Booting from CD

[GReaper]

Hi everyone. As yet another attempt to learn even more, i tackled OS creation tutorials! I read that there is a certain byte sequence that the BIOS will read from a hard, floppy or compact disk in order to load it onto memory and execute it. I made the same sequence in a binary file. The problem is that the tutorials use a program called partcopy to copy! data onto a floppy disk. The problem is that i don't have a floppy disk driver on my laptop! I tried doing the same from a CD, but it doesn't boot probably because a file system is created along with the file. So my question is:
Is there a way to write raw data on a CD? If yes, what's that?

[Salem]

OSRC: The Boot Process

or

create bootable cd - Google Search

[bernt]

You might also want to consider booting from a flash drive, if your BIOS supports it.

[User Name:]

1. Grab an emulator. Bochs for Windows, and Qemu for Linux are the most common(Although they both work on both platforms.).

2. Go to an OS development related forum and wiki. osdev.org is a good one.

3. Are you sure that your code is bootable? Is it in asm? If not, it should be. The boot sector is one of the things that actually is best done by hand.

[GReaper]

Thanks for the links, Salem.

"User Name":
1) Thanks for pointing that out, i had a hard time rebooting again and again!
2) Actually, there's where i started from.
3) Yes, my code is pure assembly. I'm using FASM for this.

"bernt":
Are there any tutorials about it? Because i feel i'm gonna stuck on the same problem.

[User Name:]

Heck yeah! Fasm's awesome!

Here's a little template:

format binary as 'img'
use16
org 0x7c00
   
   ; Set up segments
   mov ax, 0
   mov ds, ax
   mov es, ax
   mov fs, ax
   mov gs, ax
   
   ; Set up stack
   mov ss, ax
   mov esp, 0x7c00

   ; Boot code

   rb 510-($-$$) ; Align to 510
   db 055h,0AAh ; Boot signature

Assemble this, ans set it as the boot floppy in Bochs, and boot it. You'll need to print something to be able to tell whether it worked or not, but I'll leave that for you to figure out.

There's hundreds if not more simple boot loaders in Fasm's OSdev section. Here's a particularly good one: flat assembler - View topic - Case Study: FAT12 bootloader

But I'm gonna be honest, you'll not learn very much that is relevant to modern osdev from simple boot loader dev. All the interrupts you learn will instantly become useless when you set the p-mode bit in cr0. I would suggest following a grub based "hello world" kernel tutorial. Maybe this one: Fasm-TCC BareBones - OSDev Wiki. To use GCC with it, just replace t with g, the args are the same.

[bernt]

Are there any tutorials about it? Because i feel i'm gonna stuck on the same problem.

Well, it shouldn't be too much trouble to install grub on a flash drive, and then making your kernel bootable with grub. But Bochs is also very nice (I assumed you already knew about that ) because you don't run the risk of trashing your computer.

[GReaper]

Thanks, guys! I think i have enough information to go on!