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Blurring The Line Between BIOS And OS
Jon Kincade writes "The Register has an article about Phoenix Technologies cME software that allows users on anything from servers to embedded systems to run diagnostics, browse the web and other things without having to boot into a full fledged OS. The primary use seems to be recovery from system crashes. Also, this may explain why the Phoenix browser was asked to change its name a few months ago."
Command line browsing at it's best!
;-)
Look out ASCII porn here come the BIOSonly users of the world
Posting as directed.
Couldn't we move to some sort of system where it's no longer necessary? Or maybe just a very skeletal one to start the boot process.
thats...actually a brilliant idea. but in implementation, how well would a bios chip doing all this work do? i mean, we've got bios chips nowadays that need active cooling, what would it take once we add features like this?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Phoenix Technologies is hoping PC manufacturers will latch on to its newest software to help solve PC problems and improve data security.
Phoenix, which creates BIOS software for many of the largest PC manufacturers, branched out this week with the new CME, or Core Managed Environment, software suite.
Where the BIOS (basic input/output system) provides a bridge between a PC's operating system and its hardware, CME will create protected areas on a PC's hard drive that can host sensitive data or applications that alleviate common problems, allowing the computers to run even if the operating system is damaged, the company said.
Phoenix, which will sell the software directly to PC makers for an undisclosed price, becomes the latest in a series of hardware and software makers trying to make PCs easier to use and more secure.
Intel, Transmeta, Via Technologies and Microsoft have recently launched new security initiatives. IBM has also been offering special data recovery software and a security chip in its new PCs. Collectively, the companies are seeking to better protect sensitive data, owned by companies or individuals, against thieves.
Although the security offers--including Intel's "LaGrande" technology, Transmeta's newest Crusoe processor and Via's Padlock--are built into chips or, in the case of Microsoft's Palladium project, into the operating system, Phoenix's CME will reside in a protected area on a PC's hard drive.
CME applications are intended to protect and recover PC users' data and to help the PC itself repair damaged software or connect to the Internet to download updates, the company said in a statement.
Phoenix will also offer versions of CME for embedded devices, such as industrial equipment, consumer electronics and servers.
Basic Input Output System
If you can do more advance operation through "BIOS", then the "BIOS" is no longer BASIC.
Therefore, it should no longer be called BIOS (Basic IOS)
Call it Embedded Operating System (EmbOS).
Just a thought!
Now that computers aren't coming with floppy drives, there better be something that users can do crash recovery from if the machines won't boot from cd....
Personally I'd like the choice of recovery cds/floppies.
A bit like the offerngs here?
[This Sig contains on viruses]
It's something we've all wanted: a way to run your computer when the OS is hosed. Happened to me last night, actually. Booting off a floppy or CD-ROM is slow when you're in the tweak-reboot-tweak-reboot phase.
Also, it would be great to be able to get those drivers and updates, or even HOWTO's while fixing the computer.
Now, what I'd like to see added into this: The ability to instantly switch into the BIOS system. Then you could bring up a HOWTO, switch back and forth between your BIOS and struggling OS.
...
An OS crashes..
whereas you'd hope that a BIOS doesn't..
It won't boot up too fast if it's weighed down by too much stuff.
Clearly, it should stick only to vital system functions (especially repair, perhaps online) and perhaps user functions (email, calendar, [help] browsing), and leave the rest to the real OS.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Windows users rejoice!!!
But I thought BIOS stood for "Built-In Operating System". And everyone knows the web browser is a fundamental component of any OS, built-in or otherwise. I'd almost go so far as to say the two should be tied together.
A BIOS vendor is copying the EFI Specification ...too bad it is several years overdue...
While I won't suggest Intel has it right per se...it makes sense as a method by which a BIOS can extend functionality...
"... but you can love completely without complete understanding." - Norman Maclean, "A River Runs Through It"
As usual, this just seems to be a case of stuff origionally designed for big expensive systems coming down to lower levels. IBM servers tend to have this functionality, hell on our F50 at work you can dial in using a modem when the AIX OS isnt running, the bios/firmware will take care of you. The AlphaPC164 i was jsut given suprised me by having a almost full unixlike OS as its firmware (SRM).
This has happened with SCSI, raid, SMP etc so it doesnt suprise me to find a BIOS that does more than normal, and in many cases it is a bonus, depending on wether it does certain things. I use serial consoles a lot, and would love to have a better way to talk to the computer at a really low level, without resorting to expensive hardware.
Well the link to the /. article about "Phoenix, the Mozilla-based web browser, is forced to change name. The new name has not yet been decided, but it is being discussed . The reason is that the BIOS manufacturer Phoenix Technologies dislikes the trademark infrigment. Next week version 0.5 will be released, with a new name." worked pretty good.
---
eeww, I'll have a crab juice.
It is software that is stored on a "protected" portion of the hard drive.
Basically, it is like the system partition on Compaq and Dell systems but, it will have some additional tools that they don't have. eg. a browser.
Wait... all those 8 and 16 bit computers...
"Resides in a protected area of the harddisk".
I think we all know what this means! Track 0 anyone? This could be interesting for TurboTax, and all the other horribly crippled applications forced on consumers nowadays.
Well, the Phoenix people at mozilla.org were asked by the people at Phoenix the BIOS company to change the name. So I'd say this is a pretty good guess.
Yes, I know that. But is Phoenix Technologies having a fit over a Mozilla project simply because of the name, or because they were planning to embed a browser in the BIOS? The text of the submission apprently makes the link between what the snazzy BIOS can do and the browser itself, but not necessarily with the name "infringement".
Usually the two most critical items needed to help a problem system is file system access and then some basic editing tool. If this bios can come with
1 - your choice of file system driver (ntfs, ufs, whateverfs)
2 - a raw sector editor
3 - a simple text file editor
That would be a godsend. A tcp/ip stack with telnet/ftp would also be very useful, but I could live without that.
If they do it wrong, however, it might be a nightmare of DRM, spyware, and commercial apps sitting in weird disk partitions. That, we definitely don't need. I don't want my machine reporting to Phoenix every time I boot, for example.
