bootstrap loader

A very small (about 20 instructions) bootstrap loader could be held at the front of each program tape, but even this approach was not always used.

The regular loader read a more compact format tape than the bootstrap loader.

This allows a program to be loaded without the need for a ROM-based bootstrap loader.

The small program that starts this sequence is known as a bootstrap loader, bootstrap or boot loader.

Once POST completes successfully, bootstrap loader code is invoked.

The bootstrap loader takes the control over the booting process and loads NTLDR.

Since the early minicomputers used magnetic core memory, which did not lose its information when power was off, these bootstrap loaders would remain in place unless they were erased.

The CPU additionally contained instructions, operator communication, bootstrap loaders, and hardware test programs, that were implemented in a 1K read-only memory.

In order to do anything useful, the user had to enter a small program known as the "bootstrap loader" into the machine using these switches, a process known as booting.

Historical note: this term derives from 'bootstrap loader', a short program that was read in from cards or paper tape, or toggled in from the front panel switches.

The bootstrap loader on PC-compatible computers (MBR or boot sector) is located at track zero, the first sector on a disk.

Still later, popular usage extended the word "firmware" to denote anything ROM-resident, including processor machine-instructions for BIOS, bootstrap loaders, or specialized applications.

It would often take upwards of five minutes to load the tiny program into memory, and a single error while flipping the switches meant that the bootstrap loader would crash the machine.

A user would normally use the "(L)oad" command to load a bootstrap loader (i.e., for CP/M) from a floppy or the fixed disk.

Furthermore the hardware supports the programming new operating systems by a Bootstrap Loader as well as replacing the FPGA configuration through the USB interface.

The term boot comes from the idea of lifting oneself by one's own bootstraps: the computer contains a tiny program (bootstrap loader) which will load and run a program found on a boot device.

To program the machine after switching it on the bootstrap loader program had to be entered, without error, in binary, then a paper tape containing a BASIC interpreter loaded from a paper-tape reader.

The BIOS confirms there's a bootstrap loader, or boot loader, in that first sector of the boot disk, and it loads that boot loader into memory (RAM).

BOOTSTRAP LOADER START-UP: SUCCESSFUL.

When Intel designed the 286, it was not designed to be able to multitask real-mode applications; real mode was intended to be a simple way for a bootstrap loader to prepare the system and then switch to protected mode.

A RAM image is a sequence of machine code instructions and associated data kept permanently in the non-volatile ROM memory of an embedded system, which is copied into volatile RAM by a bootstrap loader.

In conjunction with LOADER, Multiuser DOS and REAL/32 boot sectors use this to locate the boot sector of the active partition (or another bootstrap loader like IBMBIO.

But DISKZ started its sector addressing with the first available unused sector, while the others started with sector zero of the disk, making it easy for a Fortran programmer dabbling in assembler to inadvertently overwrite the bootstrap loader.

Typically the RAM image is loaded into RAM when the system is switched on, and it contains a second-level bootstrap loader and basic hardware drivers, enabling the unit to function as desired, or else more sophisticated software to be loaded into the system.