Am Donnerstag, den 07.01.2010, 10:30 +0100 schrieb Luc Verhaegen:
I am just warning that dmi might not be as tight and enduring as many people think it is, and that therefor it should be used with some care.
For the tightness, I completely agree: DMI/SMBIOS matching is only as good as the strings the vendor provide. That's the same problem we have with subsystem IDs. And of course if the vendor just ignores susbsystem IDs, it is quite probable that it also doesn't care about DMI/SMBIOS strings, see your Jetway example below.
For the endurance, I think there will be no problem: The SMBIOS table interface will be as enduring as non-EFI PC Biosses. There is no end-of-life announcement for SMBIOS, and Windows (still in Windows 7) uses SMBIOS to retrieve the system information presented WMI. BIOS vendors will provide SMBIOS stuff because the brand customers need this feature (they can't explain the business customers why their board name doesn't appear in the WMI database), which means that even no-name boards will get the SMBIOS table, but perhaps with useless entries, see the tightness issue above.
Also, i own Jetway mini-itx boards for which dmi will not change a thing (but luckily, they do not require a board enable).
Regards, Michael Karcher