Linked by Gregory on Sat 26th Feb 2011 16:51 UTC
"Intel is pleased to announce the BIOS Implementation Test Suite, a bootable pre-OS environment for testing BIOSes and in particular their initialization of Intel processors, hardware, and technologies. BITS can verify your BIOS against many Intel recommendations. In addition, BITS includes Intel's official reference code as provided to BIOS, which you can use to override your BIOS's hardware initialization with a known-good configuration, and then boot an OS."
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RE[7]: I hope this is what it looks like
by looncraz on Sun 27th Feb 2011 04:25
in reply to "RE[6]: I hope this is what it looks like"
Member since:2005-07-24
...
A number of OS developers who've lived in hatred of the thing for decades disagree with that.
Gee, a bootloader that allows one to completely customise the boot process and replace behaviour set by the vendor of your motherboard... yeah, that sounds completely useless.
A number of OS developers who've lived in hatred of the thing for decades disagree with that.
Gee, a bootloader that allows one to completely customise the boot process and replace behaviour set by the vendor of your motherboard... yeah, that sounds completely useless.
But that is not what we are talking about here.
We are talking about a test suite to ensure the viability of the BIOS configuration on Intel hardware. Frankly I'm surprised this hasn't been done before...
Oh wait!! It has... by AMD, no less...
So, now, would you prefer the one who did it first, and has a more mature solution, or the last one to the party?
In any event, this has little benefit to the end user, it is useful for the BIOS authors, and OS developers. It merely makes it easier for people to stay on the same page - not that people like to do that, they just have no choice.
The only case where an end-user could find this useful is if they know the intimate details of how their motherboards are designed AND the issues involved with supporting some obscure operating system. That is the only case I can see. And that only exists because the test suite permits live code injection and hardware re-initialization, thereby overriding possibly flawed BIOS logic / init routines.
That is all.
--The loon
EDIT: embedded quotes... grrr...
Edited 2011-02-27 04:26 UTC
RE[8]: I hope this is what it looks like
by TheGZeus on Sun 27th Feb 2011 05:30
in reply to "RE[7]: I hope this is what it looks like"
Member since:2010-05-19
It's the possibility of it being forked/used in other tools that interests me.
The original intent of any bit of code isn't necessarily the end result.
What's this AMD project that allows one to bypass/alter the settings made by proprietary BIOS code with an open solution and requires no hardware modification?
I'd be interested to see it.
Barking sarcasm rather than sharing information seems rather counter-productive.
RE[7]: I hope this is what it looks like
by tylerdurden on Sun 27th Feb 2011 09:20
in reply to "RE[6]: I hope this is what it looks like"
Member since:2009-03-17
RE[8]: I hope this is what it looks like
by TheGZeus on Sun 27th Feb 2011 17:56
in reply to "RE[7]: I hope this is what it looks like"
Member since:2010-05-19
Member since:
2010-05-19
A number of OS developers who've lived in hatred of the thing for decades disagree with that.
Gee, a bootloader that allows one to completely customise the boot process and replace behaviour set by the vendor of your motherboard... yeah, that sounds completely useless.