1.5 KiB
PC/AT
PC-compatible machines need no introduction. They are one of the most popular machines of all time. Collapse OS has a 8086 assembler and has boot code allowing it to run on a PC/AT-compatible machine, using BIOS interrupts in real mode. Collapse OS always runs in real mode.
In this recipe, we will compile Collapse OS and write it to a USB drive that is bootable on a modern PC-compatible machine.
Gathering parts
- A modern PC-compatible machine that can boot from a USB drive.
- A USB drive
- qemu for emulation
Build the binary
Running make
in this folder with yield:
- mbr.bin: a 512 byte binary that goes at the beginning of the disk
- os.bin: 8086 Collapse OS binary
- disk.bin: a concatenation of the above, with
blkfs
appended to it starting at0x2000
.
disk.bin
is what goes on the drive.
This binary has BLK
and AT-XY
support, which means you have disk I/Os and
can run VE
.
Emulation
You can run the built binary in qemu using make emul
.
Running on a modern PC
First, copy disk.bin
onto your USB drive. For example, on an OpenBSD machine,
it could look like:
doas dd if=disk.bin of=/dev/sd1c
Your USB drive is now BIOS-bootable. Boot your computer and enter your BIOS setup to make sure that "legacy boot" (non-EFI boot, that is, BIOS boot) is enabled. Configure your boot device priority to ensure that the USB drive has a chance to boot.
Reboot, you have Collapse OS. Boot is of course instantaneous (we're not used to this with modern software...).