Assembly Bootloader Project

Welcome to my Assembly Bootloader project! This project demonstrates the creation of a simple bootloader written in assembly language that outputs "Bruce" to the console when run in the Bochs emulator.

Project Structure

• boot.asm: This is the assembly source file that contains the code for the bootloader
• main.c: C program that writes the complied bootloader to a disk image(a.img)
• bochsrc: Configuration file for Bochs emulator to specify how the emulator should run the disk image

How It Works

The bootloader is a very basic program written in assembly that, when executed, will display the text "Bruce" on the screen. This is useful for understanding how low-level interactions with hardware can be accomplished directly through assembly language

Compilation and Execution Flow

1. Compile the Bootloader: We use NASM, the Netwide Assembler, to compile the assembly code in boot.asm into a raw binary format:

nasm boot.asm 

2. Write Binary to Image: The binary file needs to be written to a disk image (a.img) to be loaded by the Bochs emulator. This is done using a C program:

gcc main.c -o main
./main

3. Run in Bochs: With the a.img containing the bootloader, we run it using the Bochs emulator

bochs -q -f bochsrc

Setup and Requirements

To run this project, you will need:

• NASM: For assembling the bootloader
• GCC: For compiling the C program that writes the bootloader to the disk image
• Bochs: For emulating an x86 environment to test the bootloader