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RCOS.java: A simulated operating system with animations

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 RCOS.JAVA: A SIMULATED OPERATING
SYSTEM WITH ANIMATIONS
David Jones, Andrew Newman

ABSTRACT
RCOS.java (Ron Chernich's Operating System) is a Java-based, simulated operating system designed to address
student difficulties in understanding operating systems concepts. This paper describes the rationale, design,
features and planned use of RCOS.java. The intent with RCOS.java is to emphasise active, student-based learning
and the development of the higher level learning skills of analysis, synthesis, evaluation or problem solving.

KEYWORDS
Simulation, Animations, Operating Systems

INTRODUCTION

A course covering the algorithms, concepts and theories behind the design, construction and
operation of operating systems is a recommended core component for courses in computer
science [7]. For a number of reasons students find operating systems related topics, like many
computer science topics, difficult to relate to and learn [17].

RCOS.java is a Java-based, simulated operating system that attempts to address some of these
problems by providing students the opportunity to observe animations and to actively
experiment with the algorithms, data structures and services of an operating system.
RCOS.java builds on lessons gathered during the use and development of previous computer-
aided learning systems at Central Queensland University (CQU) [9,10].

A unique characteristic of RCOS.java is that it combines the features of previous operating

systems courseware such as animation [18], concurrency simulation [5,22] and toy operating
systems [9,10] into a single system with the features of Java and the World-Wide Web.
Importantly RCOS.java includes features that can be combined with appropriate pedagogy to
offer support for active and discovery-based learning.

CONTEXT

The current shape of RCOS.java has been influenced by a number of contextual factors
including the characteristics of CQU students, the delivery modes used at CQU and previous
experience with teaching operating systems at CQU. This section sets the scene for the
development of RCOS.java by describing these contextual factors.
Students and Delivery Mode
The primary purpose of RCOS.java is to address problems experienced during the teaching of
the course 85349, Operating Systems at Central Queensland University (CQU). CQU is an
multi-campus institution based in Australia with four branch campuses based in Central
Queensland, five campuses (referred to as the International Campuses) managed by a
commercial partner in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, the Gold Coast and Fiji, international
partners offering supported distance education to students in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong
Kong and a large cohort studying via print-based distance education. In many courses less than
20% of students are on the same campus as the instructor in charge of the course.

85349 Operating Systems is CQU's traditional operating systems course and was a core course
in the second year of CQU's Bachelor of Information Technology degree until 1999. 85349
averages around 200 students per offering with approximately half those students studying via
print-based distance education. In recent years it is common for less than 40 students to be
located on the same campus as the course coordinator for 85349.

Distance education students receive a study guide, textbook and other resources as their
primary learning material. Most distance students never talk face-to-face with a course
coordinator or visit a CQU campus. An increasing number of CQU courses, including 85349
(http://www.infocom.cqu.edu.au/85349/), make some use of the Websites and mailing lists. All
CQU, distance, computing students are expected to have access to an Intel-based computer
running a version of the Windows operating system. The software used in all CQU computing
courses is designed to run on that platform.

On-campus students learn via traditional on-campus delivery approaches including lectures and
tutorials. Lectures to the students at the Central Queensland based campuses of CQU are given
by a course coordinator at one campus and distributed via video-conferencing to the other three
campuses. Each of the International Campuses has a lecturer who is responsible for organising
lectures and tutorials for students at that campus. As a result this means that in some courses
there can be up to five or six essentially independent staff at different campuses giving the
same lecture.

Previous Approaches
Over the last ten years a combination of four basic approaches have been used at CQU to teach
operating systems. The following discusses briefly these approaches, how they were
implemented and the CQU experience. The four approaches are: purely theoretical, separate
unrelated projects, simulated operating systems, and the use of a complete operating system.

The purely theoretical model introduces concepts and explanations with no practical
application or demonstration. Many students never fully understand the relevance or meaning
of the concepts and theory without the reinforcement and demonstration practical application
provides [10]. Many of the older operating systems textbooks [24,32] follow this method with
the assumption that course coordinators will provide the practical activities. More recent
operating systems textbooks have started to mention and incorporate some of the existing
operating system courseware such as Nachos [10], OSP [21], and BACI [5].

To provide the practical demonstration of the theory and the ability for students to test their
understanding it is possible to introduce a collection of unrelated practical projects and
activities. Examples of individual projects from the literature include physical demonstrations
[36], animations [18] concurrency simulators [5,22], and quizzes [16].

Often these resources do not meld together in any way and generally don't deal directly with an
operating system. Consequently students often have difficulty relating the activity with the
operating systems principles that the activity is meant to explain. There is also a tendency to
produce students with an understanding of each separate concept but without a grasp on how
these concepts fit together to produce an operating system [37]. Additionally, the observation
that students work hardest at assessable activities leads to students who understand only the
principles associated with those activities that were assessable.

