Even today the floppies are still being used, for example - as virtual floppies inside the coreboot open source BIOS. Just imagine: your wonderful OS could be a part of someone's BIOS build! (for coreboot supported motherboard, maybe you have or could get one - see https://www.coreboot.org/Supported_Motherboards )

If you already have a coreboot-supported motherboard, or a real chance to get one, - wouldn't it be cool to be able to launch your own OS straight from the BIOS chip? ;) With one simple command it is possible to add any floppy to coreboot BIOS build - and then you see it as a boot entry. Multiple floppies could be added this way (as long as you have enough space left inside the BIOS flash chip, luckily LZMA compression could be used for the stored floppies to reduce their occupied size) - although with the unofficial SeaBIOS multiple floppies patch found here - http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Lenovo_G505S_hacking#Unofficial_SeaBIOS_patches .

@icebreaker , my sincere congratulations: I added your FloppyBird compiled image (uploaded by my friend here - https://github.com/mikebdp2/floparchive/blob/master/floppies_extra/floppybird.img ) to the coreboot.rom BIOS build for my Lenovo G505S , and it's working perfectly 😉 Also, after LZMA compression your FloppyBird occupies just 2174 bytes inside the flash chip. Thank you very much for this beautiful game, Mihail, it made my BIOS better and funnier 👍

this is such a great work! a question: can you have Makefile to compile this to .COM (or .EXE) file, so it is possible to run the game under DosBox/DosEmu?

thanks.

I don't understand how one would need GIMP to compile an operating system...
Is it necessary? I don't see how.

Hi Mihail,

I wanted to share with you something that I’ve been working on lately. It’s called Magnolia, and it’s a tool that lets you run arbitrary programs on the context of a PC BIOS. It works as an Option ROM that can be embedded in the BIOS or on a hardware device, and it executes during the POST. You can find it here: https://github.com/miraliumre/magnolia.

The reason I'm writing is because I have included Floppy Bird as a demo on Magnolia and, while searching if someone else had attempted to something similar before, I have found that there's a 2019 issue (#3) about a similar project. The key difference is that, as an Option ROM, Magnolia with Floppy Bird can be embedded in a much wider range of motherboards, not only those supported by coreboot.

Of course, Magnolia is still a work in progress and it has some bugs and limitations. For example, on one of the motherboards I have tested it in, I can exit Floppy Bird and boot normally, but if I try to enter the CMOS setup screen after playing, the PC crashes. But I’m working on fixing them and improving the functionality.

I hope you don’t mind me using your code for this project. I’ve given you full credit and linked to your GitHub page on the README file. I just wanted to show you what I’ve done with your amazing game and see what you think.

Cheers,
Rodrigo