BIOS' Days Are Numbered

Paladium by dataarea · 2003-02-20 13:13 · Score: 1, Insightful

In that case, how will be Paladium be implanted? Does Phoenix will have (forced to?) have the paladium's required functions?

Re:Paladium by arivanov · 2003-02-20 19:47 · Score: 3, Insightful

That is exactly how will Palladium be implanted. You cannot graft palladium on top of the old IBM/Phoenix standard. You need to start from scratch and have a machine that is compliant from the moment the key is turned on.

In btw: nothing new here. This is the way all big Iron works. It starts enforcing licensing from firmware level so no way you can circumvent it.

So watch the words EFI. They are the words that will have to precede the words Palladium. Also do not even think about replacing the OS on such machine if the manufacturer has decided to disallow you to do so. And they very well can do this.

--
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/

Yeah get rid of BIOS by vivek7006 · 2003-02-20 13:15 · Score: 4, Insightful

by giving it some other fancy name! U need to have something between hardware and the OS. Call it whatever you want to call

Re:bios? by OtaconX · 2003-02-20 13:16 · Score: 2, Insightful

Umm. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it isn't there. OEMs like to have startup screens that disguise the text mode stuff going on invisibly...

OpenFirmware pls by jpt.d · 2003-02-20 13:16 · Score: 5, Insightful

What else is there to say? OpenFirmware works nice

--
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!

Stricter Enforcement for DRM by Apple+Acolyte · 2003-02-20 13:17 · Score: 3, Insightful

If BIOS isn't broken, one wonders why there needs to be a fix. One can pretty confidently assume that such a change would usher in stricter enforcement for DRM. And I'm sure it simply solidifies the work MS largely completed through its XP registration scheme. Perhaps I'm paranoid, but can any of you blame me?

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Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so

Gets rid of text-mode startup? by meringuoid · 2003-02-20 13:18 · Score: 4, Insightful

I _like_ text mode startup.

Machines that give you a graphical startup are annoying because you don't see the POST test etc, and if you're messing about with the hardware that's a real nuisance; you're never sure what's gone wrong.

If you're a geek, you definitely want the boot information. If you're not, just watch it scroll by and think about how cool it is in a Matrix sort of way. But don't cover it over with a manufacturer's logo and a Microsoft ad...

--
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.

Re:Gets rid of text-mode startup? by MisterFancypants · 2003-02-20 13:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

Just because it does away with text-mode startup doesn't mean it can't give you all the information it does currently. Just like replacing a line-printer with an inkjet doesn't mean you can't use it for text printing.
Re:Gets rid of text-mode startup? by gwernol · 2003-02-20 13:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

Machines that give you a graphical startup are annoying because you don't see the POST test etc, and if you're messing about with the hardware that's a real nuisance; you're never sure what's gone wrong.

Of course there is absolutely no reason why a graphical startup can't (perhaps optionally) display all the usual POST test messages. A good example of this is Mac OS X: by default you don't see the Open Firmware messages during startup but you can turn them on and get all the information you would expect.

If you're not [a geek], just watch it scroll by and think about how cool it is in a Matrix sort of way. But don't cover it over with a manufacturer's logo and a Microsoft ad...

Some text-mode BIOSes already do this. The issue is not text vs. graphics, its what features and options does your particular EFI or BIOS vendor give you.

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Sailing over the event horizon
Re:Gets rid of text-mode startup? by shepd · 2003-02-20 13:34 · Score: 2, Insightful

>Just like replacing a line-printer with an inkjet doesn't mean you can't use it for text printing.

And, just like replacing a line printer with an inkjet printer, it's a much slower, lower quality, harder to read, and more expensive way to do exactly the same thing.

GO INTeL!

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If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Re:Gets rid of text-mode startup? by dogas · 2003-02-20 13:46 · Score: 2, Insightful

Now I'm only assuming that this new standard they're inventing will have some sort of debugging mode, or else it really won't fly. Quick, Eye-candy laden startups would be nice too.

