Survival Workstation
A bare-metal UEFI application that boots from a microSD card with no operating system — just a C compiler, text editor, file browser, and the knowledge to rebuild.
This book walks through building the entire system from scratch, chapter by chapter.
The Book
Part 1: The Bare-Metal Workstation
Phase 1: Boot & Input
| # | Chapter |
|---|---|
| 1 | The Mission |
| 2 | How Computers Boot |
| 3 | Setting Up the Workshop |
| 4 | Hello, UEFI |
| 5 | Memory Without an OS |
| 6 | Painting Pixels |
| 7 | Hearing Keystrokes |
| 8 | The Main Loop |
Phase 2: Filesystem & Editor
| # | Chapter |
|---|---|
| 9 | Reading the Disk |
| 10 | Browsing Files |
| 11 | Writing to Disk |
| 12 | The Text Editor |
Phase 3: The C Compiler
| # | Chapter |
|---|---|
| 13 | The C Compiler |
| 14 | Write, Run, Repeat |
| 15 | Teaching TCC to Output UEFI |
| 16 | The Self-Hosting Rebuild |
| 18 | x86_64 Self-Hosting |
Phase 3.5: Syntax Highlighting
| # | Chapter |
|---|---|
| 17 | Syntax Highlighting |
Phase 4: USB & Cloning
| # | Chapter |
|---|---|
| 19 | USB Volumes |
| 20 | Cloning to USB |
Phase 4.5: Self-Self-Hosting
| # | Chapter |
|---|---|
| 21 | Eating Your Own Dogfood |
Phase 5: Streaming I/O & Tools
| # | Chapter |
|---|---|
| 22 | Streaming I/O |
| 23 | The ISO Writer |
| 24 | The Format Tool |
Phase 5.5: exFAT & NTFS
| # | Chapter |
|---|---|
| 25 | Reading and Writing exFAT |
| 26 | Reading NTFS |
Part 2: The ESP32 That Saves the World
Phase 1: The Pocket Flasher
| # | Chapter |
|---|---|
| 27 | The Pocket Flasher |
| 28 | Setting Up the ESP32 |
| 29 | Driving the Display |
| 30 | Talking to the SD Card |
| 31 | Creating a GPT |
| 32 | Building FAT32 |
| 33 | Packing the Payload |
| 34 | Flash! |
Phase 2: The Survival Toolkit
| # | Chapter |
|---|---|
| 35 | The Home Screen |
| 36 | Reading FAT32 |
| 37 | exFAT Support |
| 38 | The File Browser |
| 39 | File Viewers |
| 40 | Image Decoders |
| 41 | The Image Viewer |