From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Aug 1 10:13:34 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7B36A37B400 for ; Thu, 1 Aug 2002 10:13:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from april.chuckr.org (april.chuckr.org [66.92.147.143]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 964F943E84 for ; Thu, 1 Aug 2002 10:13:25 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from chuckr@chuckr.org) Received: from april.chuckr.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by april.chuckr.org (8.12.5/8.12.5) with ESMTP id g71HDr3j000882; Thu, 1 Aug 2002 13:13:53 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from chuckr@chuckr.org) Received: from localhost (chuckr@localhost) by april.chuckr.org (8.12.5/8.12.5/Submit) with ESMTP id g71HDp5b000864; Thu, 1 Aug 2002 13:13:52 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: april.chuckr.org: chuckr owned process doing -bs Date: Thu, 1 Aug 2002 13:13:51 -0400 (EDT) From: Chuck Robey To: "Andrew R. Reiter" Cc: Ryan Sommers , Subject: Re: Assembly, Kernels and Bootstraps In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020801131036.G379-100000@april.chuckr.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG 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 > with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message