The thing about it is, I totally expected a post like this. Sure, mod me down as a troll, but this is what happens when the slashdot crowd gets whiff of a new standard in the PC market. Below I have exampled this effect of "reverse luddite-ism".

Dell shipping with no more floppy discs? Oh no! whatever will we do? How about a bootable cd? Seriously. I haven't used my floppy in ages. They're unreliable, slow, and have a tendency to destroy an important term paper that's on it. Good riddance.

Whaaaaaaat?!! Office XP is going to FORCE me to register?!! Why I never! Yes, they ask you what country you live in. If you're not pirating your copy of Office, this ain't no big deal.

Poo-poo to this EFI. I'll never use it! I need diagnostic info! I like text! Besides, Microsoft will hijack it somehow! Like I said before, it won't become a standard unless you CAN use it for diagnostic information. AND, since we're talking about a new standard here, maybe it will cure a lot of the problems that you might need BIOS to debug!

PS - half of my post was funny. The other half is true. Mod accordingly.

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'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.' -HST
Re:Gets rid of text-mode startup? by shepd · 2003-02-20 20:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

>It would be difficult to imagine a comment more totally wrong than this one. Line printers costed thousands of dollars, had crappy output, and were often the size of a refrigerator. Inkjets are tiny, often cost under $50, have far better print quality, and can print pretty color pictures.

You really think professionals are all using inkjets for high-volume printing?

My college reports are still printed on a line printer. Sure, it's hella big, but it prints fast enough to pump out well over 10,000 pages in a a few days without effort. This is done three times a year.

Yes, line printers have a higher initial investment, but lets compare the _real_ costs for high-output use, using my college as an example:

Inkjet cartridge (for your $50 printer): $50, lasts about 100 pages.
Ribbon for impact printer: $20, lasts about 1,000 pages.

Inkjet printer price: $50.
Impact printer price: $3,000 (at most).

TCO per year for my college for the inkjet printer, which needs to print every page 3 times, since inkjets don't handle multipart forms: 900 carts @ $50 ea ($45,000) + 25 hours employee time replacing carts and printers ($375) + $50 printer * 30 (getting 3,000 pages from a cheapie like that would be a miracle in itself) ($1,500) = $46,875.

TCO per year for my college for the impact printer: 30 ribbons @ $20 ea ($600) + 1 hour employee time replacing carts (printer is maintenance free to the point it hasn't been repaired once in the 4 years I've worked there) ($15) + $3,000 printer + $0.10 extra per page for multipart forms ($3,000) = $6,615.

I didn't include costs that would be common to both printers (loading pin-feed can be a bitch, but so would having to re-load the inkjet printer every 25 pages), you have to burst apart the forms on the line printer, but you have to collate them on the inkjet, etc, etc.

Replacing line printers with $50 inkjets. Get real! I hope you didn't tell your manager this bright idea... Sorry, but honestly, you and the other guy actually expect _inkjets_ to replace these printers? Especially the cheap plastic Apollo 2550 printers that almost crumble in my hands?

Hell will freeze over before you see $50 inkjets being used for _real_ print jobs. Plus, yes, the output from a $50 inkjet _is_ only an infinitessimal step above a line printer, if it's actually printing more than 1 page an hour.

>There is no good reason to retain the BIOS. The BIOS is not and elegant, refined mechanism. It was a hack 20 years ago and now it's around for legacy reasons only.

It's necessary for embedded systems, and it's necessary to boot your machine. Your computer isn't just going to magically start your hard drive. And, considering all that legacy stuff is down pat and is _never_ changed, we're talking about 256k of extra EEPROM. You might save $0.25 per board if you took it out, but you'd spend $10 per board in re-development costs to do so. Hardly anything to write home about...

>Computers and printers have not been declining in capability (see the Moore's Law article).

Did I say you had to buy a 30 year old line printer? Get with the times man! Impact printers are stink-fast nowadays (they've been fast for a couple of decades, actually). Lasers, of course, are taking over, for all but specialised jobs (printing on stuff like birthday cakes isn't going to work for a laser, and using them for labels and evelopes is a bad idea -- that's inkjet territory).