To address the lack of integration provided by separate projects some classes use a simulated
operating system that provides an environment in which most operating system concepts can
be shown. The intent of using a simulated, rather than a real operating system, is to reduce the
learning curve associated with becoming familiar with the system. However, experience using
PRMS (Process and Resources Management System)[18] and RCOS [9,10] has shown that the
effort required by students to understand a simulated operating system can still be considerable
[10].

Additionally the simulation may not exhibit exactly the behaviour of a typical operating system
[14, 31, 37]. As a result the student must perform the conceptual leap from the behaviour of the
simulation to real operating system behaviour.

The 1992 offering of 85349 made use of PRMS [18]. PRMS was used to demonstrate the
operation of operating systems data structures via animation and allow students to modify the
source code and investigate the outcomes. While the animation provided by PRMS was well
received by students it only covered two of the areas studied in operating systems and had
numerous design and implementation problems which made it difficult for students to modify.
In particular the combination of animation code with operating system code confused students
and made it difficult for them to form appropriate mental models of the operating system.

Drawing on the lessons learnt during the use of PRMS and a wish list of desired features [10]
RCOS was built during 1993 with further development occurring during 1994. RCOS is a
portable, multi-tasking operating system (OS) designed to demonstrate general operating
system principles through controlled animation, and to allow simple modification and
experimentation with OS data structures and algorithms.

The use of RCOS during 1995 and 1996 was a success with 74% of students agreeing that
helped them understand operating system concepts with 28% believing it was too difficult to
use [9]. Use of RCOS in 85349 ended in 1996 due to the transition of CQU students away from
MS-DOS to the Windows platform.

Using a real operating system means that students are able to experiment with a real system
and its implementation details. However the students must climb an even steeper learning
curve than that involved with a simulated operating system [19]. The sheer speed and
complexity of modern computer systems make them difficult for the average student to
understand [26].

An attempt in the early 1990s to use the Minix [35] operating system at CQU confirmed these
difficulties. Many distance students were not able to install Minix let alone observe it in action
[10]. However, in an appropriate context a real operating system can be useful in teaching
operating system concepts.

An example of this is the responses to a question posted on Slashdot (http://www.slashdot.org/)

in late 2000. It was a request about what systems Universities were using to teach operating
systems. Responses from students throughout the world mentioned the following operating
systems (both complete and toy): Mach, Yalnix, Linux, Minix, RoadRunner, Nachos, OSP,
Xinu, Lego, uCOS, DLXOS, L4. (http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/00/12/08/2339254.shtml)

WHY IS LEARNING ABOUT OPERATING SYSTEMS DIFFICULT?

The study of operating systems involves gaining an understanding of both the responsibilities
of an operating system, the algorithms and data structures used in implementing these
responsibilities, and how an operating system interacts with the other components of a
computer system. Teaching operating systems involves balancing coverage of a significant
amount of theory with the desire to provide some practical relevance of the material and has
always been a challenge [30].

The economic pressures and the tendency to open access in today's Universities results in
courses having large enrollments including students from all walks of life. The variety in the
background, culture and capabilities of students makes it exceedingly hard to introduce the
difficult, abstract concepts of operating systems. A further problem at CQU is that very few of
the students entering 85349 have the prerequisite knowledge expected by most of the common
operating system textbooks. Further adding to the difficulty is the inconsistent use of
terminology throughout the field. Two different textbooks may have subtly different
definitions for important concepts. These differences become very confusing for students
attempting to grasp the concepts.

A large number of the concepts introduced in operating systems courses (e.g. processes and
concurrency) are abstractions and are not easily understood [36]. Additionally many of these
concepts are dynamic concepts that cannot be easily explained in a static medium such as print.
While operating systems texts use images to illustrate concepts they do not portray the
dynamic nature of operating systems abstractions [36]. Students find it easier to understand
these concepts when they are grounded to visual objects.

Studies have shown that relatively few students reach an acceptable level of achievement in
science and mathematics [8]. Ben-Ari [2] suggests that students often have no effective model
of a computer as an accessible ontological reality and that this is a serious obstacle to learning
computer science. Many of the traditional approaches used to teach operating systems rely on
behaviourist teaching practices and do not explicitly address the construction of a model of the
operating system by students. Without a good theoretical base students revert to rote learning.

It is now widely held that objectivist approaches suffer a number of weaknesses that decrease
their educational effectiveness. For example, Confrey [13] suggests that objectivist approaches
require that the instructor, rather than students, is responsible for simplifying the contents of a
knowledge domain. As a result the objectivist approaches present students with a simplified
model of complex knowledge and deprive the students of the benefits gained by simplifying
the knowledge domain. It can be said that modern day operating systems textbooks contain
little more than a simplification of the complex knowledge domain that is operating systems.

