BootLife

Conway's Game of Life implemented to run directly from a 512-byte x86 boot sector in assembly, using VGA memory itself as the simulation grid.

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BootLife implements Conway's Game of Life so that it runs directly from a 512-byte x86 boot sector, using VGA memory as the simulation grid rather than a conventional display buffer managed by an operating system. It is built with NASM and run in QEMU as a raw floppy image, or through a bundled make target.

The whole simulation, from bootstrapping the CPU to rendering each generation, fits inside the 512 bytes a BIOS loads and executes before any operating system is present, making it a compact demonstration of low-level x86 boot-sector and VGA programming techniques.

It is written in x86 assembly and released under the ISC license.

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