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Neptune Boot Loader 2.0.1 Beta
The Neptune Boot Loader is a boot loader written in MSVC and NASM. This new version adds on some major improvements over the previous releases.



Features
-Dynamic Boot Menu
-Improved Configuration file
-Native PE EXE, DLL Booting
-MultiBoot compliant image Booting
-Floppy disk, Hard disk support
-Partitioning support
-Can chainload Windows and other OSs
-Can install on a hard disk partition
-FAT12, FAT16
-Restart, Shutdown options
-Can relocate when loading to 64K

Documentation
HTML Documentation

Download
If you would like to test the software, please download bootldr.zip (14K). The default configuration file is set up to boot NEPTUNE/SYSTEM/OSLOAD.EXE on floppy disk 0 or Windows on partition 0, first hard disk. Please see the HTML documentation for more information on how to configure the boot loader and install it.

Future Support
-FAT32 Support
-More automated HDD installation
-More MultiBoot Info support (please see documentation for details.)

Feedback
Please let me know if there are any problems running the software or if it works. The software has been tested in Bochs, Virtual PC, and real hardware.

I thank you for your interest

Nice start
My thougs are

• Configuring issues - took me a while to understand how to get my kernel booting (maybe add a option for it to find kernels on the disk and if there is one boot-able file just load that)
• break windows addiction
• outher filesystems support

apart from that im gonna keep watching it with some new tools and some cross-platform stuff it may be a nice alternative to grub

sprints wrote:[*] break windows addiction

I'm guessing the whole purpose of this bootloader was to support PE EXEs and DLLs produced by Windows compilers - otherwise you could just use GRUB.

Hello,

I appreciate your suggestions, sprints.

The boot loader originated with native PE EXE/DLL booting support. This new release tacks on additional features that allows an OS (Such as ours) to boot from a hard disk drive while having most of the capabilities of modern boot loaders.

Any more suggestions are welcome

neon wrote:Hello,

I appreciate your suggestions, sprints.

The boot loader originated with native PE EXE/DLL booting support. This new release tacks on additional features that allows an OS (Such as ours) to boot from a hard disk drive while having most of the capabilities of modern boot loaders.

Any more suggestions are welcome

Perhaps PE 64-bit booting (if you didn't have that yet). That makes me wonder: has anyone here ever succeeded in getting a 64-bit PE kernel up and running?

Hello,

Creature wrote:Perhaps PE 64-bit booting (if you didn't have that yet). That makes me wonder: has anyone here ever succeeded in getting a 64-bit PE kernel up and running?

Thats an interesting idea, and should not be too hard to add.

Ill be sure to look into it, thanks for the suggestion

Very good bootloader, Mike! It may be floppy alternative for Grub!
This is maybe just too old thread to post on it.

Lukand wrote:Very good bootloader, Mike! It may be floppy alternative for Grub!
This is maybe just too old thread to post on it.

Did you have to bump the thread? BTW, GRUB supports floppies.

omarrx024 wrote:

Lukand wrote:Very good bootloader, Mike! It may be floppy alternative for Grub!
This is maybe just too old thread to post on it.

Did you have to bump the thread? BTW, GRUB supports floppies.

I know that, I meant floppy alternative for Windows users, which don't want to write their own bootloader.
What is wrong with bumping threads?

What about the source code? Knowing how to load MZ/LE/NE/PE EXEs and ELF/AOUT is something that needs more documentation and real world code examples.

Maybe it explains it:

Please note that we are not currently allowing access to the Neptune SVN at this time. The project is currently closed source. We do plan to release it again later as a shared source project for educational use only. We have moved the project back to a closed source license in order to facilitate the movement and privacy of the new SVN location and to facilitate the designing of internal components of the software system.

neon wrote:Neptune Boot Loader 2.0.1 Beta
The Neptune Boot Loader is a boot loader written in MSVC and NASM. This new version adds on some major improvements over the previous releases.



Features
-Dynamic Boot Menu
-Improved Configuration file
-Native PE EXE, DLL Booting
-MultiBoot compliant image Booting
-Floppy disk, Hard disk support
-Partitioning support
-Can chainload Windows and other OSs
-Can install on a hard disk partition
-FAT12, FAT16
-Restart, Shutdown options
-Can relocate when loading to 64K

Documentation
HTML Documentation

Download
If you would like to test the software, please download bootldr.zip (14K). The default configuration file is set up to boot NEPTUNE/SYSTEM/OSLOAD.EXE on floppy disk 0 or Windows on partition 0, first hard disk. Please see the HTML documentation for more information on how to configure the boot loader and install it.

Future Support
-FAT32 Support
-More automated HDD installation
-More MultiBoot Info support (please see documentation for details.)

Feedback
Please let me know if there are any problems running the software or if it works. The software has been tested in Bochs, Virtual PC, and real hardware.

I thank you for your interest

Hello,

It should be noted that the software provided in this thread was posted almost five years ago and has long since been rewritten to support many more features. Although we do plan to hold an official release relatively soon, it is not quite ready at this time.

The software is currently closed source - however, I do tend to share parts of it to those interested. I just keep it closed source for now since the architecture may change as the design progresses. For this reason I do not feel that allowing access to its source code would be helpful since any part of it is subject to change.

For loading executable files...I do believe that the Wiki covers ELF/AOUT very well. Even for MZ/PE there is MSDN which covers every part of it. The Winternals books are also very good with detailing their internals. Either way, the best way to learn is to experiment.

neon wrote:Either way, the best way to learn is to experiment.

I have to totally agree here. 90% of what I know I learnt by trial and error, 5% from official documentation, and 5% from what other people have done (whether that is their source code, or advice they give when I need help.)

Oh my god! Hey, Mike. Brokenthorn?

Lukand wrote:

omarrx024 wrote:

Lukand wrote:Very good bootloader, Mike! It may be floppy alternative for Grub!
This is maybe just too old thread to post on it.

Did you have to bump the thread? BTW, GRUB supports floppies.

I know that, I meant floppy alternative for Windows users, which don't want to write their own bootloader.
What is wrong with bumping threads?

What's wrong isn't the bumping the thread, but bumping without anything to add to the conversation is annoying. It buries more recent threads.