Re: Open BIOS

Interesting.  It never occurred to me that BIOS might/could go
open-source.  After all, it is so closely tied to the MB, it just
seemed to make sense that the MB manufacturer (or their contractor)
would be the ones responsible for developing it.

Just a few weeks ago, I had to flash a BIOS on a Dell laptop so that
it would take XP's service pack 2.  As a result, I get a memory error
message at boot-up that beeps me and forces me to hit <F1> to
continue; Dell is telling me that the memory module is bad and has to
be replaced.  The laptop is out of warranty.  Since WinXP still
reports the actual memory and SP2 installed and everything is running
"normally", I'm just leaving it be.

Given that flashing the BIOS can sometimes adversely affect hardware,
will this be a point of contention for getting warranty service if
we're working with "open" BIOS?  It'll be interesting to see how this
plays out.

Dan

On 6/15/05, steelville@xxxxxxxxxxx <steelville@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Interesting comments on Free BIOS from Free Software Foundation:
> 
> http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/free-bios.html
> 
> The hard-coded BIOS may also carry Big Brother type codes, identifying the 
> individual machine and maybe the user, all that...
> 
> - Alan