAM, more is better

Notice

• I have tested it on all of my machines (6 different) and it works fine. Others have tested it also.
• Besides non LFB video cards i have never heard it not to work.
• It will not atempt to write on your HDD
• It works fine and pretty fast under VMWare, Virtual PC2004, QEMU emulators
• It works slower but ok under Bochs emulator
• No claim is made about any compatibility, use at your own risk!

How to use

1. Boot the SOLAR OS Floppy

• It will show a progress mark "#" while loading
• OS will atempt to detect VESA video board and display some info about the VESA version, ammount of video RAM, chipset name, location of LFB, Video scanline pitch, and pixelformat for VESA mode 114h - ie 800x600x65536 colors
• it will present you some sort of options menu

Alternatively you can use the provided os8.flp to use it as a floppy image for Vmware Workstation 4 or Bochs and start that virtual machine instead.

Also the os8.dsk file could be used with Virtual PC 2004.

2. Choose your Options

• Choose your desired graphic mode / options and then press Enter
• After a short delay the OS GUI should startup
• Move the mouse a little ... if it moves ok, then start Explore ;)
• IF the mouse pointer is not moveing corectly: press ALT+3 again to reset PS/2 mouse driver (hold the ALT longer)

Undocumented keyboard commands

For testing purposes only. Keep the ALT Key pressed before other key.

• Alt+Esc - will RESET PC
• Alt+3 - (re)setup PS2 mouse driver
• Alt+Z - WARM Restart OS (clear memory)
• Alt+4 - gray back
• ALt+5 - black back
• Alt+6 - white back
• Alt+7 - Blue
• Alt+8 - Green

Notice: There is a help file available inside the OS. You can acess it by either pressing F1 key or by choosing HELP for the SOL Main Menu