On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 09:06:01AM +0530, Guruprasad Baskaran wrote: > Hi all > i am a new member and an absolute moron. Being new and not knowing a whole lot about kernel programming doesn't mean the latter. Don't sell yourself short; with effort you can do it. On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 09:06:01AM +0530, Guruprasad Baskaran wrote: > i wanted to get any information about how to write a calculator that boots > itself > i know only a bit about booting. > how to capture interrupts and write isr? > thanks > regards > GP It depends on how much of booting you want to do. You don't have the choice of doing all of it (unless you're going to start pulling chips). Loading using GRUB's Multiboot feature should simplify this a great deal, since fewer of the workarounds for x86 16-bit mode brokenness are required. It drops you straight into 32-bit mode, pretty much loading an arbitrary ELF executable. From there about all you need to do is get your ISR's into into an IDT, and decode the input from the keyboard. bochs (c.f. bochs.sourceforge.net) is also very useful for testing x86 bootstrap code before running on live hardware. It's a simulator that has the ability to single-step through your code and so is good for debugging. Some good references for bootstrapping would be: (1) Intel i386 architecture manual vol 3 "System Programming" (basic hw spec) (2) Intel "IO Hub Controller Specification" (builtin devs) (3) "The Undocumented PC" (bios calls) (1) and (2) are available online from developer.intel.com. (3) is hardcopy only. A number of things from (3) are irrelevant if not using M$-DOG. ... and for "How to get into protected mode?" there are hundreds, if not thousands, of quite googlable webpages on this... but notice there is some slang that calls it "pmode", so that might help find search strings. I fully expect the regulars to chime in here. =) Cheers, Bill -- Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ IRC Channel: irc.openprojects.net / #kernelnewbies Web Page: http://www.kernelnewbies.org/
