OSDev.org

I have never tried to program an os before and I'm not very good at programming either. Where should a person who want's to create an operating system start?

You really need to find a way to practice programming. Get yourself a compiler or assembler and assign yourself simple, unambitious little mini-projects -- things you can finish in a few hours or minutes -- and write, compile, and run the code. Have the code print to the screen to prove that it works. If the code doesn't work, practice figuring out what went wrong, why the code does not work, and making changes to the code until it works properly.

(One rule I made for myself is that, if I can't figure out very quickly why the code doesn't work, then I've probably written too much at once, and I'd best start over with something simpler, and add less code at a time. So add SMALL chunks of code to your system, and verify that each one will work reliably before using it in a future mini-project.)

I'm writing my own little toy OS. I don't have a kernel, but I have been writing lots of little toy mini-projects to build little bits of the code that may or may not end up as part of my OS. I've been at it seriously since last November, so I have quite a few pages up now. This may or may not fit your style, but you might like to take a look:

http://www.karig.net/

Thanks Karig. You're website is quite interesting to me and I found some very useful links there.

I found this little tutorial to be very interesting
http://www.howtodothings.com/showarticl ... rticle=525
and I will try it out now.

Also I registered as I have a feeling I'll come here a lot.

I also read about the book MMURTL V1.0. Is this book any good?

Ok I need some help. I've compiled the boot file but how to I create a diskette which I can boot from? The program RawWriter for windows just confused me as it wants an img file. I only have a boot file. What have I missed?

I would go to here:
http://alexfru.chat.ru/epm.html
get the program called bootprog.zip,this is the best program for beginers.
It comes with a boot loader ,that once installed on a floppy,
Will let you put a exe or com file on the floppy,and it will boot it,so say you have a exe call myprog.exe maded with your conpiler put it on the disk in the A: drive and reboot the pc and bingo ;D ,or if you, Or the compiler uses dos int's then bingo :'(.
So do not uses dos int's in your program. bios are ok.


ASHLEY4.

Thanks for the reply. I also managed to make it work using RawWriter. But I had to compile it with nasm instead. The other compiler I used did not work very well but it worked as soon as I tried nasm.

try my xosdev tutorials at osdever.net in the tuts section. i made them to be read and not just READ. you know, plain english.

there are also many great tutorials for begginners on the site.

also try OSRC, geezer's osdev, and osdev.org's msg board. don't forget google(use Ggle to find the above sites)

about the bootfile thing it depends how your bootloader loads the kernel. Is it a linear file or a FAT floppy? Use something like rawwrite to write it to floppy. I use it and it works great.

I read some place about something called "OS Development for Dummies" Can anyone enlighten me?

Follow the link i give you and it is there

ASHLEY4.

Yes sorry. I was confused by the fact that the link
http://www.mega-tokyo.com/osd
did not work but I looked further down and there was another link.