I hope, however, that Phoenix will be cut out of the loop. Something like the Linux BIOS or OpenFirmware make a whole lot more sense to me as the basis for this.
Basic Input-Output System.
;)
I assume you were kidding, but you never know
my 2c
Yawn.
I remember when all OS's came on ROM. :-)
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
Ahh very sly Daniel-san. Much like how DVD changes from Digital Video Disk to Digital Versatile Disk.. if the acronym don't fit.. change it!
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
Are there already a # of OS that fits on a 3.5" 1.4MB floppy disc? http://www.woalf.uklinux.net/ Also, as soon as more MB manufacturers supporting booting from USB devices (thumb drive, for example, which comes in all variety of sizes even at 1GB+)m would this features be pretty useless?
I agree.
The whole point of a "Basic Input/Output System" is for, well, basic I/O. It was meant to be a thin layer between the OS and the hardware.
While I agree that the technology can be improved upon, I don't think this is the proper direction to take.
I much prefer the route that Gigabyte has taken with their DualBIOS. If there is serious enough trouble with the OS, just boot to a CD with recovery tools on it. If there's a problem in the BIOS, you now have a spare. I don't see the necessity of a TCP/IP stack in the BIOS.
My $0.02.
-azmaveth
This info might be rather outdated, considering I do not have any access to more then one modern BIOS. However, when are these things going to become a bit more standard? It seems like every BIOS is vastyl different from any other BIOS. I mean, if you take away the most logical stuff such a different vendors and motherboard capabilities, there are no real standards. Some BIOSes allow you to select where to boot from by giving you a limited set of capabilities designated by standard C:, D:, etcetera, while other BIOSes (even made by the same vendor) give you a much wider choise or even better, allow you to manually select a boot order using devices, not logical station name. (boot from Primary IDE, Master... Like that.) Even worse, some mobos I had didn't even allow slightly more exotic choices such as SCSI/IDE controllers, RAID (SCSI/IDE) controllers and network booting...
I'd like the possibility of having more then three choices and to be able to delect from which device I boot, listed by IDE connection. Also, which is mighty handy, some sort of boot menu which can be called during boot, allowing you to select where to boot from. My current computer has it, if I want to boot from CD, I just have to select it... Very handy.
Hate me!
Pheonix are going to use your HDD to store their shite, so it doesn't really solve any problems if your HDD is pushing up daisies.
This nifty thing has been available on the Alpha machines for 10 years or so.
Help fight continental drift.
Basically, in the BIOS you can select to run the backup version, which, if you're smart, is a backup of the last known good BIOS.
Excellent! I've so been waiting for a simple web terminal. Years ago I was supporting a system with users on green screen terminals. Then those terminals got replaced with Windows(TM) PCs 'cos someone thought they needed them so they could access the internet. Or something.
Anyway, Windows PC's are a nightmare to support. Terminals are easy. So for corporate use, I think a web terminal would be great (I did think of suggesting using a DreamCast, but then thought better of it!).
Simple. And plus, it means they should be cheaper because there's no MS tax. So thats nice too.
This makes the suit actually have some merit or at least more merit than it had before. Before we knew this it seemed like it was just another case of corporate landsharks going after any and everybody with a similar name. Now that they both have products in the same field it appears that this is what they where thinking about when they decided to sue.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
But perhaps you can still log into Slashdot and engage in some karma whoring.
Somebody has to stop this!! Where is Steve Jobs? Where is Linus Torvalds? They need to GPL our freedom to open-source! Somebody hand me a GNU!!
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Yep, and that's why I was asking about some backing info on why Phoenix did what they did.
They didn't do it in release 0.5, btw.
They only said in 0.5 (scroll down to items 14 & 15) that they would do it in the future.
The codename for the 0.6 beta is "Glendale", but I'm not downloading it just to see what's inside. Maybe after dinner.
Personally, I think they should change the name to Pheonix and tell Phoenix to go shove an EPROM up their ass.
Boot hitting Open Apple control and some other buttons would cause the computer to load up off a system stored in the rom. It could read the drives on the scsi chain, disks and even had Apple share support to connect to an appletalk network.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
BIOS stands for Basic Input Output System, and as for the idea of enahancing the BIOS kindof defeats the purpose of having a bare bones way of controling the hardware, however if it is implemented well, it could provide a good intermediate level between the BIOS and a full OS for low level diagnostics, but i don't see a need for web browsing.
Admittedly, I'm over my head here, but can't you have a complex BIOS that gets out of the way when the OS boots, or acts as a mini OS when the real OS wont load?
I mean most support for computers is online now, and its kinda hard to log in to "dell.com" if the damn thing won't boot.
Why can't the bios be both? for instance: IBM used to have a BASIC interpretor in bios (286 and pre), but it didnt get used unless the system didn't find an OS. It didn't get in the way.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
"Visual Basic Input Output System"
sulli
RTFJ.
In other news, Microsoft today announced the availability of Bios XP Service Pack 3, available as a 900MB download from www.microsoft.com or on two handy CD's for only $19.95 plus shipping and handling.
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
we used to buy the magazines, go to the stores and log on to the net to be eagerly greeted with hot new tech that made us want to immediately scrap the $10k worth of goodies we'd just bought the week before.
Now it seems that every day brings "innovations" that seem designed to further my intent to hang on to what I've got forever if I can manage it.
What's wrong with this picture?
KFG
When i am doing a fresh install of WIN2K and REDHAT on my comps (a once-in-6-months exercise) i make sure the machine is not even physically hooked up to the net untill i have a software firewall configured, up and running. I keep the firewall packages on CDs, along with config files, and ONLY AFTER these are setup, i go online to install other things, update drivers, etc (usually, only for win2k, not for redhat, which is trivial to bring back to my customized setup)...
;) ...
having TCP/IP built into the bios, with no firewalling support, and no possibility of frequent/safe upating, no easy way to check for "being" owned is a very bad idea. Also, Phoenix being a popular bios manufacturer, there will be a lot of worms targetting this bios tcp/ip stack.
