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Date:      Thu, 1 Aug 2002 13:13:51 -0400 (EDT)
From:      Chuck Robey <chuckr@chuckr.org>
To:        "Andrew R. Reiter" <arr@watson.org>
Cc:        Ryan Sommers <ryans@gamersimpact.com>, <freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: Assembly, Kernels and Bootstraps
Message-ID:  <20020801131036.G379-100000@april.chuckr.org>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1020731162220.70398B-100000@fledge.watson.org>

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On Wed, 31 Jul 2002, Andrew R. Reiter wrote:

> On Wed, 31 Jul 2002, Ryan Sommers wrote:
>
> :Greetings,
> :
> :Recently I became interested in researching and learning whatever I could
> :about how a computer boots and what is involved. There are probably better
> :places to get this information but since FreeBSD is my development
> :environment of choice I thought I would start here.
> :
> :I just have a few questions that if you could take a few minutes to answer
> :you would make my day.
> :
> :Several of the sites I have visited on assembly say it isn't needed
> :anymore. Is it still needed to write a bootstrap?
> :
> :Where is a good starting point to just read through some of the Kernel
> :source? Where is the entry point? I'm on all x86 architecture.

Yes to the above, but if you have access to the cvs archive, there's some
good READMEs that I don't think are in the current sources.  Too bad as
far as I'm concerned (maybe I just can't find them).  See if you can dig
out the README* files (3 of them) from RELENG2 in
src/sys/i386/boot/biosboot.  They have enough answers in them to give you
a lot of the right questions to ask, which is the real start of things.

Try reading that old code, too.  The methods have gotten more
sophisticated now, but at the cost of simplicity, so that old code is the
best place to do some learning.

> :
>
>
> Ever think about reading the intel manuals?
>
> --
> Andrew R. Reiter
> arr@watson.org
> arr@FreeBSD.org
>
>
> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
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>

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chuck Robey         | Interests include C & Java programming, FreeBSD,
chuckr@chuckr.org   | electronics, communications, and signal processing.

New Year's Resolution:  I will not sphroxify gullible people into looking up
fictitious words in the dictionary.
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