A minimal two-stage boot sector program written in x86 assembly that implements a bare-metal text editor.
The editor supports typing, saving, and loading text directly from video memory — running entirely without an operating system.
- Two-stage bootloader
- Stage 1 fits within the 512-byte MBR limit
- Loads Stage 2 into memory to enable editor functionality
- Text editor
- Character input with real-time screen updates
- Save and load text buffers from video memory
- Low-level system design
- Direct manipulation of VGA text mode memory
- BIOS interrupt handling
- Demonstrates bare-metal control transfer between boot stages
- An x86 emulator such as:
nasm
assembler to build the project
nasm -f bin stage1.asm -o stage1.bin
nasm -f bin stage2.asm -o stage2.bin
cat stage1.bin stage2.bin > editor.img
qemu-system-i386 -fda editor.img