Tag
firmware
- May 17, 2026 How Firmware Describes Physical Memory to the Kernel The E820 and UEFI memory map formats, why reserved ranges outnumber usable ones, and how the kernel turns a list of address ranges into its own page allocator. operating systems
- Mar 19, 2026 Interrupt Vectors as the First Hardware Abstraction Layer The real-mode vector table turned firmware entry points into a stable calling convention, letting programs reach disks, video, and keyboards without knowing which adapter was installed. computing history
- Aug 28, 2025 The IBM PC BIOS Standard and the Cost of Freezing a Firmware Interface What a ROM-resident interrupt interface guaranteed to software, how its fixed data structures blocked hardware progress, and why the replacement took the form of an emulated decades-old machine rather than a new specification. computing history
- Jan 7, 2024 The Reset Vector and the First Instruction Executed Why an x86 processor begins executing at 0xFFFFFFF0 in real mode, how that address reaches the firmware ROM, and what the sixteen bytes at the top of memory must contain. operating systems