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.
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