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EFI and OSs
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Author:  Ford [ Mon Nov 08, 2010 6:52 pm ]
Post subject:  EFI and OSs

I was wondering if anyone knew of some resources for writing simple boot loaders and OSs for computers that use EFI. Also, anything on how EFI actually changes how you write an OS and/or boot loader, and how you interface with EFI via C or ASM.

I was wanting to start a new hobby OS project. Not really sure about the direction yet, but I know I want to use ASM. I know I want to use EFI. I also know that I want to use OpenBFS for my filesystem (when I get to that point), and I know that I want to try and port FalconPL to it. Outside of those things, I have no clue. This will mostly be an academic project for me.

My main roadblock to starting this is that I cannot find any information on EFI/ASM/C when I search online. All help is appreciated.

PS: wasn't sure whether or not to put this in OS, or programming languages... since it deals with both.

Author:  losethos [ Tue Nov 09, 2010 12:05 am ]
Post subject:  Re: EFI and OSs

You talking about this? http://www.uefi.org/home

It says legacy support. I kinda hope I don't have to change anything. Bastards built PE and ELF into the spec!! I have my own binary file format.


This UEFI is ugly. Standards are always bloated and ugly.

Author:  Ford [ Tue Nov 09, 2010 10:10 am ]
Post subject:  Re: EFI and OSs

Well, yeah. That is precisely what I was looking at. I have a Mactel at home, and I like that the system boots directly to 64 bit mode rather than starting out with 16 bit then going 32 bit then going 64 bit. I also like that with GPT, I can address over 2.19 TB of block storage (I don't even have a drive that large, but I like that I could). Also, targeting only Mactels makes the amount of supported hardware nice and small.

My basic list of things I would like to implement:

EFI booting to 64 bit mode
OpenBFS with GPT on block storage
FalconPL as the main programming language other than ASM
XML files for application and system configurations

I would like the system to be primarily command line driven, but only because I have never really done much low level graphical programming work. My current thought is that my system will be vaguely reminiscent of UNIX, and only because I am not sure how else to make an OS work. As an example, I like having pipes on the command line. I am comfortable with the commands and options and arguments paradigms.

My main roadblock at the moment, is that I have no idea how to write something bootable for EFI...

Ok. I found a few things that may be helpful for myself and anyone else struggling with this topic:
http://www.intel.com/intelpress/EFI_TOC.pdf
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/ ... ocess.html
http://x86asm.net/articles/uefi-program ... rst-steps/

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