I dont see a single genuine advantage of having all this crap in the BIOS anyway. I mean, if u hose ur drive, and need to go online for some critical information/software before u can bring ur comp back up, just keep a KNOPPIX cd handy. I personally think BIOS shud be thinning down even further, given none of the modern OSes really use most of the services, and the BIOS mostly just gets in their way. All the bios shud be capable of, is to bring up the OS, and then let the OS configure everything. It wud be so neat to have the OS kernel setup all the hardware, the powersaving policies, everything when it starts up. Of course, the best is to just have the OS kernel as the bios!! just throw this anachronism completely out. (yeah for ppl whos fav os is not linux, sumthing else might need to be worked out
Ghoul
Sigura Non Grata
HP/Compaq Servers and SUN have some similar things on their servers now. Although no web browser, and not technically BIOS. The Remote Insight Lights-out (RILo)boards provide great disaster recovery tools. Compaq An oldie but goodie is SUN Solaris PROM. Much more useful than BIOS.
I know people clammor for the good ole days of BIOS and CMOS, but now we just need to accept that these new products are going to be better.
what? what I thought we were in the trust tree in the nest, were we not?
Some reading the links, and little information gathering, you know, research? Or didja just think "Slashdot" and "ignorant assumptions" and somehow it just "clicked"?
Personally, I'm happy enough just using a bootable disk to fix WinXP (yeah, I know), if it gets hosed. It actually doesn't happen very often anyway. But if for some reason the OS was hosed and using bootable media wasn't an option (perhaps security concerns, for example), how would this be better than just have LILO and a dedicated "repair" partition with linux and a bunch of repair tools on it? This way, as another poster commented, you aren't introducing unneccesary complexity into BIOS. and in fact, this seems very similar to what Phoenix is doing - the ZDNET article mentioned that the bios would have special hard drive partitions with recovery apps at it's disposal. So it seems like the only thing we're doing here is giving BIOS the ability to operate apps on a recovery partition directly, instead of using LILO+linux. Unless your boot record is screwed as well, what's the advantage to this? And if your hard drive is that trashed, doesn't it make more sense to stick the drive in a machine that also has a working HD, copy what you can, and reformat? For that matter, if your hard drive is getting pooched so often that you NEED dedicated bios support, then you should replace it. At least,that's my opinion. IAACTAAHBMMIPS (I Am A Computer Technician As A Hobby But My Major Is Political Science)
I'm the stranger...posting to
And by the way, microsoft doesnt make motherboards. you are thinking of intel. just because MS maintains a hardware list doesnt mean that is the only stuff authorized to work with Windows, it just means it passed MS's testing. Doesnt Linux have to have specific computer parts to work as well? How about (hahaha) Apple?
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
So Windows crashes, and you can't get it to come back up. No problem! You just boot up into your BIOS, send the built-in web-browser to support.microsoft.com, and then your set.
Dammit! And I'm using the new BORK edition BIOS....
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
The parent post was a joke, of course (did no one else notice the bit about "tying" browser and OS?). But you raise an interesting point. Is the BIOS acronym really descriptive anymore? It seems as if current PC OSes don't use it beyond the most basic boot, where DOS and CP/M actually used it for, well, I/O services to talk to the hardware. Isn't much of the BIOS 16-bit code anyway? I thought that (and bugginess/poor performance/Windowscentricity) was kind of why Linux and FreeBSD eschew the BIOS routines after the barest, earliest part of the boot cycle.
Really, isn't it Basic Bootstrap Services nowadays?
I've always wondered why IEEE 1275 / OpenBIOS / OpenFirmware never caught on. IMO it is a much better and much more powerful alternative to the closed and aging BIOS found in most PC's. People are always complaining about "Closed" operating systems but don't bat an eye that their BIOS is closed...
Could this be the first version of a 'Auto-Updater' for future Palladium-enabled BIOSes?
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
there isn't anything about BIOS programming that is proprietary or costly
What about talking to the motherboard's chipset? Many chipsets have settings that if accidentally triggered could make the motherboard HCF. Of course, the official BIOS is careful never to trigger those settings, but just randomly poking at the I/O registers could do Bad Things.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Well, obviously, Microsoft should supply the BIOS code as well ($for$a$fair$price$). Really I'm surprised they don't already. Surely Windows PCs could be more consistent and reliable if they did?
I'm being facetious, but why *hasn't* Microsoft attempted to control PC BIOS firmware? It would have seemed a natural thing for them to do, given their propensities. Is it just fear of antitrust legislation?
What if they called it an OS on a chip?
Make it separate from the BIOS; but possibly on the same EEPROM chip; it will only load up if you hold down the F12 button (or something) when you boot.
After the BIOS hands the control of the
machine to the OS, to what extent is the
BIOS used, if at all? I mean, userspace
code cannot circumvent the OS -- if it tries,
the process gets killed by the OS. AFAIK, there
is no such a relation between the OS and the BIOS:
if the OS tries to circumvent the BIOS and talk
directly to some device, it does not get killed.
So, the BIOS is not a layer below the OS,
right? I am talking about real OS's, not DOS
or 'doze 95.
How many floppies would it take to reflash your BIOS with the newest GNU Emacs 83.2?
You know where you are? You're in the $PATH, baby. You're gonna get executed!
Just because BIOS currently stands for "Basic Input/Output System," doesn't mean it can't be coopted for some new meaning.
I'm glad to see PCs getting something similar to the tftp and other bootprom tools which good minicomputers had. Something that will let you build a machine from nothing, or fix or salvage data devices on a damaged system.
[
Not even Emacs comes with one of those. ;)
You know where you are? You're in the $PATH, baby. You're gonna get executed!
why *hasn't* Microsoft attempted to control PC BIOS firmware? It would have seemed a natural thing for them to do, given their propensities. Is it just fear of antitrust legislation?
No. Instead, it's because Microsoft is still working on it, using Xbox as a test platform.