But, just to see I'm not bullshitting you, do some searches for high-volume impact printers, laser printers, and inkjet printers. Impact printers are slowly on their way out, being replaced with laser printers. Inkjets pick up on all sorts of niches that neither of the other two do well, but there's not a heck of a lot of them that are designed to print regular 8.5" x 11" paper quickly.

I stick with what I said. If I need a workhorse printer, and my choices are inkjet or impact, I'll take the impact printer. If I had any choice, I'd get a laser printer. But, since my choices are inkjet or impact, I'll take the impact printer (or line printer, whatever you want to call it, I really don't care).

Everything has it's place. But, since no homeowner I knew of would have a line printer, and since line printers were designed to print all day and night, I have to compare task to task. And the inkjet just ain't gonna cut it.

However, it's nice at home, gathering dust beside the LJ II printer which is the only one of the two I can afford to use, except for cover pages for my reports.

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If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC

Re:Text mode start up screens by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-20 13:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

The problem with graphics bootup is that if there is a hardware problem, you will see nothing. Displaying a text message like 'bus barfed' is trivial, handling a terrible, terrible problem in gfx mode, not so.

The problem with PCs is that they are generally consumer-servicable and are designed so that you can plug all kinds of hardware into it. This calls for an extensive and reliable startup code that can tell you something more than you could deduct from the fact your OS is not booting. I know my computer is Compaq/HP/IBM, I'd appreciate something else than a purrty BIOS logo.

Re:Goodbye BIOS as well as.. by Azureflare · 2003-02-20 13:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

What will replace the floppy drive? Granted, it's antique, and @#$ing slow, but what other method do you have to transfer small files easily between two computers, without the net? Granted, everything should just be net based, but what happens if your net connection goes down? Floppy drives are simple, easy to use, and widely available in PCs. Also, you can't monitor a floppy drive like you can emails ;)

Re:bios? by MrChris007 · 2003-02-20 13:31 · Score: 1, Insightful

" whats a bios? in all the newer computers ive seen that havent been built by the users, there is no bios."

Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about because all computers have a BIOS.

You ask "what's a bios" which indicates you don't know what it is and then you claim to know that there are computers without it ? How can you know that acomputer doesn't have a BIOS in it if you don't even know what a BIOS is to begin with?

no, wrong direction by g4dget · 2003-02-20 13:32 · Score: 4, Insightful

The BIOS should be replaced by another, hardware-vendor supplied GUI--that's just going in the wrong direction. I mean, who is going to talk to this thing? Why should something become easy to use that, if it ever enters the consciousness of the end user, is most likely going to result in the machine being returned for service anyway? Is software or hardware going to come with lengthy instructions for booting into the BIOS and fiddling with endless configuration screends?

"Normal" home users, the kinds of people who might benefit from a GUI, probably don't want to talk to anything other than their main, mainstream OS. And power users and network administrators want the hardware to come with a system that can be scripted, extended, and remotely controlled. And almost everything that needs to be done with the BIOS-replacement should be done from the regular OS, which can leave little scripts in non-volatile areas for what the BIOS-replacement should do when it reboots (as opposed to putting those instructions into the user's brain).

Yes, the BIOS needs a serious overhaul, and, yes, it needs to change a bit in the direction of becoming a better OS. But it should become a better OS that normal users never have to talk to directly. It should become a 32bit/64bit OS that much more than previously accomplishes its magic behind the scenes. If it needs a GUI at all, the GUI should probably consist of a web server (so that the BIOS can be configured over the net) and a built-in, simple web browser, not some Microsoft-wannabe-lookalike.

Complexity by Zelet · 2003-02-20 13:57 · Score: 1, Insightful

I don't think it is smart to add complexity to a damn near hardwired system. If there is one of the "cool" bugs found in the bios replacement how would you ever be able to fix it? This sounds somewhat dangerous to me.

