OSDev.org

I did some OS development before and
I gave a LONG break... but now I'm back.

previously I used to boot from floppy but
now I want to learn how to boot from CDROM.

how should I prepare the boot image so that
when I burn it using Nero into a CD-RW, I be
able to boot from it? I know i have to learn the
CDROM filesystem format... but is there a boot sector
or something like there is in HDD and FDD? and
when ( somehow ) loaded, does it also start at
0x0000:0x7C00, does it start also in real mode?
I need all the basics to be able
to load from CDROM...

can anybody help me?

thanx

The easiest way in Nero is to choose bootable CD and make sure floppy emulation is turned on. You can then point it to an image you created (which you would've written to floppy) and as far as your code is concerned it works just as a floppy would. It sees no difference. This way no need to learn the CD file formats (of course you will need that later in your OS if you ever want to read what's on a CD/DVD)

maybe this helps: http://bos.asmhackers.net/docs/booting/cd_boot/ ?

We have a few words about that on the FAQ -- mainly that if you don't want to toy with "fake floppies on CDROM", you can use El Torito ...

And that's virtually all i can say since i haven't practiced cdroms. sorry.

Here my 2 cents, first the easiest way is to make a floppy or hdd image and click on the make bootable option, in your burn software.
It will than ask you for a bootable image, you can point it to the A: drive (with a bootable floppy in it) or to a image already made.
It will add some bin file to the disk, you can then add more stuff to the disk.
But you need to remember that any thing you add to the disk can not be got at unless you have a atapi driver.
Also any stuff in you image can not be used from pmode even with a pmode floppy driver, as soon as you enter pmode emulation ends.

So the only way to use all program in the floppy image, is to load them from real or unrealmode.
Eg: like menuet does.