Thou shalt keep windows on thy machines (was Re: [ILUG] Naive..etc.)

[jm at jmason.org]

paul at clubi.ie writes:
>On Thu, 21 Jun 2007, Timothy Murphy wrote:
>> Such as: Updating machine BIOS, and other firmware.
>
>- FreeDOS. Indeed, didn't/doesn't one PC vendor even use FreeDOS to
>   distribute bootable update floppy disk images?
>
>- You can also update many eeproms from Linux (ask Padraig Brady).
>
>- Some vendors even provide tools for Linux, such as Dell.

This is variable; my cheapo Dell Inspiron didn't support that.
http://taint.org/2007/04/23/153737a.html

>- Some vendors put 'system partitions' on their machines (Compaq,
>   Dell), with a small bootable OS and various diagnostic and update
>   tools. (It's usually DOS and/or Win3.1, but it could be any OS -
>   the point is your machine has an OS-=independent, vendor-supported way to
>   update ROMs that doesnt need more than a few tens of MB of disk
>   space).

IBM did this for the T40 --
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Hidden_Protected_Area . However they didn't
support BIOS updating from that; they required that you use Windows to
upgrade the BIOS, instead.

>- Write your own firmware update. Ask the vendor for the procedure
>   and write a utility for your own OS.

!!!  This might be possible if you're (a) a skilled sysadmin (b) have lots
of free time and (c) are willing to sign NDAs etc... that's a pretty small
group, in my opinion.

>I'm sorry, but you're just making (rather poor) excuses.

So, saying that Tim could *write a firmware updater*, is somehow a
*better* excuse?  wtf. ;)

--j.