--
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)

Re:Open Firmware anyone??? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-20 14:21 · Score: 1, Insightful

Sounds like Intel wants to reinvent the wheel. I hope they realize that Open Firmware exists. Or is it their version of embrace and extend?
Yes. This is to Open Firmware as USB 2.0 is to Firewire.

Re:because by MarcQuadra · 2003-02-20 15:15 · Score: 4, Insightful

OpenFirmware does NOT live on the Hard Drive, it lives in Flash ROM so it's semi-permanent. Compaq tried putting a BIOS Setup program on a 'secret' partition on the old Deskpro 2/4/6XXX machines and it was a total hassle to fix them if the drive died or somrthing happened to the partition, you had to load the BIOS Setup from _DISKETTES_. It was cool to have a GUI Setup with full diagnostics, but when the drive died so did the convenience. Don't even get me started on upgrading hard disks on those things.

--
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails

Re:Uh Oh! by facelessnumber · 2003-02-20 15:24 · Score: 2, Insightful

It all sounds like a good idea, but "non-volatile" is the last thing I'd call anything that's stored on a hard disk. My BIOS is ugly, but scripties aren't playing around in my firmware. Right now the worst a virus can do is force you to blitz your drive and reinstall an OS. How'd you like the next Code Red to render machines completely unbootable, or perhaps even damage hardware? It sounds great, really, but don't put it on a hard disk. Also, It's been done, to a degree. Some laptops store BIOS settings on a hard disk, and it's a bitch when an OS upgrade braindeads it, or keeps it from suspending, etc...

Re:Why not by orionpi · 2003-02-20 16:43 · Score: 2, Insightful

SGI has its prom that is graphical, the machine boots to a menu: Start system, Install OS, Diagnostics, Restore System and Maintance mode. The first time I saw it a was shocker, 24bit color BIOS! and a nice chime, it is a graphics workstation. When you select Maintance mode, by clicking on it or pressing 5 it takes you to a console window that works verymuch like openfirmware. It boots to the same menu over serial just it is a text menu:
System Maintenance Menu

1) Start System
2) Install System Software
3) Run Diagnostics
4) Recover System
5) Enter Command Monitor

Option? 5
Command Monitor. Type "exit" to return to the menu.
>> hinv
System: IP22
Processor: 175 Mhz R4400, with FPU
Primary I-cache size: 16 Kbytes
Primary D-cache size: 16 Kbytes
Secondary cache size: 1024 Kbytes
Memory size: 32 Mbytes
Audio: Iris Audio Processor: version A2 revision 4.1.0
>> version
PROM Monitor SGI Version 5.3 Rev B10 R4X00/R5000 IP24 Feb 12, 1996 (BE)
>>

If PC's booted in 32bit mode it would sure make life easier. Nix the BIOS and replace it with a 32 or 64 bit interface like OpenFirmware or the SGI PROM.

Re:Text mode start up screens by Proc6 · 2003-02-20 19:23 · Score: 4, Insightful

I'm sorry, I absolutely hate these minimalist "what we have is good enough" attitudes. Is what we have functional? sure? should it be forever white text on a black screen? fucking hell no. I have an SGI 320, which has a completely GUI PROM, and you know what? I really like it. Maybe you want to live in a dull world with ASCII terminals and Lynx as your web-browser, backing your data up to punch-cards and riding your 1971 Scwinn bicycle to work, but the some of us like cool shit.

By the way, ever seen the blank stare on an average computer user's face when you tell them "Oh, you can fix that in the BIOS, just hit the F2 key once you hear the POST beep, use the tab and +/- keys to navigate around and set the AGP aperature setting to 64MB, then hit F10 to Save and Exit." - yea, we can do better than this.

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I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!

About time by PotatoHead · 2003-02-20 19:25 · Score: 2, Insightful

The current boot process sucks.

SGI has been doing this right for years. Their PROM is network aware, can run basic diagnostics, uses a gui and just looks damn cool.

Much better to see "Welcome to Octane" than Beep Chuga Chuga.... Post complete Memtest and other garbage.

Lets just hope the process remains open enough to allow Open Code.

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Blogging because I can...

