Use of BIOS calls by various OSes, bootloaders, etc., online references

[Rod Pemberton]

The general issue of whether BIOS calls are important or not to
bootloaders and OS development came up recently on
alt.os.development. Perhaps, it's best for each to make their own
conclusions. But, you can't do that well without being fully
informed about what uses the BIOS. So, I can help inform by
providing some references that I've collected over the years. I'm
adding alt.msdos.programmer etc in case there is someone out
there that wants or needs this esoteric info.


"x86 BIOS calls used by grub and Linux" by Colin King, Feb 10 2010
http://smackerelofopinion.blogspot.com/2010/02/x86-bios-calls-used-by-grub-and-linux.html

"A Study of BIOS Interrupts as used by Microsoft Windows 2000" by
Adam Sulmicki
http://wayback.archive.org/web/20070721000716/http://www.missl.cs.umd.edu/winint/index1.html

"A Study of BIOS Services as used by Microsoft Windows XP" by Adam
Sulmicki
http://wayback.archive.org/web/20070721000843/http://www.missl.cs.umd.edu/winint/index2.html

"Legacy-Free Hardware and BIOS Requirements" by Microsoft, Dec 4,
2001
http://web.archive.org/web/20100328131544/http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/Lf.mspx

"Linux 2.4 BIOS usage reference" by Alan Cox, Jun 22, 2001
linux.kernel, Usenet MSG-ID E15DTfd-...@the-village.bc.nu
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/linux.kernel/jCR0tpxu9oY/GJQToAyycoQJ

"FreeBSD BIOS Coupling on i386" by Bruce M. Simpson, Apr 8, 2006
mailing.freebsd.current, Usenet MSD-ID
e183jh$drj$1...@FreeBSD.csie.nctu.edu.tw
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mailing.freebsd.current/K1VOemzz080/6TuwxYYtDSQJ

"BIOS types" by Hale Landis, Jan 25, 1995
comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage, Usenet MSG-ID
791004...@sugs.tware.com
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage/87Wd8Jk8RWs/Bke_kDO_rdsJ

"Reverse-Engineering DOS 1.0 - Part 1: The Boot Sector"
http://www.pagetable.com/?p=165


Rod Pemberton
"My paranoia becomes reality."