Setting It All Up.

[Joshua50187]

hello everyone, I have been trying to work on an Os off and on. though i have stopped for the last two years and forgotten and lost all that i have learned. I am now revamped and wish to begin again. I am running in a Vmware machine with ubuntu 10.10 and was wondering if i could get a list of needed tools to get started and maybe a point in the right direction (basically a list of tools you use.). the biggest problems i am having is getting a virtual floppy disk. and help/tutorials/anything will help thank you all in advance. and any questions you have for me will be answered to the best of my ability.




p.s. i understand i am to use the search engine but i honestly dont know what to even look for, and i hope that as time moves forward my posts will become better. thank you

[cristian]

No need to use the search tool, just take a look on wikipedia.
Everything you need is there!

[Joshua50187]

you mean the osdev wiki or wikipedia.com i have looked at both but dont fully understand it i will look again and isolate where i am having issues

[Joshua50187]

The code is assembled in NASM and copied to floppy using partcopy,dd,or debug. Then you simply boot from the floppy. - from babysteps1 tutorial


Got the Nasm part and continued with

nasm boot.asm -f bin -o boot.bin
dd if=boot.bin of=/dev/fd0

1. I dont have a floppy/virtual floppy
2. if i could just even get step one to run in qemu/bochs (I now have both) i believe my questions will be answered

[Joshua50187]

no like i said i have read it for the most part but either miss understand something or dont realize what exactly it is telling me to do. i am currently in the process of throughly reading it top to bottom. all im really looking for is how to setup a good development environment something like:

Nasm- i already have it installed and know how to use it
dd - alittle confused but a basics course on what is happening will help


the part im most confused about is how do i simulate a floppy drive/disk and get the bootloader like the one in babysteps1 to run on bochs/qemu from ubuntu 10.10
after i understand that im sure this post will be solved

Im not asking for code or someone to hold my hand through the whole development just a clear and concise instruction into setting up a development environment and know the basic routine of what to do

[Joshua50187]

Ok stop me if I'm wrong but,

dd can create the floppy .img file on a machine i.e. just the img file on your desktop

Code: Select all

 dd if=/dev/zero of=myimage bs=512 count=2880

bochs and qemu can load that img file anyway even with out a vfd

and i can also use bximage to create the file and use it with bochs as long as i place it in the bochs src file like so

Code: Select all

floppya: 1_44=/dev/zero, status=inserted
boot: floppy

am i on the right track at least. im not a linux guru im only proficient and i dont wish to work in windows cause well it sucks and i love working through the command line and hate having to setup path variables everytime i install a new command line tool

[Joshua50187]

I got soemthing like it working in Qemu where i just loaded the .bin file


still unclear on certain things though and would definitely like a list of steps other people use to prepare their OS for qemu and Bochs thanks for your help everyone

[M-Saunders]

http://mikeos.berlios.de -- get the zip file, extract and look at build-linux.sh. This script demonstrates loopback mounting of floppy disk images under Linux, adding the bootloader with the dd command and so forth.

M