Writing the Boot Sector and

make it executes a simple

program.
Shady Elwan
Thebes Academy
Computer Science Level 3

efore we start, we must know some facts about the topic

The Boot Sector is 512 bytes in size

The Boot Sector MUST end with 2 special bytes called
"boot sector signature" ,0XAA55
The Boot Sector ,when written to any bootable drive (hard
disk, floppy, cd drive,.. etc) ,it must be written to
Sector 1
Cylinder 0
Head 0

So when we turned on the pc and after the POST operation the

bios check the list of the bootable devices and access the first
device in the list and checks
Head(0)=>Cylinder(0)=>Sector(1) of the device and see if
the "the boot sector signature" (x0AA55) exist at offset 510 if not
it will make the same check on the next device in the list and so
on,.if the bios doesn't find the "boot sector signature" it will
display an error message on a black screen otherwise it will load
the first sector at memory location 0x7c00
and executes it.

The Boot Sector Code

[BITS 16]

; the bios starts out in 16-bit real mode

[ORG 0]

; Data offset = 0

jmp START

; Skip Data section and go to the begin of our simple program

;============================== Data
==================================================
welcomeMessage

db 'The bootable program loaded successfully!!',13,10,13,10

db 'About Me:',13,10
db 'Shadi Elwan',13,10
db 'Thebes Academy',13,10
db 'Computer Science - Level 3',13,10,13,10,0

rebootMessage

db 'Press any key to reboot.',0

;============================== Data
==================================================
;
=======================================================
===============================

;============================== Functions
==============================================
ShowMessage:
mov al,[si]

;load byte at location DS:SI into al

cmp al,0
;If al register equals 0 that means we reache the end of the String
and set "Zero Flag" to 1
jz EndFunction ;if "Zero Flag" equals 1 then go to EndFunction
mov ah,0eh
int 0x10
inc si

;;We will call interrupt 10 (video interrupt)

;;so we make ah=0eh to tell the bios to put (al) value into the screen
;;Increase SI by 1 so we point now to the next character

jmp ShowMessage
EndFunction:

ret

;return from this function to the caller

;
=======================================================
================================

START:

;
=======================================================
================================
mov ax,0x7c0
mov ds,ax

;; BIOS puts our code at memory location 0:07C00h, so to be

;; able to access our Data we set Data Segmant (ds) = 0x7c0

;
=======================================================
================================

;===================== Our Real program starts from here

=======================
mov si,welcomeMessage
call ShowMessage

mov si,rebootMessage
call ShowMessage

;; wait for key press

mov ah,0
int 0x16

;then reboot!
JMP 0FFFFh:0000h
;========================= Our Real program ends here
==========================
;
=======================================================
================================

times 510-($-$$) db 0
dw 0xAA55

;Fill The file with 0's untill its size reaches 510 bytes

;Put these 2 bytes at the end of file [Boot Sector Signature]

;(now the file size is 512 bytes)

;
=======================================================
================================

End of Code

How I make it works

irst I use nasm tool to compile the code to plain binary file

using this command:

Nasm -f bin mybootCode.asm -o ShadiBootCode.bin
Where:
mybootCode.asm: Is the assembly code file.
ShadiBootCode.bin: Is the output compiled binary file.

econd I used a program called UltraISO to put the compiled

code to the sector 1 of a cd image then I burned this image to a

real cd disk and voila it works

First create empty cd image

Then load the boot file

Select Burn CD/DVD Image

After burning the cd image to a real cd disk put the disk intto your
pc and reboot and make sure that your pc will boot from cd drive
first and you will see something like this

Best regards: Shady Elwan