Build your own operating system

Ten years ago (around the year 2001) I wrote a simple x86 protected-mode OS just to find out how operating systems work. That was really great fun and I learned very much about OS concepts and paradigms (and also a lot of stuff about computer hardware, programming, software architecture, data structures etc.). Ever since the gathered experience and knowledge by building my own operating system has been extremely valuable.

I began by reading Andrew Tanenbaum's book "Operating Systems: Design and Implementation" during which I studied a lot of Minix source code. Later I also read his other books about modern operating systems and structured computer organization.
To get started with this challenging task, one needs some profound knowledge of the memory-management-unit (MMU) of the x86 CPU and its protected mode. To me, the best known tutorial on the web is the "Protected Mode Tutorial" by Jens Hohmuth of the Westsächsische Hochschule Zwickau. Sadly, this tutorial is only available in german. If you do not speak german you may try to translate it with Google Translate. The best parts of the tutorial are its great assembly language examples for Borland's TASM and Microsoft's MASM. I typed in all the examples by hand and played with them until I understood every single line of code :-). What is also helpful to understand the MMU and protected-mode of the x86 CPU is Intels Architecture Software Developer’s Manual and Hans-Peter Messmer's book The Indispensable PC Hardware Book.

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