What exactly does an Intel box do at boot?

[GtPrOjEcTX]

What exactly does an Intel box do at boot? Independent of OS, I know there must be some sequence of functions that get executed but what are they? I'm sure there's a certain order to them and reasons why. Enlighten me.

 

[CTho9305]

Search Microsoft.com for the windows95 boot process - it explains it fairly well.
Executive summary: CPU gets power, jumps to FFFF:FFF0, runs that code (mapped to the BIOS). That code detects hardware, etc, then reads the first bit of the hard drive (boot sector) and executes that code (which loads the OS)

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

any chance of a link? I'm not getting too good of results from searching their KBase.

Thanks for your reply btw.

 

[AEB]

you can try to email them i did asking about comparisons betwix thier products and amd, and although they wouldnt tell me they did provide good links (anandtech was on of them!!!)

 

[CTho9305]

Hmm... couldn't find it on the MS site. here is a link with the contents of what I THOUGHT was somewhere on MSDN.

edit: Ah ha!

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

thanks. Also useful were some sites I found on the POST procedure.