Please help the newbie

[Vyse of Arcadia]

OS development really really fascinates me, and I would love to play around with that, but I have no clue how to start. Can anyone help me with this?

[Karig]

The first thing you need to do is spend time reading OS-development sites like this one (and osdever.net, and www.mega-tokyo.com/forum) to find out what others have done -- the ideas others have had for their own OS. This is to help you think about what you'd like your own OS to be able to do. Once you have some ideas for the design of an OS, break it down into its parts -- boot sector, system loader, task scheduler, memory manager, hardware drivers -- and start figuring out how you'd like to design each of these. Eventually you'll also need to figure out what kind of development environment you'll want to use -- C compiler? Assembler? Run the OS in Bosch, or reboot the computer to run the OS? Run the OS from floppy, or from a partition (or file) on the hard disk?

Short answer: If you have no idea how to start, READ first. Take notes. Ideas will probably suggest themselves to you as you go. Good luck.

[Karig]

Ahem. Sorry. "Bosch" should be "Bochs".