Hello, I'm new to assembly language. I have some C background and I have studied up on binary arithmetic and hex and etc. So I'm aware of what areas I need to study up on. At this time, I'm testing some tutorial code with nasm, but I would like to convert it to fasm so I can start trying to code with it. I'm using Linux to program.

I have some basic questions and I don't know if this is the right place to ask, so please move this if necessary. I did not find a beginner board when looking.

My question is this. I'm interested in the future, in running an asm written application directly form the bios. This is so it boots like an arcade console. In other words, after the computer starts, how can I execute my program without an os.

My other question is graphics. I am using a nvidia video card and information for graphics is very difficult to find. Using assembly language, how can I write directly to video memory.

This is a little advanced for me, but my first real goal is to create a graphics screen that boots to a scroller. Which is very common in demo programming.

In C, I would say that I am trying to make a small graphics library. So I would like to code all graphics routines myself.

For now, getting some pixels on the screen would be great.

Thank you

Moved to OS Construction

With regards to the BIOS boot. I think you might mean that you want to make a boot disk that the BIOS loads and executes. To replace the BIOS would be a somewhat much more difficult problem that might make your system unusable if you make a mistake.

NVIDIA information will likely be much more difficult to obtain. I would recommend that you read about the difficulties that the Linux users have had with getting GPU info. Some GPUs are documented and some are not.

If you we are talking about legacy BIOS the thing you are searching for is so called OPTION ROM mechanism that allows to run code from third party cards. You may also use SeaBIOS as base for BIOS and add your code to it, later run it as coreboot payload. Keep in mind that most code of coreboot is written in C, but adding assembly code to SeaBIOS isn't that hard.

You can test Option Rom without any real hardware and run it under QEMU with Seabios.

In case of modern hardware you want the EDK II kit for UEFI but it is not well suited for assembly code.

Overall revolution suggestion to go with boot disk is a lot easier.