Ben-Ari [2] believes that many of the phenomena observed in the computer science literature,
such as the haphazard construction of computer science concepts and the perception that
computer science is hard, can be avoided by using a constructivist approach. For example,
contemporary theories of learning place emphasis on gaining knowledge through appropriation
of information. This is central to a constructivist tradition of learning that emphasizes the role
of the learner in knowledge creation. Implications for teaching involve encouraging students to
plan and define their goals for learning based on their existing knowledge; allowing students
opportunity to examine their processes of thinking and problem solving, that is to become
meta-cognitive processors of information; and providing learning experiences that engage the
learner.

The importance of student activity, especially in the construction of mental models, can be seen
in the literature on the use of animation in computer science education. While students report
feeling that animations aid their understanding of algorithms [33] there have been a number of
reports showing limited or negative results (e.g. [6]. In the majority of cases the positive result
from the use of animation was small and not statistically significant [34]]. Pane et al [29]
suggests that the challenge is to engage the student in the activity to encourage students to
actively experiment with animations and simulations. Designing and implementing an
animation forces the student to identify the fundamental operations of the algorithm. It
encourages the student to become the teacher [34]. Bergin et al [3] attribute higher motivation
and better integration and retention of content to the active engagement on the part of students.

RATIONALE AND AIMS OF RCOS.JAVA

The design and construction of RCOS.java was influenced by the CQU context, previous
experience in teaching operating systems and the literature on educational technology.
However, the initial spark for the RCOS.java project was provided by a combination of the
release of Windows'95, a move at CQU from Pascal to C++ as the first year programming
language, the arrival of Java, the Java Cup International and the presence of three advanced-
level students ready to work.

During 1995 it become obvious that CQU would adopt C++ as the first year programming
language. RCOS supported the ability to execute programs written by students using the
RCOS Pascal compiler. Rather than expect new students to learn Pascal simply to use RCOS it
became necessary to modify the RCOS compiler to compile C/C++ programs.

Implemented as an MS-DOS application RCOS relies on a number of low-level BIOS calls.

The use of these calls meant that the operation of RCOS under Windows'95 was problematic
and would become increasingly so with the development of Windows NT. While RCOS was
designed to be portable the effort involved to port RCOS to the Windows32 platform was not
trivial. However, with increasing use of the newer Windows operating systems amongst CQU
students it became necessary to identify an alternative.

In late 1995 the hype surrounding the Java programming language was just commencing. One
of the main features of Java being promoted was portability. The ability to write code once and
then run it on any system. This feature promised to protect the investment required to write a
system as complex as RCOS.java. To encourage interest Sun Microsystems organised a Java
contest with attractive prizes and a category for educational applications
(http://java.sun.com/applets/archive/javacontest/).

The long terms goals in developing RCOS.java were to provide a system that would

•reproduce all the benefits and capabilities of RCOS,

RCOS.java had to provide a simulation of an entire operating system and supporting
hardware with code that was simple for students to understand and modify. This should
include the ability to execute student programs and provide animated representations of the
internal state of the operating system and hardware.
•address some of the problems experience with RCOS, and
The major problems was that portability could only be achieved by rewriting low-level
support functions.
•harness improving technology to provide new possibilities.
For example, use of the platform independence, distribution, and multimedia capabilities.

The pedagogical emphasis in the development of RCOS.java is to provide a system to make it

easier for students to construct and test mental models of operating systems. Animation of the
operating system operation is intended to aid in the construction of mental models. While the
ability for students to interact with the animation, write their own programs, and to modify the
internals of RCOS.java are provided to enable students to test their mental models.

THE FEATURES OF RCOS.JAVA

RCOS.java is currently a Java application consisting of 250 classes, with over 100,000 lines of
source code. The classes can be broken into five major categories: hardware, operating system,
animation, message system, p-code compiler. RCOS.java is an open source project and the
code and associated resources are available from http://rcosjava.sourceforge.net/

Hardware
RCOS.java implements a collection of simple hardware devices including CPU, Disk Drive,
RAM and terminals. The CPU is a stack-based, p-machine CPU [12] and is based on the CPU
used in RCOS. The disk is based on an IBM 3740 8 inch diskette. RAM has 20 elements each
of 1024 bytes. User input/output is via 8 text-only (80x15) "green screen" terminals.

The simplicity of the hardware devices is intended to ease the initial student learning curve.
The flexibility inherent in the design of RCOS.java means that at a later stage more complex
simulated hardware could be introduced.

Operating System
The RCOS.java operating system is a micro-kernel, message passing operating system. The
micro-kernel handles interrupts, context switching and generates messages to other operating
system components to perform traditional operating system services such as memory
management, process and disk scheduling.

