Since you've taken the time to try and help me, i'll take the time to try and help you. Let's see how I can do that. I hope my comments are useful to you, Billy.
quote:
okay... seems like those claim win9x do not have DOS never learn assembly language.
Well, first off, you don't need to understand anything about Windows to write in assembly. Did you know that UNIX, MS-DOS, CP/M and other operating systems can have programs written in assembly? Yep, that's right, it's not tied down to Windows like Visual Basic is.
quote:
if you load something in DOS and boot into lunix, will you be able to call it??
Load something into DOS, and then boot Lunix? The answer is possibly yes, through the magic of device drivers and virtual 8088 technology, that has existed in intel chips at least since 386, although I wouldn't be shocked if the 286 had it as well, since after all, it did provide a protected mode. I wouldn't recommend the 8088 approach though, as it didn't work well for Windows 9x
.
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And, calling any interrupt (21h) is not the "windows way". In win32 document, it did not mention anything about interrupt. everything is wraped in API.
Don't you mean the GUI/CUI way? Native applications and device drivers can and sometimes have to utilize interrupts. I would tell you to pull out your favorite hex editor or dissassembler to prove this, but Microsoft would get mad at you, and we can't have that (although if you happen to search, I wont tell anyone :Z). The interrupts exist for a reason, although you do have a good point. Most programmers for the Microsoft Windows platform never have a real "need" to use interrupts, and some are unable to (at least, directly).
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those try to confuse bootloader and kernel sure do not have any idea what they talking about.... In fact, a boot loader has a mini-kernel that handles IO and memory.
I'm not sure what your point is here, since your second sentence doesn't seem to support your first. But i'll address them both for you
. You are correct. A bootloader is more-or-less something that loads the "primary" operating system(s) a user will interact with (via something magical called a shell). But, it is possible for a kernel to be a bootloader, and you seem to support this conclusion with your second sentence. I would recommend researching Exokernels. Here's a link for you. It may not explain 100%, but it's worth a read if you're interested: <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_%28computer_science%29>.
EDIT:
Here's another URL you might enjoy.
<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootloader>I read both of those links I posted, BTW.
Just a future note, it's not nice to assume that just because a particular comment I made was incorrect, that everything I have said was. Just because I wasn't sure how a CLOSED SOURCE operating system worked, doesn't mean I need a lecture on what a kernel is. Thanks for your effort though. In the future, I will make sure I do more research when making posts like this, instead of relying on sources that are questionable in their correctness (that also means, being careful about making careless assumptions).
[ August 11, 2004: Message edited by: anphanax ]
[ August 11, 2004: Message edited by: anphanax ]
