Introduction

Basic Information

• Introduction
• Required Knowledge
• Beginner Mistakes
• Getting Started
• How To Ask Questions
• GCC Cross-Compiler
• What Order Should I Make Things In?
• Licensing
• Tutorials
• Frequently Asked Questions

Environment

• How kernel, compiler, and C library work together
• Using otherLanguages than C
• UEFI and legacyBIOS (PC)
• Inline Assembly (including examples)
• Object Files and relocation

Bare Bones / Baby Steps

• Bare Bones (C and C++)
• Ada Bare Bones
• C Sharp Bare Bones
• D Bare Bones
• FreeBasic Bare Bones
• Go Bare Bones
• Pascal Bare Bones
• Limine Bare Bones
• The BabyStep Tutorial

Example OS Organization

• Meaty Skeleton

Booting and Setup

• Boot Sequence
• Diskless Booting
• The Global Descriptor Table and aGDT Tutorial
• Interrupts
• Getting Keyboard Input

Testing and Debugging

• Troubleshooting
• Testing
• Unit Testing
• How Do I Use A Debugger With My OS
• Kernel Debugging

Development

• Going Further on x86
• Creating an Operating System
• Code Management

Compiler Development

• What's a compiler?
• Making a Compiler (Theory)
• Code Generation and Optimization Techniques
  • Implementing Conditional Statements And Loops
  • Tail Recursion and Tail Call Optimization

Design Considerations

Kernel Models

• Monolithic Kernel
• Microkernel
• Exokernel and related models
• Modular Kernel

Task Models

• Monotasking Systems
• Multitasking Systems
• Real-Time Systems

Memory and Resource Management

• Memory management - Overview and Introduction
• Segmentation
• Paging
• Memory Allocation
• Page Frame Allocation
• Memory Management Unit, or in-depth description of recursive mappings
• File Management
• File Systems

System Calls

• ARM System Calls

Scheduling

• Processes and Threads
• Context Switching
• Scheduling Algorithms
• Multiprocessor Scheduling
• Blocking Process - processes sleeping and waiting

Process Sychronization

• Synchronization Primitives - Semaphores, mutexes, spinlocks et al.
• Signals

Inter-Process Communication

• Message Passing
• Shared Memory
• Remote Procedure Call

Resources

• Books on OS Development
• Academic Papers on theory and design
• Assembly
• Disk Images with preinstalled GRUB
• Deprecated, yet relevant, bits of specifications
• Chip Numbers, Acronyms and Things
• Resources

Tools

Bootloaders

• Bootloader theory
• GRUB
• Limine
• LILO
• XOSL
• System Commander
• Boot Magic
• Rolling Your Own Bootloader

Compilers

• GCC
  • Cygwin
  • MinGW
  • Dev-C++
  • DJGPP
  • Building aGCC Cross-Compiler
  • Cross-Compiler Successful Builds
  • Porting GCC to your OS
• Calling Conventions
  • System V ABI
• Watcom C/C++
• Visual Studio
  • Visual C++ Runtime
• TCC
• Smaller C
• Other Compilers

Assemblers

• GAS (GNU as, part of binutils)
• FASM
• NASM
• YASM
• On the difference between AT&T and IntelOpcode syntax

Linkers

• LD (GNU ld, part of binutils)
• Link Archiver (GNU ar, part of binutils)
• Mold (Modern Linker)

Emulators

• Bochs
• QEMU
• Virtual PC
• VMware
• VirtualBox
• SimICS
• Lingemu

Working with Disk Images

• Disk Images in general, and ...
  • Loopback Device for Linux, *BSD et al.
  • hdiutil for MacOS X
  • Windows Tools

Hardware

• TheHardware Category andlinked resources

CPU

General

• Register Machine Model of Computation
• Memory Architecture
• Instruction Set Architecture
  • Historical Notes on CISC and RISC
• Execution Architecture
  • Multiprocessing Architecture

X86
Modes

• Real Mode
• Protected Mode
• Virtual 8086 Mode
• x86-64

Other

• IA32 Architecture Family
• Model Specific Registers (MSRs)
• Detecting CPU Speed
• Inline Assembly/Examples
• CPU Bugs
• SSE
• Where Can I Find Information About Ports
• CPU Registers (x86,x86-64)

ESA/390

• Kernel Barebones
• Program Status Word
• Processing Storage Area Memory Mapping
• z/OS DataSet FileSystem
• Batch I/O Channel SubSystem

ARM

• ARM Overview
• Raspberry Pi Bare Bones

Memory

• Detecting Memory (x86)
• A20 Line or "Why can't I access all my memory?"

IRQs and Exceptions, PIC, NMI, APIC, OPIC

• I Can't Get Interrupts Working
• The Interrupt Descriptor Table and IDT problems
• Interrupt Service Routines (ISRs)
• Interrupts
• Non Maskable Interrupt (NMI)
• APIC
• PIC
• OPIC

Clocks, Timers and Counters

• HPET
• APIC timer (per-processor timer)
• Programmable Interval Timer (PIT)
• TheCMOS clock, and itsRTC chip
• Detecting CPU Speed

Video

• Accelerated Graphic Cards
  • Native Intel graphics
• Detecting Colour and Monochrome Monitors?
• Printing To Screen in Protected Mode
• Text Mode Cursor
• Drawing In a Linear Framebuffer
• Kernel Stdio Theory
• VGA Resources andVGA Hardware documentation
• Drawing characters in graphics mode usingVGA Fonts
• Video Signals And Timing
• How to program Bochs' and QEMU's BGA graphics device

Audio

• Sound
• PC Speaker
• Sound Blaster 16

Storage devices

• ATA (harddisks)
• ATAPI (CD-ROM)
• AHCI (SATA native)
• DMA
• NVMe
• Floppy Disk Controller (FDC)

Input/Output

• PS/2 Keyboard
• Mouse
• Serial Ports (primarily RS-232)

Plug and Play

• Plug-and-Play (PNP)
• PNP Calls In Protected Mode

PCI, USB and things like this ...

• PCI
• PCI Express
• USB

UEFI

• UEFI
• Systems withbroken UEFI implementations

ACPI

• ACPI
• RSDP
• AML

Network cards and communicating devices

• Ethernet and other wired networking:
  • 3c90x
  • Intel 8254x
  • Ne2000
  • RTL8139
  • RTL8169
  • Intel Ethernet i217
  • AMD PCnet
• Wireless Networking:
  • 802.11 (WiFi standard)

Non-x86 Development

• PowerPC
• MIPS
• Sparc
• ARM
• RISC-V

Reference Information

Executable File Types

• 64 bit
  • ELF
  • PE
  • COFF
• 32 bit
  • ELF
  • PE
  • COFF
• 16 bit
  • COM
  • MZ
  • NE

Filesystems

• FAT Details
• Ext2 Details
• SFS Details
• NTFS Details