OSDev.org

Me and a friend of mine are going to write our own OS. My question is now, are there any books which tell one the whole story of writing an OS? Or where do you all get your information from?

john,

The problem with your above statement is that there are no set rules about how you write an OS from step 1 to step 21... It takes a lot of creativity and ideas on how to implement all your functions that the OS will perform. For casual learning of some common concepts, stick to tutorials and example code from the Internet.

Then when you are confident in your system programming skills, I can suggest one book that has given me a lot of insight into OS design, and how most operating systems do things and what is wrong with that particular methodology.

The book is called "Understanding Operating Systems" written by Ida M. Flynn and Ann McIver McHoes. Personally this book has helped me incredibly, and made me think alot about OS that are currently popular like Linux and Windows.

I hope I answered your question...
   HuntrCkr

This book might help too:

http://www.sensorypublishing.com/mmurtl.html

I find that I use different books for differenet parts....

For all the pmode stuff I really like "Protected Mode Software Architecture"
(intel docs are good to have too)

For hardware stuff....(titles might be a little off)
Undocumented PC
Indespensable PC Hardware Book

and just about any other old assembly lang book at used book stores.

There are a couple of books(besides the mmurtl one) that you can get that are about OS design/writting. But they tend to be more theory and about $75 a piece.

Protected Mode Software Architecture
Tom Shanley
Mindshare, Inc.
2-201-55447-x

I consider this book one of the best protected mode references ever.  Easier than the Intel manuals for beginners to read, all inclusive, and thoroughly diagrammed.

I've also seen the TOC for the two books Chase mentioned near the end of his post, and they look EXCELLENT!

Make sure you have an assembly reference, though.  TASM came with a great one (for a great assembler!), which you might be able to order straight from Borland.  Just ask for their Assembly Quick Reference from the lastest version of TASM.

Jeff

Two books I have found useful are in addition to the others listed in previous post are:

Understanding the LINUX Kernel: From I/O Ports to Process Management
By Daniel Pierre Bovet, Marco Cesati
O'Reilly & Associates

Linux Core Kernel Commentary, 2nd Edition
By Scott Andrew Maxwell
The Coriolis Group

These give you a good tour of the internals of a working kernel and have really helped me by clarifying how some things work.

You will probably want to use your own solutions when it come to your individual OS design, but it sure helps to find a good approach to the common problems of OS development when you know how someone else has done it in the past.

Good Luck (you will need it

Since many here are both relatively inexperienced at assembly language, and are using Netwide Assembler, I would recommend _Assembly Language Step by Step_ second edition, by Jeff Duntemann (Wiley & Sons Inc., ISBN 0-471-37523-3). It is among the best introductory programming books I've seen - good enough for a *first time* programmer to learn x86 asembly language from, no mean feat - and gives anexcellent overview of the various memory models for the x86 family. It is also unique in that it not only covers Linux as well as MS-DOS, but also uses NASM as it's target assembler. An excellent choice for detailed review of assembly programming.  

I definitly second that!

I read this book a long while back, and found in an excellent resource!  (I might've had the first edition, though, because I don't remember the Linux stuff... all the more reason to grab it, though!!!)

Thanks to Schol-R-LEA, I remembered another one on the same topic:

Assembly Language for the PC - 3rd Edition (might be newer ones now!!!)
Brady Programming Library
John Socha and Peter Norton
1-56686-016-4

This is, no doubt, an older book (1992), and covers (as far as I remember) only DOS, but again, it's a great introduction to assembly, and one of the books I learnt from.

I actually grabbed it at a computer book liquidation... I think I only paid $20 for it!  Those sales are excellent for picking up good programming books!

Jeff

Teach yourself assembler, 2nd edition

(c) 1993
Mark Goodwin
MIS: Press
ISBN 1-55828-329-3

old skool assembler, comes with a 5 1/2 floppy disk,
Tasm code, bought it for $2

this is a great book (i have the PDF laying arround somewhere.)

*cough* http://realtime.ssu.ac.kr/cgi-realtime/ ... are&page=3  *COUGH*

This is a good book for basic OS design.  I read it to get an idea of where to start, and what is involved.  The operating system included is simple to understand (although it has some design flaws).  Although I would recommend not doing a lot of things the way he does, there is still plenty of worthwhile info.