DUE DATE: Wednesday, February 13, 2002, 4:35 pm

(no late submissions accepted)

Summary

This project introduces students to the system's ROM-BIOS services, and to the design of a boot loader as a replacement boot sector on a floppy disk. Your task is to write and install a boot sector replacement for a 1440 kb floppy disk which will execute from drive A: when the system is restarted. It should perform the following tasks:

• Display a message with your name as the program's author and instructions on how to proceed
• Wait for the user to press a key
• Continue booting by loading an operating system from the hard disk

Notes

• You will have to make use of the ROM BIOS video, keyboard, and disk services to perform the required operations.
• Booting from the hard disk can be accomplished by reading the boot sector off the hard disk into the standard location (0000:7C00h) and then jumping to that address.
• Your boot sector code would have to relocated (moved to a different area of memory) in order not to be overwritten by incoming data from the hard disk. (Hint: use x86 string operations)
• Use the DEBUG.EXE program in DOS to write your boot sector replacement to the floppy disk.
• Standard project guidelines apply: be neat, write comments.

What to turn in

A floppy disk with your source file(s), resulting binaries, AND your boot sector replacement written to the floppy, i.e. your disk should be bootable with your new boot loader. Also, please turn in a printout of your code.