Motivation for this site

Operating Systems, Design and Implementation, by Andrew Tanenbaum and Albert Woodhull, is a great book. Unfortunately, it does not cover the boot sequence in detail. Because the boot sequence is not part of the operating system proper (after all, any nontrivial boot loader should be able to boot multiple OS's), the authors chose to cover the subject lightly. However, since the minix OS relies on the boot sequence extensively, a study of the minix operating system should include a study of the boot sequence. Minix not only depends on the boot sequence to find and load the minix OS but also to switch to protected mode (if appropriate) and to determine which memory ranges the OS can use.

This web site grew out of my own struggles getting started with minix. Anyone who studies the 6 files will not only gain an understanding of the minix boot sequence but should also get enough exposure to the Intel x86 assembly language to be able to understand the assembly language code in the OS proper.

I hope you find this site to be of value. We have spent a lot of time on it. If a few people find the site to be useful, our efforts will have been rewarded.