Resources

This page maintains a list of resources related to operating system development.

Operating System Development

• Bran's Kernel Development tutorial and the list of bugs.
• Bonafide OS Development
• The Operating System Resource Center
• Christopher Giese's website
  • mirror: John Fine's Home Page
  • mirror: Write Your Own Operating System
  • mirror: (includes a .zip copy of the site) redir.no-ip.org
  • .bz2: dev.ifeelrandom.com
  • mirror: osdevbrasil.net
  • mirror: dev.ifeelrandom.com
  • mirror: files.osdev.org
  • mirror: wz.cz
  • web.archive.com: web.archive.org
• How to Write an Operating System
• NeuralDK OSDev Tuts
• TAJ OS Development (This link is broken since 2014)
• BrokenThorn OS Development Tutorials
• OSDCOM (This link is broken since 2014)
• The OsLib (This link is broken since 2014)
• OS FAQ, overall design, VM design, threads..
• Memory Management
• Protected Mode
• Roll your own UNIX-clone OS and the list of known bugs.
• Operating System Tutorials (This link is broken since 2014)
• Germsoft OS Tutorials and Resources (This link is broken since 2014)
• int6.org - System Programming Resources

Hardware Specifications

• Pierre's Library
• Ace OS 'specifications' page
• stockpile of hard-to-find datasheets (broken) archive.org version
• List of PS/2 documents
• ChipDB datasheet archive

Processors

• Intel Manuals
• Processor Architecture
• x86-64(AMD64)

BIOS

• BIOS Boot Specification
• Plug and Play BIOS Specification

Motherboard Devices

• PIC, PIT, DMA, RTC, ..

Human Input Devices

• Serial Mouse
• Human Interface Devices
• PS/2 mice
• PS2 mouse driver

Video

• official VESA & VBE website

Storage

• official ATA working group
• another ATA/ATAPI website, includes reference driver
• an introduction to ATA/ATAPI commands. It contains a couple of ASM examples to read sectors and identify drives.
• Disk and Disc Drives
• collected links about Ultra DMA, on ATA drives and how PCI configuration comes.

Audio

• Sound Devices

Network and Communication ports

• Serial and Parallel port, SPP, EPP, ECP
• Networking Devices
• RTL8139 family datasheets

Buses

• Interconnect Buses
• official USB developers docs
• more USB info
• USB OHCI
• USB EHCI
• OHCI for FireWire
• OHCI mirror

Software Specifications

• Banana - Use these if you want
• Ralf Brown's Interrupt List
• The Boot Process
• Partitions
• File Systems
• Executable File Formats
• Plug'n'Play Specs
• Device Driver Interfaces
• FAT12-32
• The Art of Software Security Assessment
• Art of Exploitation
• Secrets of Reverse Engineering
• Subverting the Windows Kernel

Other Specifications

• stockpile of technical documents (partly in Russian)
• Legos, ATX, NetPC's..

Source Code

• Miscellaneous Code
• OSD Code Snippet Index
• stockpile of documents at singlix.org
• a reference implementation for malloc()

Sample Kernels

• Kernels documented in the wiki

Small Kernels

• OSD Kernels
• broken: PM Kernels
• Selection from Bonafide
• BOS
• LibOSDK

Larger Kernels

• BCOS
• Tabos
• Mobius
• Cosmos/Borealis
• Clicker
• MenuetOS
• Daidalos
• BlueIllusionOS
• Agnix Kernel
• SolOS
• Minix 3
• AMOS
• OSKit

Non-hobby Kernels

• Plan 9 from Bell Labs
• Linux (See also Linux Kernel Primer)
• OpenBSD
• L4
• K486

University Courses

• Advanced Operating Systems (NYU)
• Operating System Engineering (MIT) (2004) (2006)
• Introduction to Operating Systems (WISC)