Will I retire or break 10K?
just adding a correct link to the english page for KNOPPIX
.. looking good so far :)
am downloading that tool as we speak
When we talk about the BIOS, we talk about firmware written for a piece of hardware to talk to software. Now OpenFirmware from Sun's labs had caught on, but didn't catch any waves. (IMHO)The pc market doesn't go for something thats going to make us be able to install a new version of our firmware and create adapters that can be easily programmed to interface with the that firmware, a plentiful abstraction layer. Apple, Sun, Compaq, and a few others have implemented it, but they aren't going to package this into a pc motherboard. It's enough to get 20 pcb pc motherboard manufacturers to follow the same chipset. If a company like NVidia or VIA adopt, or even our chip manufactures, bring the idea back to the drawing board, we might have a chance at seeing firmware upgrades in our hardware be able to increase performance out of those old boards. With an open standard, WE, US, The People, will be able to manage, extend, manipulate, integrate the firmware into things it has never been supposed to do before. Honestly, Solid state devices are the future, we're just not there yet, but we will get there. Anyone out there could be breaking out their breadboard right now building an implementation of OpenFirmware or alike. The first step to this must be a partnership formed by hardware and software manufacturers to develop such a standard. I don't think IEEE1275(which was denied) got anywhere because the community wasn't open enough at the time. Now that Free Software has made its dent into the economy, I think its time they jump on the band wagon. Thats my 2cents for today =)
Phoenix's CME will reside in a protected area on a PC's hard drive.
I laugh as I read this. At this very moment, I have a system on my bench with an HDD that just let the magic smoke out of it's chips in a great gout of fiery stink!!! No chips, no spin, no way for their "protected area" of the HDD to do anything but stink.
I love the smell of burning chips....It smells like
PROFIT!!!
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
Now that's worthy of a PANIC if I've ever heard one.
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
That's actually not a bad idea, and has at least some potential for Good, IMHO. With storage as cheap as $1 per gigabyte, an OEM moving their 650MB Recovery CD into this area seems like a great idea (not great if you want to swap in a new hard drive yourself, but they're not targeting power users)
However, Phoenix seems to be under the impression that just because they have this space, they should use it. A web browser and TCP/IP stack? Someone explain to me how this is good, and how the target "non power user" will be able to make sense of this technology without RMA'ing their computer if it gets that hosed.
Nothing is so smiple that it can't get screwed up.
It's not hard to keep the added complexity out of the boot path. The way I would do this (they never ask me) is to have the brower, etc only launch from a BIOS menu. If you never run it, it's just taking up ROM space, no biggy.
As almost everything with x86/ia32 technology this is just another braindead cheapo option.
I mean, sure this will need another primary partition? And why the heck they just don't implement OPENFIRMWARE 'coz thats all the bios
you'll ever need?
I really hope the guys from the different open/free bios projects get their things right, up and running. I can't stand the trash anymore!
Somewhat OT, but you brought it up. I just finished installing Win2K-Pro as a guest OS in VMWare, running on Win2K-Server. I'll be installing TurboTax in the guest OS tonight and will post in some appropriate place about how it goes. I don't expect there will be any problems, but you never know.
Vista:XPSP2::ME:98SE
So, are there any BIOSes that can be accessed via HTTP or TELNET? That's perhaps more important to me than more local functionality.
Actually, newer Macs use OpenFirmware. I have it on both of my Macs, and they're both over two years old.
For a little bit of fun, hold down CMD+OPT+O+F at the boot chime. This will put you into the PROM, which is scriptable in Forth.
Given that board test and driver suites are written in OF, I don't see any reason at all why a web browser would be difficult. Text-only, perhaps -- but not terribly difficult.
There is also a project I noticed one day on Freshmeat that I think was called Retro Native Forth, for the IA32 arch. I wonder if that could be molded into an OF-like role on that platform?
unixkb.com -- articles on practical Unix issues.
Phoenix probably did not officially announce the connection between their spiffy BIOS and the similarly-named Mozilla project. To do so would have announced their project before it was more than vaporware. Sometimes companies slip up and make *ethical* business decisions...
To understand what happened and why, look at the two related events: the lawsuit and the BIOS release. Add some logical speculation, observation, and assumption: Phoenix Technologies wanted to name their brower the Phoenix Browser (speculation). Phoenix Technologies did not (AFAIK) sue the Project Phoenix, the capital of Arizona, Phoenix Contact, or any immortal flaming birds(observation). Phoenix Technologies is staffed by humans(assumption). Humans tend to be jealous and illogical(observation).
Stir until mixed. Bake until done. Remove conclusion from head. Mine looks like this: Phoenix Technologies planned to release a browser under the name 'Phoenix Browser', but someone beat them to the name. Rather than pick a different name, they convinced themselves that they had more right to the name than the other guy. Then, they send hordes of marauding Vikings to pillage and plunder. Or something like that.
Was there a connection? Probably. Will they admit it? Probably not. Am I done ranting? Reply hazy; try again.
Batou: Hey, Major... You ever hear of "human rights"? Major: I understand the concept, but I've never seen it in action
It makes me wonder why microsoft hasn't started making BIOS's a long time ago. It would be a good way to implement some embedded software, which seems to be the goal of the whole .NET strategy. I can see microsoft BIOS's that are specially meant to handle Windows' API's, and maybe could further their monopoly by only being able to launch microsoft operating systems.
Then again, would they really be called microsoft anymore if they did that? It'd be more like microhard.
$ make love
make: don't know how to make love. Stop
"Admittedly, I'm over my head here, but can't you have a complex BIOS that gets out of the way when the OS boots, or acts as a mini OS when the real OS wont load?"
Sun firmware contains a FORTH interpreter that "can" do "anything". It offers all kinds of access to hardware, and can even be used to tune the OS after boot. There's a symbolic debugger, facilities for running programs that don't need an OS, and tty support. If you wanted/needed to be clever, you could do *anything* from here.
Except for the fact that PCs follow certain design factors (decisions made in the early-mid 1980s), there is no reason we couldn't have something similar in the PC world.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
It'll be a cold day in hell that I run any machine capable of connecting to the net without my telling it to explicitly.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Now what would happen if we had a beowulf cluster of these? Seriously, you buy a computer with a power cord and ethernet connection. Have it boot off a server open-source NFS and such, and you're set. No boot roms, floppy disks, ethernet drivers, etc.