Re:Uh Oh! by ctr2sprt · 2003-02-20 20:31 · Score: 2, Insightful

Honestly, this sounds very much like they're replacing the BIOS with something that works very much like a BIOS, but prettier...

It's not just that. More flexible "BIOSes" can add so much power to a system. An example of this, and one that's very near to my heart, is the ability to boot from anything. Pretty much every BIOS out there is unable to boot from at least some devices; the most common approach is a catch-all "SCSI" boot entry, which may be a SCSI device or it may be a ZIP drive or... Even then, half the time it just doesn't work and you can't boot from your add-on IDE controller card.

A better BIOS would solve this by getting a much clearer idea of what sort of hardware is in the system and what can be done with it. Got a USB hard drive you want to boot from? No problem: EFI knows how to read USB disks, so it grabs the files it needs and boots from it. Want to boot from your second CD drive instead of your first? Just pick "cdrom1" instead of "cdrom0" and you're all set. Want to boot over the network, but don't have DHCP? Set your NIC's IP address in EFI and tell it where to grab the boot image from using TFTP.

And then there's the nifty trick Suns have of being able to interrupt the operating system, no matter what, and drop you back into the "BIOS." I'm told there's even a debugger in there that you can use to debug the same system you're using (in case of kernel traps and such).

A more flexible, versatile, and powerful BIOS is a very cool thing, and even everyday desktop users will be aware of its benefits (though they may not know the source of them). People who use PCs for serious work have lusted after this sort of thing for a long time.

Re:Uh Oh! by dlapine · 2003-02-21 04:13 · Score: 2, Insightful

Let's get this straight, people. EFI lives in a flash ram device on the mainboard. You can boot the node without a single harddrive in it.

EFI does allow you to format a partition of the hard drive in vfat (linuxspeak for fat32) so that it can recognize the files stored on it. Those files can be anything you want, and the partition may be mounted by the OS and treated as a regular partition. For example, the /boot partition of a Itanium II node that has SuSe SLES 8.1 installed on it looks like this:

drwxr--r-- 3 root root 4096 Dec 31 1969 .
drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 528 Feb 11 11:26 ..
-rwxr--r-- 1 root root 503248 Jan 27 06:55 System.map-2.4.19-SMP
drwxr--r-- 4 root root 4096 Jan 27 07:51 efi
-rwxr--r-- 1 root root 1160383 Feb 10 21:00 initrd
-rwxr--r-- 1 root root 1156850 Feb 10 21:00 initrd.shipped
-rwxr--r-- 1 root root 2381696 Jan 27 12:55 vmlinuz
-rwxr--r-- 1 root root 72173 Jan 27 14:37 vmlinuz.autoconf.h
-rwxr--r-- 1 root root 39332 Jan 27 14:37 vmlinuz.config
-rwxr--r-- 1 root root 2381696 Feb 10 19:12 vmlinuz.shipped
-rwxr--r-- 1 root root 130 Jan 27 12:33 vmlinuz.version.h

When EFI boots up, it will look for fat32 or fat16(why bother?) partitions on any harddrives, cdroms, ls240's or any other local devices the MB manufacturer supports. It then offers you the opportunity to access these mounts just like you had good old dos onboard. Instead of assigning drive letters, you get FS0:, FS1:, etc.

Caveats:
The OEM who provides the MB and its EFI implementation has to provide the driver for the devices that EFI supports. So the manufacturer of an Intel Tiger 4 Chassis with built-in SCSI from MPT needs to obtain the EFI driver for the device from the manufacturer. Same thing for the IDE chips on board or the integrated NIC. If the EFI has the built-in driver in the rom, it can then use that device during boot. I don't know if a hardware driver for EFI can be loaded manually.

To live on the harddrive, EFI uses a new type of partition table, EFI GPT, to store partition information. fdisk doesn't like this, but parted works just fine for linux. I'm not sure how Windows deals with this.

Hope this helps. If you need to know how I know this, well let's just say that I have over 256 Tiger 4's in my linux cluster. :)

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The Internet has no garbage collection

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