Each of the operating system components provides a layer of abstraction and implements
various operating system specific algorithms. For example the process scheduler allows
students to choose from round robin, FIFO (First In, First Our) or priority based scheduling
algorithms. Operating system components that have been implemented include a disk drive
scheduler, a memory manager, inter-process communication handler that supports semaphores
and shared memory, a process scheduler and terminal manager.

Animation
RCOS.java has a number of classes, referred to as animators that are responsible for providing
a graphical representation of what is happening with the simulated operating system and
hardware. Some animators also provide methods by which the user can modify the operation of
the operating system and hardware in real time. For example, the user can see the lifecycle of a
program and modify its execution behaviour while it is running and also modify the algorithms
used for process and disk scheduling.

Current animators include the:

•Process scheduler animator,

The process scheduler displays the Zombie, Blocked, Ready and running queues. It allows
modification of the scheduling algorithm, the quantum, and the speed of the animation
display. Figure 1 is a screen dump of the animator for the process scheduler.
•IPC manager animator;
Provides a view of currently allocated memory, semaphore values and of shared memory. It
shows in real time memory the allocation, reading and writing of memory.
•CPU animator.
The CPU Animator shows an in-depth view of the P-Code CPU including the current stack,
register values and assembly language instructions.

While the current interface is based upon a multi-window format (one window for each
animator) the flexibility of the design enables the interface to be modified without need of
changing the underlying operating system or messaging system. The animation system has also
been designed to enable the messaging system to interact with allowing text descriptions to be
displayed against a currently displayed animator.

Message system
The components of the RCOS.java operating system communicate via the use of RCOS
messages. The messaging system uses a number of software patterns to increase flexibility.
Each message is placed into three broad categories based on its destination: animator only,
operating system only, and both (animator and operating system bound).

Since all activities in RCOS.java achieve through the distribution of messages it is possible to
add a recording feature. This feature is designed to allow a session with RCOS.java to be saved
and played back at a later time. The applications of the recording feature include students or
teachers creating RCOS.java sequences to demonstrate and explain particular operating system
concepts. The use of an XML based recording format allows the saved data to be modified and
used by other XML aware applications.
Fig. 1: RCOS.java, Animator for process scheduler
P-code compiler
The RCOS.java CPU executes p-code [12]. The P-Code compiler distributed with RCOS.java
is implement in Java and compiles a simplified C/C++ syntax. The compiler allows students to
create their own applications to be run in RCOS.java. The compiler was implemented in Java
using ANTLR (ANother Tool for Language Recognition) tool. ANTLR provided a C/C++
grammar, which was modified it to include various specific RCOS, commands for disk drive,
interprocess commands and memory management. Only simple compilation is allowed with
libraries and other advanced C/C++ features not implemented.

FUTURE PLANS

Since the initial implementation RCOS.java has been redesigned, recoded and converted to
Java 1.2. The choice of implementation in the Java language, and Java's subsequent "success"

as a language, has ensured that any time and effort has not been lost over the long coding time.
Future plans for RCOS.java revolve around two major tasks: developing appropriate
educational uses of RCOS.java and further improving the features and capabilities of
RCOS.java.

Due to a number of factors RCOS.java has not yet been used to teach operating systems.
Computer-based learning (CBL) has been widely criticised for using poor teaching strategies.
Van der Brande [38] claims that 'only 3% of educational software has been written in the
context of an articulated pedagogic rationale' (p23). The intent with RCOS.java is to emphasise
active, student-based learning and the development of the higher level learning skills of
analysis, synthesis, evaluation or problem solving. Achieving this lofty goal is no easy task and
will take a significant effort over the next year.

Future planned extensions to RCOS.java include upgrades to the current RCOS.java hardware
including more complex CPU, disk drive, terminals and the addition of new hardware devices
such as network cards. Further expansion of the recording mechanism to handle different
forms of multimedia, such as audio, is also planned.

CONCLUSION

RCOS.java is a simulated operating system implemented in Java and provides a number of

features intended to aid students in gaining an understanding of the algorithms, concepts and
theories behind the design, construction and operation of operating systems. These features
include

•animation of the internal operation of the operating system and hardware

•the ability to write, compile and execute "RCOS.java programs"
•the ability to read and modify the code which implements the RCOS.java "operating system"
•the ability to create "scripted" RCOS.java sessions to demonstrate particular topics.

Development work on RCOS.java is continuing as an open source project. The code and
related resources for RCOS.java can be found at http://sourceforge.net/projects/rcosjava/

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David Jones
Faculty of Informatics and Communication
Central Queensland University
Rockhampton, 4701
Australia
Email: d.jones@cqu.edu.au

Andrew Newman
Bluedog Technologies
Brisbane, 4064
Australia
Email: andrew@bluedog.com.au

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