How many slashes would a slashdot dot, if a slashdot could dot slashes?
I read the headline and thought "Wow, that's the coolest thing I've seen in a while." Then I read the article and it took only the words "stored on a protected portion of the hard drive" for me to become severely disapointed. This would be awesome if it were embedded as a ROM, but as a HD partition, it's usefulness is questionable at best. In short, if your HD dies, you're still up the creek, much like you would have been without this technology.
Admittedly, I'm over my head here, but can't you have a complex BIOS that gets out of the way when the OS boots, or acts as a mini OS when the real OS wont load?
"Old" Alpha servers from Digital used to have a "BIOS" that had a shell and supported even TCP/IP connection; i't was used for diagnostic and recovery purpose when the machine was rebooted, something went bad in the process, and maybe the sysadmin isn't even in the building...
On a standard workstation or on a PC, this doesn't strike me as useful: what good would it do, when I do have a boot floppy lying around?
Even having a BIOS isn't that useful anymore: OSes do better hardware detection and resource assignment (you OS does them every time it starts, unless you are using DOS) than any BIOS.
You can save space. Or you can save time. Don't ever count on saving both at once. -- First Law of Algorithmic Analisys
I pity the potential contributor to society who spends his cycles trying to defend ones right to use a name which may cause confusion in a small market space.
.. you just can't open a computer company called Apple. Thems the breaks. It actually helps people less knowledgable than you not get rooked or confused. Your anti corperate ire, which I tend to have lots of myself, could be far more usefully directed than getting all irate when somebody has a semi-legit case with trademark dilution .. I mean, they didnt even try and put Pheonix the browser out of 'business', they just wanted them to change their name.
You wanna rail against dirty corperate tactics, of which we both know there are many?
a) find a real dirty corperate tactic (shouldnt be too hard)
b) spend your valuable time fighting it
But honest to god, dude, you are welcome to open a sofa store called Apple
No biggie, so chillax and fight the battles worth fighting.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I totally agree this is bad.
:-)
I understand Phoenix is trying to protect their business, but really, the days of the BIOS as it is should be over.
The BIOS is a legacy piece of crap that serves practically no purpose, but to boot the OS.
The services provided for the "Input/Output" go largely unused, mainly because the majority are 16 bit services and no modern OS has a way to call them in the first place (well, without a high latency). Even the 32 bit services go largely unused,- PCI for example is practically always implemented by a driver that does direct IO vs. calling the BIOS.
In other words, non of the most prominent operating systems call the BIOS for services such as RS-232, IDE, LPT, Video, you name it, after the apprioriate drivers are loaded.
The REAL purpose of the BIOS should be: initialize the hardware up to a point so that it can boot the OS. This means memory initialization, some timer and interrupt related stuff and whatever code is required for the boot devices (I personally think IDE and Ethernet are the most important, but I can see that USB and SCSI are important to a lot of people)
After that the BIOS should load the OS image and be done.
Don't think I'm making this thing up; I've actually implemented a boot loader that completely eliminated the need for a BIOS and it was very fast; ready to boot of the harddrive as soon as the harddrive was spin up (e.g. 3 seconds!)
LinuxBIOS is doing something similar.
Anyways, sorry for this little rant without any proper links or so, but I gotta go to be in time for Apres-Ski happy hour!
I completely agree with you.
LinuxBIOS is doing something similar.
And I'd like to flash out my BIOS with it, if only I'd have a little time...
You can save space. Or you can save time. Don't ever count on saving both at once. -- First Law of Algorithmic Analisys
On a standard workstation or on a PC, this doesn't strike me as useful: what good would it do, when I do have a boot floppy lying around?
I don't use floppies, and most of my computers don't have floppy drives. Many computers don't come with floppies anymore.
Even having a BIOS isn't that useful anymore:
It is if you want the OS to be able to talk to the hardware. Without the bios, it can't.
And the OS doesn't do better hardware detection in my experiences. Remember, the OS detects the hardware THRU the bios, by comparing it to a list of known hardware.
Yea, if you use only hardware that is older than the OS, then the OS is great at recognizing it. And I prefer to have more control over the resources. No OS, especially Windows, can anticipate all the crazy stuff I may be trying to do. Maybe I want to have 6 pci video cards or modems. (Yes, some of us do crazy stuff like that.) Windows doesn't handle that very well, even now. With a more sophisticated bios, i could debug and tweak the way it was seen by the OS.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Did anyone else just have flashbacks to the whole TurboTax thing that wrote to 'protected areas of the hard drive'? This technology sounds cool, but I'm a bit concerned: it almost sounds like the beginnings of BIOS-level DRM (digital rights management), sugar-coated with some seemingly-good features.
It has cool potential, but at the same time, scares me somewhat at what it could theoretically be used for.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Yes, very bad, because you know if this happens one day you'll see:
Click here to flash your bios.
And you can count the number of seconds on your right hand that will elapse before that link fries your motherboard.
I don't use floppies, and most of my computers don't have floppy drives. Many computers don't come with floppies anymore.
Right. That's when bootable CDs kick in.
And the OS doesn't do better hardware detection in my experiences. Remember, the OS detects the hardware THRU the bios, by comparing it to a list of known hardware.
Bzzzt. Wrong.
Practically, all hardware interaction is done, nowadays, with drivers that can access directly to the barenaked metal stuff inside the case.
A BIOS should only prepare the OS to boot up from a physical medium, i.e. a drive, a flash card, a ethernet connection. Given that need, that is fulfilled in about 3/5 seconds, everything else is only unneeded crap, since modern OS can handle it much better, from the programmer's point of view, and from userland.
And I prefer to have more control over the resources.
That's operating systems and userland applications' stuff, not BIOS'.
Windows doesn't handle that very well, even now.
I'm really sorry for you, and whoever is using a retarded operating system that isn't even good on retrieving the information it needs directly from the hardware, instead on relying on possibly buggy and/or incorrect information from a piece of crap that survived beyond its use.
