initial utilities:

Ironically, these utilities advanced progress fast enough that once the kernel was operational, the biggest obstacle became booting off of DOS. So the next step was to implement a bootstrap and standalone system so that we could rid ourself of DOS entirely.

We had put the plan of the first article into action, used the second articles tools to load test programs as the kernel, extending standalone operation. This created a base for the kernel and user environment.

We describe the need and use of a cross-support environment to create 386 code from a non-386 machine, so as to create the initial binarys before our port can generate them.

With cross tools we could make utility programs for our nascent system. The next step would be incorporating them into a filesystem so that they could run on the native 386, with the kernel program.

Having made the initial filesystem on another kind of system, we need to move it into place on the system we are running the kernel on.

Nothing ever goes right the first time, so a incremental process of bringing up the filesystem, from standalone utilities to system initialization allows us to debug flaws in filesystem creation, often artifacts of its non-native creation.