Question about which tools to use, bugs, the best way to implement a function, etc should go here. Don't forget to see if your question is answered in the wiki first! When in doubt post here.
I have my kernel.bin file, which I tries to get onto a floppy disk image along with the GRUB bootloader. I've followed the guide on the Wiki and copied the stage1 and stage2 files into my folder and made a pad file with the size of 750 bytes, and using this command:
The first command means that the kernel starts at block #200 (see above) and its size is 18 blocks. This just loads the kernel into the memory, but does not start it. The boot command really starts the kernel.
I'm not exactly familiar with the floppy style of GRUB (I do no-emulation CDs and HDs only), but don't you need a menu.lst file to tell grub what it needs to do?
If GRUB does not find a menu.lst file, it simply shows the command prompt and lets the user enter the commands manually, that would normally be listed in the menu.lst file. For the barebones tutorial, no menu.lst file and no even a file system is used, the kernel is simply loaded by entering its sector address into the command prompt.
And yes, it works the same way on real and simulated computers. Just enter the commands I quoted above.