With a more sophisticated bios, i could debug and tweak the way it was seen by the OS.
Sounds like you need a better OS, not a better BIOS. ;-)
You can save space. Or you can save time. Don't ever count on saving both at once. -- First Law of Algorithmic Analisys
Now we get to hear how IE "can't be removed from the BIOS".
Slashdot Journal on Monopoly News
Seriously, the biggest inconvinience of all BIOS' I saw is inability to extend them. But if BIOS will have Emacs as UI - no problems! Few brackets and you have new wonderful function.
UI of Emacs is not overbloated (compared to GNOME/KDE), but still powerful enough. With a choice depending on available memory, it can be compiled with or without X11.
However, which Emacs? GNU/Emacs is more compact and faster, but Xemacs has a great package management subsystem.
Wait a minute. UI is good, but not everything. Who will be responsible fo hardware? Of course Linux. So, that will be sort of embedded Linux with Emacs as UI. Cool! I want PC with such BIOS!
Less is more !
In good BIOS "B" stands for "Big". That's right. Big Intelligent Operating System.
Less is more !
While Microsoft moves more and more application functionality into the OS, Phoenix moves more and more OS functionality into the BIOS.
Let's hammer that home, shall we? Instead of a minimialist BIOS setup, Award and Asus have decided that the following features are more important than conextual help on the P4PE (rev. 1.03) board;
That's not all...
Tom's Hardware gave this one a thumbs up?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Granny will find it too intimidating to do almost any system maintenance task - she's not the target for this software, any more than she's the target for Linux+Lilo repair partitions. And grannie, as well as most desktop and a lot of server users, is probably running windows. Windows cannot write to Linux partitions, so far as I know.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Those six types of powering up a machine are actually a pretty good thing. I've used the Automatic power up each day at a specific time as an alarm clock more than once. And it is also pretty nice for the work place.
Powering up a machine by using hotkeys on a keyboard is a nice feature for us big fat lazy guys that don't want to bend down to the level of the computers power button.
The graphical boot logo is ment more for OEM's (HP uses a lot of ASUS boards), and geeks that like to tweak this feature.
Although I like these features I must point out that the latest bios flash for my ASUS P2BLS seems to have caused some issues with powering down either via the power button or software when wake at a specific time is enabled, it reboots 30% of the time rather than shutting down.
As for the boot sector virus settings... I saw it used daily when I was doing phone support for Windows ME. We had a lot of techs that would explain the mysterious freezes that occured during setup as a "BIOS anitvirus" and tell them to call the BIOS maker. It made a great excuse and the cutomer can rarely verify this... ever tried calling AWARD? Good luck Joe Sixpack! That place sure sucked.
~Z
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
For God sakes! A browser in the firmware? What for?!
Look. DEC did this right years ago. If you don't know, find a crummy AlphaStation on EBay or something. They're next to free.
You can put a serial cable in the back and when the 10+ year old computer notes the lack of a keyboard and/or video subsystem on boot (because its headless, like most significant computers) it will send a frigging prompt out the serial port. From there you can run basic diagnostics, dump a device list, pick a boot device, etc. You can bootstrap the machine from nothing to full installed and running OS without the use of a "local" keyboard or monitor. I don't think you even need to have a processor installed to get, at least, the prompt. It uses a small, inexpensive and independent CPU!
Sun, HP, etc. I'm sure they all have similar.
Over *here* I have a VA Linux A1000. I got this for cheap during VA's fire sale before they spaced the hardware biz. One of the last machines out the door from VA. What is this machine's solution to the bootstrapping puzzle? A proprietary connector on the back (where?!) attaches a proprietary little black box (poorly made and rather difficult to replace, I gather) that provides keyboard/mouse/VGA connectors. IT'S A 1U BOX! I'm supposed to leave this flimsy little device permanently attached to the machine in a rack? What crap!
What I want is someone (say Phoenix, perhaps?) to create a BIOS for Intel/AMD based motherboards that provides all the basic features of traditional PC BIOS (minus that pointless energy saver thing) configuration through a serial port, with the option of allowing the OS to assume control of that same serial port and thus achieving complete, end-to-end, power-up to OS bootstrapping fully headless. I have no doubt that every cotton picking Intel/AMD motherboard with a built-in serial or USB connector is FULLY CAPABLE of doing this today. All it would take is a tiny bit of inspiration. Why on Earth has no commodity motherboard manufacture thought to do me this trivial thing? I'll pay extra. A LOT extra.
Yeah, I know, buy "good" hardware, the Unix folks already do this. Yeah, I know, some weirdo vertical market board maker has just the thing hiding behind some link. My point is this; allowing a serial port, instead of keyboard+VGA, to perform BIOS config and bootstrapping is trivial to implement. There is no technical reason this should not exist on cheap, common peecee hardware.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
The REAL purpose of the BIOS should be: initialize the hardware up to a point so that it can boot the OS. This means memory initialization,
some timer and interrupt related stuff and whatever code is required for the boot devices
Can someone tell me why the bios needs to look at all 512+ meg of memory?
Why does it play with the floppy drive or CD rom at all if its told to just boot C:? It should just do what it needs to do to load the OS. If that means waking up the disk controller, and reading in a few sectros without starting up the screen, great. I don't need the screen... I need the os loaded in the machine and I'm assuming it will reset up everything else again.
Don't you think if you needed karma, you *WOULDN'T* post AC?
*shrug* I dunno... just makes no sense to me to karmawhore when your posts don't affect your karma
The whole point of a "Basic Input/Output System" is for, well, basic I/O. It was meant to be a thin layer between the OS and the hardware.
I always thought BIOS stands for "Built-In Obsolete Software".
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Dude, didn't ya get the memo? Tom's recommends pretty darn everything that doesn't actually burn down the lab. Anything to server another 2 doz add impressions.....
"Sanity is not statistical", George Orwell, "1984"
>Complexity is mostly bad. Complexity in software
>leads to bugs. Complexity in BIOS breaks
>the "Basic" part of BIOS.
