Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Bootloader


The below assembly code loads the secondary bootloader (boot2.bin) at address 0x8000 from the FAT12 filesystem and jumps to it.


;_______________________________________________
;    File name : boot.asm |
;    Authour : M.Alexander |
;    Mail : programmer_83@hotmail.com |
;    Date : 09-05-2004 |
;    Description : Primary Bootloader |
;_______________________________________________|


[BITS 16]


; Memory Map
;_______________________________________________
; |
;      _____________________ |
;     |    |  <-- 0x0000 |
;     |    | |
;     |        STACK    | |
;     |    | |
;     |_____________________|  <-- 0x05FF |
;     |    |  <-- 0x0600 |
;     |       FAT COPY    | |
;     |_____________________|  <-- 0x1800 |
;     |////////UNUSED///////| |
;     |_____________________|  <-- 0x2000 |
;     |    | |
;     |    ROOT DIRECTORY   | |
;     |_____________________|  <-- 0x3C00 |
;     |/////////////////////| |
;     |////////UNUSED///////| |
;     |/////////////////////| |
;     |_____________________|  <-- 0x7C00 |
;     |    | |
;     | PRIMARY BOOTLOADER  | |
;     |_____________________|  <-- 0x7E00 |
;     |/////////////////////| |
;     |///////UNUSED////////| |
;     |/////////////////////| |
;     |_____________________|  <-- 0x8000 |
;     |    | |
;     |SECONDARY BOOTLOADER | |
;     |_____________________|  <-- ?? |
; |
;_______________________________________________/


%define FAT_CPY 0x0600
%define DIR_CPY 0x2000
%define SEC_BL 0x8000


[org 0x7C00]


jmp short start
nop


OEM_IDENT db 'FAT12FLP'
BYTES_PER_SCT dw 0200h
SCTS_PER_CLST db 01h
RESERVED_SCTS dw 01h
NO_OF_FATS db 02h
ROOT_ENT dw 0E0h
NO_OF_SCTS dw 0B40h
MEDIA_DCPTR db 0F0h
SCTS_PER_FAT dw 09h
SCTS_PER_TRK dw 012h
HDS_PER_CYL dw 02h
HDN_SCTS dd 0h


start:


mov ax, 0
mov ds, ax
mov es, ax
mov ss, ax       ; Initialize segment registers
mov ax, 0x5ff
mov sp, ax       ; Setup Stack space


sti       ; Enable Interrupts


;____________________________________________________________.
;     Loads FAT copy into main memory at address 0x0600      |
;____________________________________________________________|


xor ax, ax
add word ax, [RESERVED_SCTS]
call trans_add
mov ah, 0x02
mov al, [SCTS_PER_FAT]
mov dl, 0x00
mov bx, FAT_CPY
int 13h


;____________________________________________________________.
;     Loads Directory Entries into main memory at     |
;     address 0x0600     |
;____________________________________________________________|


mov al, [SCTS_PER_FAT]
mul byte [NO_OF_FATS]
add word ax, [RESERVED_SCTS]
call trans_add
mov ah, 0x02
mov al, 0x0E
mov dl, 0x00
mov bx, DIR_CPY
int 13h


;____________________________________________________________.
;  Calculates the start of data area and saves it in the     |
;  variable DATA_AREA for future use.     |
;____________________________________________________________|


mov ax, [SCTS_PER_FAT]
mov bx, [NO_OF_FATS]
mul bx
add ax, [RESERVED_SCTS]
mov bx, ax
mov ax, [ROOT_ENT]
shl ax, 0x05
shr ax, 0x09
add ax, bx
mov [DATA_AREA], ax


;____________________________________________________________.
;     Searching for the secondary file begins here.     |
;____________________________________________________________|


mov bx, [ROOT_ENT] ; Move the number of root entries into bx (counter)
mov dx, DIR_CPY ; Move the address of Directory entry into dx
srch:
cld ; Clear the direction flag
mov di, sec_file ; Move the address of the secondary file into di
mov si, dx ; Load the source address
mov cx, 0x0b ; Number of characters to compare (8+3)
repe cmpsb ; Repeat till the characters not equal. Maximum 0x0b times
jnz short next ; If not found, try next entry




;____________________________________________________________.
;  Loads the secondary file at the address SEC_BL declared   |
;  earlier.     |
;____________________________________________________________|


mov bx, SEC_BL
mov si, dx
add si, 0x1A ; Byte 26 & 27 of the file entry
mov word ax,[si] ; (Entry cluster value)
push ax ; Push the starting cluster to the stack
load:
xor eax, eax
xor ecx, ecx
xor dx, dx ; Clear out necessary registers


pop ax ; Pop the last computed value for the sector
push ax ; Again save it for future use


cmp ax, 0x0FFF ; If End of sector for the file, jump to exit
jz exit


mov cl, [DATA_AREA]
dec ax
dec ax ; Subtract 2 from the next sector value
add ax, cx ; Converts the data sector into LBA
call trans_add ; Converts LBA into CHS


