[Novalug] Accessing BIOS

[Ed James]

I'm still getting a handle on hardware capabilities from a viewpoint
of somebody who usually rescues old junk by installing linux, rather
than one who buys/builds from scratch.  Eventually, I'l go back to
building my own, but the tech had greatly changed since I've done
that (original Pentium series).

So, is it fair to catagorize abilities (both hardware and software)
by:

1 - Motherboard firmware (memory test...)
2 - Card add-on (ethernet wakeup, graphics, ...)
3 - OS add-on (memory swapping, file access...)
4 - Desktop (gnome, kde, ...)
5 - Applications (database, word processing...)

Are there gaps in the level hierarchy?  For a home-user
PC, are there really any differences between MoBos at
level 1?

Ed James

Quoting "Bryan J Smith" <b.j.smith at ieee.org>:
...
> *UNLIKE* every RISC/UNIX platform firmware, the PC firmware has
> absolutely *NO* ability to boot from the network.  It has *NO*
...