[Novalug] Accessing BIOS

[James Ewing Cottrell 3rd]

Perhaps the best way to think of this is as a Generic Term.

A copier, regardless of make, is a Xerox Machine.
A carbonated cola beverage is a Coke.
A facial tissue is a Kleenex.
Searching for something on the Net is Googling It, even if you use BING.

And a DMI/EFI/Sun-OpenBoot-Firmware is a BIOS.

We disagree because Terms We Don't Care About are being used.

Most people here want nothing more than a vague hazy concept of what a 
BIOS is. All we want is something simple to get and set key/value pairs 
from the command line; something like Sun's eeprom command.

So yeah, you are Correct, but you're in the Wrong Room (the one without 
hardware engineers). A similar example would be if you were talking 
about Infarctions in a CPR Class for non-medical people. Now if you said 
Heart Attack, people will know what you're talking about.

JIM

Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> DMI provides this information, not the BIOS.
> Every vendor, software tool and other solution calls it DMI.
> 
> In fact, BIOS is the legacy (and _incorrect_) name for what is a huge set of firmware today.
> It is no longer BIOS, and DMI is the interface into the firmware.
> 
> Now _back_ to the actual context of the _original_ statement ...
> 
> This was not remotely an issue with Linux, not naming, not anything.
> Making broad statement that this is what is wrong with Linux is totally off-base.
> 
> How can you disagree?  It's called DMI and it's not up to Linux to change that.
> There are GUIs in GNOME and KDE that provide the same DMI info as Windows MMCs.
> 
> This has absolutely _nothing_ to do with Linux at all, and Linux differs _none_.
> In fact, Windows can be far, far less consistent and related to the actual item under foci.
> 
> But in this case, it's just DMI and unavoidable, and nothing to do with Linux.
> 
> -- Bryan
> 
> P.S.  Intel actually introduced EFI to address the sprawling firmware mess.
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: James Ewing Cottrell 3rd <JECottrell3 at comcast.net>
> 
> I disagree. Hardware acronyms are clearly useful to the engineers that build all that stuff,
> but the PC is a Rat's Nest of Conventions, which altho Probably Documented Somewhere,
> but Mostly Mysterious to the rest of us.
> 
> ... cut ...
> 
> 
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