mov ax, 0x0201
mov dl, 0x00
int 13h ; Read the next data cluster into the main memory


add bx, 0x200 ; Increment the file pointer to load the sector


xor ax, ax
pop ax ; Pop the sector value from the stack
mov cx, 0x03
mul cx ; Multiply the value with 3
rcr ax, 1 ; Divide it by 2 (3/2 = 1.5)
jc carry ; If carry set, decimal number


mov si, ax
add si, 0x0600
mov word ax, [si]
and ax, 0x0fff
push ax
jmp load
carry:
mov si, ax
add si, 0x0600
mov word ax, [si]
shr ax, 4
push ax
jmp load


jmp $ ; File found. write code here
next:
dec bx ; Decrement number of entries to check still
jz exit ; If zero, file not found
add dx, 0x20 ; Point to next entry
jmp short srch ; Compare next entry


exit:
jmp 0000:8000h ; Jump to secondary boot loader code




trans_add:
;____________________________________________________________.
;  FUNCTION :  Translates LBA sector number into CHS value   |
;  INPUT    :  AX = LBA Sector     |
;  OUTPUT   :  CH = Cylinder, DH = Head, CL = Sector     |
;     |
;  FORMULA USED:     |
;  sector   = (LBA % SPT) + 1     |
;  Head   = (LBA / SPT) % HPC     |
;  Cylinder = (LBA / SPT) / HPC     |
;____________________________________________________________|
;     |
div word [SCTS_PER_TRK]   ; LBA / SPT     |
inc dl      ; dl = (LBA % SPT) + 1 |
mov cl, dl      ; cl = sector     |
xor dx, dx      ; Clear out dx reg.    |
div word [HDS_PER_CYL]    ; (LBA / SPT) / HPC    |
mov ch, al      ; ch = cylinder     |
mov dh, dl      ; dh = head     |
ret      ; Return     |
;____________________________________________________________|






print:
;____________________________________________________________.
;  FUNCTION : Prints a string     |
;  INPUT    : SI = String Address     |
;  OUTPUT   : Prints the string     |
;____________________________________________________________|
;     |
push ax ;     |
push bx ;     |
pchar: ;     |
cld ;     |
lodsb ;     |
or al, al ;     |
jz pexit ;     |
mov ah, 0x0e ;     |
mov bx, 0x0007 ;     |
int 10h ;     |
jmp pchar ;     |
pexit: ;     |
pop bx ;     |
pop ax ;     |
ret ;     |
;____________________________________________________________|




sec_file db "BOOT2 BIN"
file_nt_fnd db CR,LF,'File not found',0
file_fnd db CR,LF,'File found',0
DATA_AREA db 0x00
FILE_BUF dw 0x8000


CR equ 0x0d
LF equ 0x0a


times(510-($-$$)) db 0
dw 0xaa55


Wednesday, August 03, 2011

iOmega Screenplay Director

I am a moviebuff and used to watch lot of English, Tamil, Korean, Japanese movies. I felt a media player connected to TV in my living room would be better compared to watching movies in laptop. So, here is my review of the latest gadget in my home. iOmega Screenplay Director. My first choice of media player was WD Live TV because of its low cost (it doesn't come with internal HDD) and I convinced myself to go for Screenplay Director, as one of my colleagues own it. Also, this is the only media player available in Chennai stores. It comes with two years warranty.



Screenplay Director comes with 1TB and 2TB versions. I gone for 1TB version. I copied my movie collection from my laptop and external HDD that I had. I was happy about the space that I have, which could hold hell a lot of movies.

Specification:
HDD : 1 TB / 2 TB
Video formats supported: MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4 (upto 1080p), H.264, XviD, WMV, VC-1
Audio formats supported: AAC, AC3, FLAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, WMA
Photo formats supported: BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG, TIFF
Output ports: Composite (SD), Component, HDMI, Optical audio.
USB ports: 3
Ethernet port: 1

The pack comes with only Composite cable.

Design:
The media player is not a sleek one compared to other media players in market. The remote doesn't look impressive and most of the keys have dual purpose. For example, the rew / fwd, vol up / vol dwn keys have a single key and these keys are very small to press what you want to. There are Video, Music and Photo keys in the remote that lets you directly jump instead of pressing the Home key and selecting videos or music or photos.

Poor software:
The software is the worst part of the gadget. There are so many bugs, which leads you to restart the device most of the time to recover. The boot up time also takes around 2.30 minutes :(

User interface:
The UI design is okay. Not worst, not the best. There is no customization possible like changing the color of the screen.

Navigation:
The navigation is designed badly. While watching a movie, if you decide to play another movie, you press the Video key in remote. This takes you to the list of available HDD (internal and external) menu, instead of taking you to the last selected movie folder. I felt this is quite annoying at times. You have to keep scrolling all the times.

