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How an x86 BIOS Works — Real Mode, IVT, and the Journey from Reset Vector to Bootloader
To understand how a PC boots, you need to dive into Real Mode — the operating mode every x86 processor wakes up in, since the 8086 in 1978. This article explains, using the Compaq Deskpro XE 466 (486, circa 1994) as a concrete example, how the BIOS brings a machine to life: from the very…
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BREAD: Debugging a Compaq BIOS on Real Hardware with GDB
When reverse-engineering a legacy BIOS — in my case a 1994 Compaq Deskpro EISA BIOS — you eventually reach the limits of what static analysis in Ghidra can tell you. You need to see what the hardware actually does at runtime: what values the chipset registers hold, how CMOS is configured, what the EISA slot…
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Adding Two-Player Co-Op to Raptor: Call of the Shadows
How we added local two-player co-op to a 1994 single-player DOS game by turning every global variable into a two-element array.
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Compiling Raptor: Call of the Shadows from Source on a Modern Mac
Compiling a classic 1994 DOS game from source on Apple Silicon — and hunting down a data file version mismatch that shifted every resource index by one.
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Trainingsplan für das erlernen von Assembler
Phase 1: Grundlagen 1. Woche:– Tag 1: Einführung in Assembler: Lerne die Grundlagen von Assembler, den Aufbau von Assembler-Anweisungen und die Syntax.– Tag 2: CPU-Architektur: Lerne die Grundlagen der CPU-Architektur, wie Register, Speicher und Befehlszyklus.– Tag 3: Einfache Assembler-Anweisungen: Lerne die Verwendung von einfachen Assembler-Anweisungen wie MOV, ADD, SUB, JMP usw.– Tag 4: Arithmetische Operationen:…
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Loft conversion