[ipxe-devel] ipxe/seabios: segment register initialization

[Michael Brown]

On 14/02/16 10:52, Victor Kaplansky wrote:
> I've created a boot-sector which works just fine when loaded
> directly from BIOS, but doesn't work when loaded by ipxe:
>
>         0:       b8 ad de                mov    ax,0xdead
>         3:       a3 10 7c                mov    ds:0x7c10,ax
>
> 0xdead is not written to 0000:7c10.
> The reason is that BIOS have data segment register initialized to
> zero, while ipxe leaves it dirty before the jump to boot sector
> code.
>
> After adding to boot sector some code to initialize DS register,
> my code works well:
>
>         0:       b8 00 00                mov    ax,0x0
>         3:       8e d8                   mov    ds,ax
>         5:       b8 ad de                mov    ax,0xdead
>         8:       a3 10 7c                mov    ds:0x7c10,ax
>
> Is such behaviour intentional, or it is a bug?
> Who is responsible for segment registers initialization?

I'm not aware of any standard describing the content of %ds when jumping 
to a boot sector at 0000:7c00.  Every boot sector that I have 
encountered explicitly initialises %ds (and %es, and %ss:%sp) to known 
values.

Your boot sector should probably do likewise.

Michael