Video:
I haven't used any other media player, but the quality of video that I get in Composite (SD) is quite fascinating. The clarity of the video is really very good. However, some of my downloaded Tamil movies doesn't play with this media player. Not sure why is it. Haven't explored on this. There is no way to customize the subtitles, either the location or the size of the font on the screen. The text is small to read. The player doesn't upscale the audio that comes in the video. Sometimes, the audio is too low that I have to keep 100% volume in my TV.

Photo:
They haven't cared much to provide a good photo viewing experience. The wide screen photos are just scaled in composite output, which doesn't appeal at all. There is no way to configure the speed for transition.

Youtube:
The media player doesn't have inbuild wifi capability. However, you could plug in a iOmega wifi dongle in the USB port and connect to internet. I haven't bought one dongle yet. The software supports only YouTube videos from internet.

Torrent support:
I think these guys thought about all the moviebuffs in the world, who mostly use torrents to download illegal movies. This player allows you to download any files over torrents if you have added it.

I wouldn't recommend this media player, except for its good quality video. Most of the LED TVs nowadays come with USB source, where you could plug in an external HDD and play any type of video format. If you are planning to buy such a TV shortly, don't think of going for a media player.

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

miniDLNA (Ubuntu) with Samsung Galaxy S

I have been trying to play media files from my laptop running Ubuntu 10.04 through MediaTomb server from Samsung Galaxy S mobile. The mobile was able to read the CDS shared by the server. However, it was not able to playback the video from the server (I kept getting Sorry, the file could not be played). I started the server in debug mode (-D option) and found that galaxy was trying to request the file by sending the complete web server address., i.e., http://:/content/media/file/... . While other DLNA devices request the URL relative to the root folder in the server., i.e., /content/media/...

Even resolving the above issue by fixing the MediaTomb didn't help out. Still galaxy did not get the content for playback (a different issue than the above one). I happened to know that MediaTomb is not 100% DLNA compliant. Tried out miniDLNA and it worked out. miniDLNA seems to be a simple tool that will satisfy your media server needs. miniDLNA is available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/minidlna/

Saturday, May 08, 2010

Youtube 3D

Youtube player supports Stereoscopy (3D) content. The player provides various options to deliver 3D content differently to your browser. There is an option “Cross-eyed” to watch 3D (with 3D) with your naked eye. But, you should strain your eyes to overlap two images. (I tried and couldn’t make it L). Other options should allow you to watch the video using the 3D special glasses. Currently, youtube doesn’t support Polarized 3D glasses.

Watch this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RFuRY7azgA. Notice the “3D” option in the player. Seems there are many 3D content available in youtube. Next thing, I am gonna do is buy a 3D glass J. No wonder if full 3D movies make into youtube in near future.

Copying text from the video:
>>

HOW DID I MAKE THIS?
I simply used 2 identical (very cheap) cameras and placed them in the same general direction (both level with the lenses separated about 2 1/2 inches from each other). Then I resized the videos in editing and placed them next to each other (like you see in the "cross-eyed" setting). Once it was uploaded I added a few tags to trigger YouTube's new 3D viewing feature. The tag "yt3d:enable=true yt3d:aspect=3.55:4" is a custom tag I made specifically for this video and may not work for your video if you use it but it wouldn't hurt to try I guess. So just put that code into your tags if your video looks like mine.

HOW TO ANIMATE IN 3D:
Unfortunately, I had to cross my eyes to edit in 3D. I don't have any big fancy programs or a team to animate for me like most 3D studios have. So I like to keep it simple. It was a pain in the arse making this but it worked and I'm happy for that.

Camera used:
2 Flipcams

<<

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/07/youtube-3d.html

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Android on iPhone

Its really cool!!!

Android running on an iPhone. A member of iPhone development team called Planetbeing have ported Android to run on iPhone. iPhone can be configured to dual boot iPhone OS and Android phone. I even had a glimpse of Android running on iPhone in one of my friend's mobile. I would rate the experience is quiet better than the Samsung I5700 galaxy spica The graphics transition is quiet faster.

The port is currently available only in the first generation iPhones. Hope it would soon be available in iPhone 3G and 3GS models. The source code is available online here

Have a glimpse on this video.


Wednesday, April 21, 2010

HJSplit for Linux

If you are looking for an alternative method to join the splited files using HJSplit program, there is one for Linux users. The tool is used to split and join a big file. The splited files are named in the format file_name.avi.001, file_name.avi.002 and so on by the tool.

Linux users, just use the 'cat' command to merge the files. The syntax that I used is as below:

$ cat file_name.avi.* > filename.avi

This works because the cat command takes filenames in alphabetical order and merges the files.

- Have fun.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

MeeGo 1.0 first look

Intel's Moblin and Nokia's Maemo merged together to give birth to MeeGo mobile operating system. MeeGo is a Linux-based operating system with Qt support for UI. The OS currently support ARM and x86 architectures. As the OS has been released as open source (hosted by Linux Foundation), soon there will be support for various architectures. It is claimed that MeeGo is not based on any other Linux distros. But, the packages will use the existing Fedora's .rpm.

MeeGo can be downloaded here and developer resources are available here.

Look at the first preview of MeeGo running in Netbook.