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Did I write a bootloader or an operating system?

C

chrstrbrts

Senior member
Hi,

A few weeks ago I wrote a program that calls a BIOS interrupt to talk to the pixels on the screen and make a horizontal test pattern looking design.

I burned this program to a USB.

Then I booted it, and it worked.

My program really does nothing obviously.

But technically, did I write a bootloader or an operating system?
 
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If your program didn't make the usb bootable,since you state that you copied and then made it bootable,then you didn't write either.
For it to be an OS it actually has to offer some kind of operations and for it to be a bootloader it has to actually do the boot up itself.
 
TheELF said:
If your program didn't make the usb bootable,since you state that you copied and then made it bootable,then you didn't write either.
For it to be an OS it actually has to offer some kind of operations and for it to be a bootloader it has to actually do the boot up itself.
Click to expand...

I should edit the original question.

I did make it bootable.

I wrote the program in assembly and put 55aa at byte position 511 and 512 filling the dead space after my actual code and before 55aa with zeros.
 
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It sounds like it's just a program. It's very possible to have a program that loads on boot and does its thing with no OS involved (see memtest, for example).
 
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