Chapter 1 System Firmware’s Missing Link

Hardware: the parts of a computer that can be kicked.

—Jeff Pesis

Booting an Intel architecture platform should be easy. Anyone who thinks that writing an all-purpose Intel® architecture Basic Input Output System (BIOS) and/or an operating system (OS) boot loader from scratch is easy has yet to try it. The complexity and sheer number of documents and undocumented details about the motherboard and hardware components, operating system requirements, industry standards and exceptions, silicon-specific eccentricities beyond the standards, little-known tribal knowledge, basic configuration, compiler nuances, linker details, and variety of applicable debug tools are enormous. While it can be difficult, it doesn’t ...

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