>Better BIOS - I am all for that. BIOS with the
>the "OS" standing for "Operating Systems" is not
>a good thing IMHO.
Not to mention the voodoo surrounding BI-sexuals. Don't get me wrong, they freak me out. I hear they think differently. The only exception is with highly attractive females, commonly documented under the title "lesbian porn".
Whoa, I got off track. What I really meant to say was, a BI-sexual Operating Sytem scaries the be-geeze-us outta me.
btw, anyone know how to spell what is pronounced the same as "be-jesus"?
You stole my comment! ;)
The alpha SRM and mini-debugger kicked ass, if you fucked up you OS you could just TFTP a new one from the network or retrieve it from floppy or cdrom.
I am sorry, but this is absolutely true. The BIOS only exists as a concept on the PC. I like to give the Amiga OS as an example in this case.
(It was a single-user Multitasking, 32-bit OS, in late 80s to mid-90s. Last significant version was 3.1 in 1992 iirc, though 3.9 was released in 2001).
Let's take my A1200. What did it consist of? Well, it had the CPU, a custom chipset on the mainboard with DMA-accessible 2MB of RAM and an expansion slot. As you will see, there was hardware support for some things and then everything else was part of the OS:
Hardware-wise a number of protocols were supported, most importantly the mouse and AutoConfig. The mouse was simple. But AutoConfig was the plug'n'play of the 80s. (Introduced with Amiga3000 I think). It scanned the expansion bus (Think PCI bus). No, I should not say scan. It makes everything seem like windows scanning for hardware. It just sent a couple of signals on the bus and any devices that were there responded to acknowledge their presence, then the AutoConfig would ask them some stuff, like, if they had any ROM.
Now, what was interesting was that the A1200 itself had a (512k?) ROM, which contained basically the Kickstart and a large part of the OS (the kernel, disk operations and basic windowing system). The main part of the kickstart was the bootloader. Now, I don't see anything related to BIOS here. The sequence was basically
autoconfig->kickstart->kernel->?
Another interesting thing that hapenned around the same time that the kernel was loaded was what happenned to the ROMs that other devices that were connected on the bus declared. For example, my A1200 had a SCSI card addeed. The drivers for the OS were actually on a ROM on the SCSI card. When AutoConfig asked the card, it said it had a ROM. The same type of rom filesystem was used for the SCSI ROM and the Motherboard ROM. So, basically the ROM was looked at via the ROM filesystem and any libraries in there (the driver was just a shared library and shared device) were added to the system. Very simple.
So, I dunno if you would call AutoConfig a BIOS in itself. Or if you would call the ROM FileSystem part of a BIOS. In any case, the FileSystem concept was part of the OS, which used it to access all kinds of devices. The AutoConfig was an extremely simple protocol that could be done with a minimal amount of hardware. I think the specs are less than 20 pages in the Amiga Hardware Manual.
Anyway, all I see here is the hardware, some *standard protocols* that were implemented on the hardware itself, the bootloader and then the operating system itself.
BTW, Linux systems just ignore the BIOS completely, don't they?
I miss my rubber keyboard.(Homepage)
There was a crash bug in one of the versions of the C64 rom... something to do with line extensions (which lines were 40 chars and which were the second half of a virtual 80 char line) and pressing the delete key when you were on a certain line boundary. I think that was fixed in later versions of the ROM though (they also changed the colour put in colour RAM when the clear screen character was printed). And don't forget Microsoft wrote some of the base code (which Commodore altered).
The PC doesn't need a graphical OS with all that fancy nicknack. The PC needs:
* A serial console! I don't want to connect a VGA monitor to the machine just for tuning the bootdevice
* Get rid of all that INT13 C/H/S booting crap
* The BIOS needs real SCSI support, no more SCSI-BIOS remapping
* Realmode should be dumped completly! When you power on the PC it should be in protected mode immediatly
Everything else like network support is neat, but can be optional.
Just my 2c, Alex.
You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
There are BIOSes that support a serial console, e.g. in Intel's ISP series of 1U servers.
it does all that checking "to see if the hardware is OK/allright/nothing is damaged". This is especially good to do when it comes to the memory, cause you don't want to use the bad-sectors of the memory when you are in your OS do yoU?
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
Advanced Input Output System?
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
Oh Joy... Just when I thought that a system level vulnerabilty was as bad as it can get. If Microsoft made automobiles, they would be made in such a way that someone could steal your tires while the car was moving. If you crashed, which could happen at 10 mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats, none of the doors would work and your windows would all turn blue. On the freeway, someone could suddenly appear in your passenger seat, remove your stearing wheel and empty your glove box of Lic and reg, checkbook and spare keys and you might never even see them do it. I now quite enjoy my beta model Linux, though it took some getting used to. My car never crashes any more, though occasionaly the radio disappears, or one of the mirrors falls off. At least I don't have to reinstall the engine because someone sent a mangled email to my rear view mirror.
The first of these are Phoenix's own FirstWave apps, which help diagnose and recover PCs if the OS goes tits-up
heh... he said tits... heheh...
This space for rent, inquire within.
UNIX workstations have had amazing firmware-based diagnostics for at least a decade (the limit of my experience with them). It's called the OpenBoot PROM. Plug a serial console into the back of the machine and reboot, and you'll see.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
All Amiga system rom calls are patchable with a simple setpatch(). The program setpatch runs at bootup and for some versions of the roms it patches a lot of system calls before everything works like it should.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Oh, I beg to diff.
The BIOS has many valuable purposes.
In short, the BIOS adds a lot of value to the computer. (Value for corporations, to the benefit of corporations.)
C'mon these BIOS programmers need to justify their existance. A BIOS maker can't just ship the same BIOS year after year without improvements. Just look at car companies. Each year there is a new model. What changed? The bumper. The hood ornament. Etc. Or as another example, just look at Microsoft. What changed this model year? The chrome. How things are organized. The value of this? Training revenue. OS Envy creates sales sizzle. What do you really expect a BIOS maker to do? Not start adding flashy useless features? It is just a natural outgrowth that once the product cannot be enhanced in very useful ways, they will concentrate on technical challenges like audio error messages, boot-time browsers, etc.
