Re: Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) firmware
On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:04:51 +1000
Scott Ferguson <prettyfly.productions@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 23/09/11 09:01, Alex wrote:
> > Thanks for the quick reply, John.
> >
> > It is a long time ago that I hacked any BIOS, and then it was only
> > with tools made available by the manufacturer to boot the machine
> > in the first place, that I have forgotten / no knowledge of how
> > this may be achieved.
> > In any case, I was always under the impression that BIOS resided in
> > ROM (Read Only Memory) hardware, which required removing chips and
> > re-buring them with ROM burner hardware. Maybe things have changed
> > since I was last in that world, but to my knowledge the BIOS
> > setting that we can tinker with, are stored in some sort of FLASH
> > memory or similar, which is indeed writeable, and maintained by the
> > on board battery.
> >
> > But, as I say, all this is from many years ago and maybe things have
> > changed.
> >
> > But I would like to at least have some backup way out if 'the evil
> > empire' did actually achieve that draconian, monopolistic goal.
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > Alex
> >
> >
> Check out Coreboot - and research before buying a device/motherboard.
That's one way, but new tech is getting to the stage where it won't
work off a standard BIOS. You need the UEFI base to handle such things
as the new 4 TB drives from Seagate and Hitachi now.
Here are a couple of articles that bear on the subject:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/will-windows-8-block-users-from-dual-booting-linux-microsoft-wont-say/10772
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/microsoft-tries-to-block-linux-off-windows-8-pcs/9572
Regards,
Weaver.
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