OSDev.org

One note to read before starting:there are no prizes

In this competition,you should design a bootloader smaller than 3.5 MB that does everything the goals say.
If you implement the additional goals,the size limit is 4 MB
The required information follows.
Goals

• Implement under 3.5 Mb a working bootloader
  Scan for a file called OSLOADER in the main directory and load it
  OSLOADER will be a 32-bit PE file under 5 MB linked to the fourth megabyte(0x400000)
  Must use only i386 instructions
  The filesystem is FAT32

Additional Goals

• Initialize long mode and load 64-bit PE file

Contest Rules

• All entries MUST be liberally commented.If an entry does all the goals but is not commented,it will be disqualified.
  All entries MUST be ISC licensed
  All entries MUST be the original work.Collaborations are allowed.
  All entries MUST compile on NASM,GCC,G++ and GAS
  Contest deadline is January 28,2012 12:30 UTC
  Voting for the winner starts at February 1,2011 12:30 UTC
  Voting ends at February 31,2011 12:30 UTC
  Announcing of the winners starts at March 2,2011 12:00 UTC

How To Enter
To enter in this,just post a reply with the source code attached.
What Happens to the first two winners
The first two winners will get applauded,and they are the only ones free to change the license
How it is conducted
Everyone posts their bootloader.Then,after the deadline,the sample OSLOADER files will be distributed.
I will then check whether it works on my AMD Anthlon XP Asus M2V-TVM pc,if it works I will post images of it and voting for the winner starts on the voting start deadline.On the announcing day,we will like applaud all the winners for at least a day or two.The winners will also be mentioned on the announcing day.



If you would like to change any of the details,feel free to leave a comment.

amd64pager wrote: Goals

amd64pager wrote:

• Implement under 3.5 Mb a working bootloader

amd64pager wrote:

• Entries not commented, will be disqualified.
  All entries MUST be ISC licensed

amd64pager wrote: The first two winners will get applauded.

No offense, but makes it sound as if you don't have much experience in OSDev, and just want to get out a working bootloader..

amd64pager wrote:All entries MUST be liberally commented. If an entry does all the goals but is not commented, it will be disqualified.
All entries MUST be ISC licensed.
All entries MUST compile on NASM, GCC, G++ and GAS.

Why is all this necessary? As long as it runs and fits the size parameter, the actual source shouldn't matter. I agree that the license should at least allow the binary to be redistributed, for obvious reasons, but being as specific as ISC is strictly going to annoy people. Most people are going to be fine with giving source, but there's no reason to force them to.

Also, a 3.5 MB size limit is pretty massive. It would be hard to write something that does exceed that limit. An image of my entire OS, including font files and all ports, is only 5 MB. You could probably strip down Linux enough to fit a functional system in 3.5 MB. Competitions in the past have limited things to a single sector (512 bytes,) which is a real challenge. Since the filesystem and executable format are fixed, I bet you could implement a bootloader fitting your parameters as a single stage.

amd64pager wrote:Implement under 3.5 Mb a working bootloader

GRUB is much less than that, despite a pretty massive functionality. Heck, AmigaOS 3.1 had less than that, including drivers, GUI, two text editors and a bunch of utilities...

+1 to Shikhin. Are you trying to get your bootloader custom-made for you?

+1 to NickJohnson. I don't even know what this ISC license is, and I will die ignorant of it since you didn't even have the courtesy to link to it, and I cannot be ar*ed to google for it.

Solar wrote:+1 to NickJohnson. I don't even know what this ISC license is, and I will die ignorant of it since you didn't even have the courtesy to link to it, and I cannot be ar*ed to google for it.

It's basically a two-clause BSD license, it's used by ISC (..isc.org) and many others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISC_license

Can someone just send in a copy of GRUB 2 for booting and objcopy for removing the PE stupidity so we can lock this thread? Nobody is going to enter this "competition" when there's a ton of operational stuff already out there.

I think you need a lot more detail about the PE support that will be required.

The size limit should perhaps be 4k.

How should the judges compare boot loaders ? They load files. If they load successfully what else is there ?

Let's lock this now before as I don't think the discussion's going to go anywhere useful.

@OP although we have had bootloader competitions in the past (generally 512b competitions) and they're not a bad idea per se, this one needs some more thought before opening it up.

Cheers,
Adam