Just imagine that the boot logo is not only animated, but actually has downloaded advertising each time you boot up? Don't tell me there isn't value in this.
If the ad is seen each time you boot up, it encourages closed, smoke-filled, back-room meetings like this:
Phonyix: Okay, GillBates, we'll give you a 5% kickback on ad revenue if you make the computer crash.
GillBates: But I've already got that feature implemented.
Phonyix: Okay, we'll set up a schedule. If the computer crashes once per hour, your kickback is 5%. If the computer crashes 2 times per hour, then 5.28%. If more often, then we'll work out a graduated schedule.
GillBates: How about some innovative thinking. Suppose our software connects to your
C'mon guys. This is progress. Imagine back in the early days of computers, like the original 1981 IBM PC. Computers would never have provided the incredible economic opportunities that they do today. This is progress and innovation.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
A .NET enabled BIOS can ensure that you see a fresh, non-stale advertisement each time you boot.
.NET enabled OS can ensure that you see the ad frequently.
A
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
Not that any bios memory scan has ever caught an actual memory bug. Those things are about the most worthless scans the bios does.
I read the internet for the articles.
The obvious problem with this, of course, is that if such a lawsuit won, it couldput a dent in the activities of the lawyer cabal.... and lots of commercial lawyers wouldn't like the idea. (something of a catch-22 problem).
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
I think your idea does make sense, as I've been through this "hell, where's my boot CD?" many times. But I think it would be better put at the boot loader, since you probably won't be able to rescue a drive that does not reach the boot loader by editing a text file.
I love GRUB's ability to access the file system and 'cat' files. I always wondered why it is not able to write to them. R/W support is possibly much harder to implement, I think, and maybe would not fit in the restricted space the boot loader has available. But then, if you asked me way back if I thought if R/O support for file systems in the boot loader was possible, I'd probably say "no way" too.
The filesystem is the package manager
Just a thought
More like the other way around...
DOS uses support routines contained in BIOS ROM to access hardware. Your standard PC BIOS contains stuff like harddrive, floppy, video, printer and (horribly primitive and broken) serial port access routines. "Current" OS's pull some system config information from what BIOS discovers during boot, but more or less ignore BIOS completely after that.
When you live in a sick society, just about everything you do is wrong.
Because EFI has its own filing system that lives on a reserved part of the hard disk, it can become the standard home for a whole set of utilities that have always had an awkward fit with the BIOS
I my experience any thing with removeable parts or that moves, has a high chance of failing. With the current system trouble shooting is simplified somewhat by systems living in their own hardware. If systems start being shared across hardware components the risk of errors rises at at a rate inversly proportional to the ability of humble tech to resolve problems in a reasonable amount of time.
Imagine the tech support responses you would get then!
.: My machine wont boot
Welcome to Planet Mirco$oft/Intel, We own where you want to go today.
I hope they're referring to the boot track, but this still worries me:
1) They're not referring to the boot track. They make a separate 5 meg partition at the start of the first drive. This gets obliterated whenever a stupid/inexperienced user/tech repartitions, and the whole machine crashes to a halt.
2) They're referring to the boot track. DRM schemes from e.g. that tax software mentioned the other day on slashdot (too tired to look) gleefully overwrites part of it, and your computer will not boot - or even load the BIOS.
3) It uses the boot track, but everyone suddenly gets religion and treats the boot track like sacred space. No one ever dreams of overwriting it. Intel makes up with AMD. George Bush makes up with Saddam Hussein, who then shows his good faith by helping Bush improve his English. The world is as it should be. The BIOS works exactly as designed, but is absolutely useless when you try to boot a diskless machine or your hard drive gets formatted/replaced, and you're screwed anyway, but who cares, because the world is happy again.
The designers seem to be hoping for option #3. Unfortunately, the sarcasm I've painstakingly inserted seems to be the most likely part of the whole paragraph, since relying on the hard drive is even stupider than relying on the BIOSes we have now, because hey, people change their hard drives, and LILO changes the boot track, and heck, DRM changes the boot track, and guess what, we all get screwed.
--Dan
Why does it play with the floppy drive or CD rom at all if its told to just boot C:?
The purpose is to load the operating system, not boot "C:". The operating system may be on a floppy disk or CD. installing an operating system on a new hard drive should become a decent challenge ( =
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
Put in the recovery CD? Please.
I think I woudl have to agree with you here. Now what I WOULD like to see, is a slot where you can put a firmware OS in. Granted this may be a simple boot/limited functionality OS, but it would allow for a distinction between where the BIOS should be and the OS starts. This chip could do what the Phoenix is stated to do without the fea of corss-corruption.
when, not if, some kiddie finds a hole in this illconceived poster child for the DUH foundation, BIOS will come to mean "Bend It Over and Squeeeeeeel." When will they learn that features are secondary to function and stability and that security is paramount. The fastest way to screw up security, function and stability is to tack on internetable widgets. When some aluminum foil beanie-head writes a cute set of bells and whistles and bundels it up with mass manufactured computer software/firmware so that the average user can't even disable it, secure it, or remove it, the author is essentially building a bomb which someone will end up dropping on the entire internet. UPNP's SSDP Discovery Service is a stellar example of what happens when bells and whistles attack. What possessed MS to believe that it would be a good idea to build a system level back door into XP that starts by default, while leaving default disabled, the puny "firewall" they put in (which at least forces the attack on this service to be focused and deliberate for it to succeed, just makes my brain hurt with the logic of it. UPNP service was supposed to make home and office automation simple and easy. Like anyone is really gonna shell out an extra $500 for a refrigerator that can plug into their computer and run amok with a credit card, automatically ordering 30 head of dairy cattle delivered to their third floor walk-up apartment each time they run low on milk. "Windows couldn't find Dairy|Milk|Skim|32 Oz... Ordering malnourished skinny cows at best price-break supported by your Total Net Worth. At least the UPNP vulnerability was only a system level exploit.