How to test and run your own OS without rebooting your machine !

[outsid3r]

Hi all, i recently discovered a program that is able to emulate an operative system inside another operative system like windows. So if you are doing an operative system you don't need to reboot your machine each time you want to test it. You can use PC BOCHS which is an open source operative sistem emulator, what you must do run it's:


1º:
Download PC BOCHS in this website: bochs: The Open Source IA-32 Emulation Project (Home Page).


2º:
After uinzip the file you must create a configuration file and force a boot thought a bootable floppy disk. Before writing the configuration file you must create a directory which will contain the configuration file and that configuration file must be named bochsrc.txt

Example of the configuration file:

#Quantity of memory that the emulated SO will have:
megs: 32

#Name of the file of the rom images:
romimage: file=../BIOS-bochs-latest, address=0xf0000
vgaromimage: ../VGABIOS-elpin-2.40

#Drive that we will use and the image we will use is loader2.img
floppya: 1_44=loader2.img, status=inserted

#Disk of the boot
boot: a

#Erro messages go here
log: bochsout.txt

#Disable mouse unseless your OS uses mouse
mouse: enabled=0


3º:
After all this just run the PC BOCH and press 5 to begin the simulation, and remember, to create an image you will need a software like WinImage or RawWrite.


It's just this

[mikelbring]

Or it's called vmware.

[marwex89]

Nice, will you use this in your future OS-project?

[outsid3r]

Yea, of course, i will not reboot my machine millions of times

[MeTh0Dz]

You're writing an OS?

So I assume you are quite skilled in C and Assembly?

[outsid3r]

No, i'm not writing yet a really OS yet, i'm currently making a small console to run with a floppy disk at boot, a simple thing really. I'm not quite skilled both in C and ASM, but i think i have the knowledge to build something interesting like a simple single-task OS, i study a lot how OS works and in general, how everything works on a computer, which is more important than everything then we are thinking about building an OS.

[Jordan]

I didn't realize there was a free PC Emulator. I've always used VMWare and briefly used Virtual PC by Windows. Thanks for the post.

[Egz0N]

Cool One .. +rep

[outsid3r]

ty