OSDev.org

Neptune Boot Loader 2

Neptune's boot loader has been rewritten to use the new boot library written for Neptune's two main startup programs. Because this is a rewrite, I am releasing it as version 2.



Features

-Modular. Composed of three programs in two files and its usage of the boot library
-Everything runs in protected mode
-Portable: Works in tested laptops, PCs, Virtual PC, and all tested versions of Bochs
-Supports all volume types and filesystems that the BootLib supports. Currently FAT12; Any volume drive (No HDD support yet do to technical limitations in the BootLib.)
-Very easy to boot other OS's or add additional entries to boot from by making additional entries in the boot.lst configuration file.
-Hardware independent. All hardware access is done through a standard one-function BIOS calling interface via the BootLib.
-Basic boot time command parser (Currently being re-implemented)
-Not much of a feature, but written in C using MSVC 2008, with NASM.

More information can be obtained here (Clicky).

Testing

If you would like to test it, please obtain the files from here (Clicky).

To install, first format a floppy disk or virtual floppy image for a FAT12 file system. Write bootsect.bak in two parts as shown below using partcopy. This is needed as bootsect.bak does not contain a BPB table by default. Instead, it must be merged with a preformatted boot sector.
All other files can be copied over as any other file.

Please let me know if you run into any problems. Know issues are:

-BootLdr will give an error if boot.lst is not found
-Filenames in boot.lst are sent straight to the filesystem. Do to filesystem naming conventions, all image names must be in all CAPS in order to be found by BootLib's file system code.
-Does not parse directory paths nor volume mount points. BootLib kind of supports this but it is not yet used by the boot loader.
-Command parser not yet implemented. One of our dedicated programmers are working on it...

Please let me know if you have any suggestions, comments, or questions.

hi, I've never read of bootlib before but what is the point in a system that only supports removable media or floppy, I haven't seen a floppy disk in well over a decade and CD-ROM only provides a read-only space for an OS (slows boot time)

on the plus side I have tested this in my PC, vmware, virtualbox and qemu and it works fine

lcowles wrote:hi, I've never read of bootlib before but what is the point in a system that only supports removable media or floppy, I haven't seen a floppy disk in well over a decade and CD-ROM only provides a read-only space for an OS

Crickey, are you really going to be one of those types of forum members? Look:

No HDD support yet do to technical limitations in the BootLib.

Emphasis mine. No HDD support yet. So it's planned, it's just not there yet. Oh, and it's tagged 'beta', so it's obviously not complete, and may contain bugs. Thanks for testing, but why moan and complain about the lack of features that the OP has already said are missing? You may not find floppy booting very useful anymore, but many forum members here still do it.

Please, if you don't have anything nice to post, please don't post at all.

dude don't flame me because I point out an error in the Lib as mentioned by the authors post (not even the damn project whch I complemented) now I don't want to flame troll etc it's just an opinion so chill

When I browsed the forum you appeared like a spambot. And your posts in this forum are very close to noise - some even contain pure nonsense.

And you just whined like a little kid with waaaaay too much ego. There was no flame at your address, and even if there was your reaction was completely uncalled for.

Combuster = ++quok;
free(lcowles);

Looks interesting neon, I'll try it out on real hardware & Parallels when I get a chance.

lcowles wrote: dude don't flame me because I point out an error in the Lib as mentioned by the authors post (not even the damn project whch I complemented) now I don't want to flame troll etc it's just an opinion so chill

The bootlib is Neptune's Boot Library, which is used in several of Neptune boot time and startup programs to aid in compatibility and to insure code is not duplicated.

Also, its not an error. It is a feature soon to come. I thank you for testing it though. It is a complete rewrite of the original bootloader (this time built with the Boot Library) which is why I decided to make it public for testing.

neon: looks nifty, is it going to be freeware/open source?

Troy Martin wrote:neon: looks nifty, is it going to be freeware/open source?

Thanks for the compliment
I can make the boot loader itself open source. It wont be very useful though do to the bulk of the code being interfaces in the boot library The boot loader program itself is quite small actually.