A talk with Intel on the L440gx+

[Ronald G. Minnich]

They are polite and unyielding. "We don't tell people how to do that,
except under strict NDA, and we don't tell them anyway. You could hook up
a tracer and watch what our BIOS does, but we frown on that".

As of now, I'm frowning on further use of Intel products ...

It's clear that there are hidden, undocumented registers in the PIIX4E
that make FLASH update work. And Intel doesn't want its customers to know
how they work. Which means Intel customers are stuck booting DOS to
upgrade BIOSes. Oh, yeah, this also leaves FreeDOS in the cold: you guys
have the same problem.

So, if we're going to figure this out, we need to find a virus that writes
to the bios on an L440GX+, and then reverse engineer that. I doubt the
virus writers would go after us.

The intel person did allow as how he thought upgrading devbios to work
with an l440gx+ was a really great idea; he just made it clear that Intel
was not willing to help.

fooey.

ron

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[Jeff Garzik]

"Ronald G. Minnich" wrote:
> They are polite and unyielding. "We don't tell people how to do that,
> except under strict NDA, and we don't tell them anyway. You could hook up
> a tracer and watch what our BIOS does, but we frown on that".
>
> As of now, I'm frowning on further use of Intel products ...
>
> It's clear that there are hidden, undocumented registers in the PIIX4E
> that make FLASH update work. And Intel doesn't want its customers to know
> how they work. Which means Intel customers are stuck booting DOS to
> upgrade BIOSes. Oh, yeah, this also leaves FreeDOS in the cold: you guys
> have the same problem.
>
> So, if we're going to figure this out, we need to find a virus that writes
> to the bios on an L440GX+, and then reverse engineer that. I doubt the
> virus writers would go after us.
>
> The intel person did allow as how he thought upgrading devbios to work
> with an l440gx+ was a really great idea; he just made it clear that Intel
> was not willing to help.
>
> fooey.

honestly, though, most vendors will be like this.  embracing open source
is a big deal, and it is tough enough to get intel to open their specs
and write a linux driver every now and then.

Just pester them until you get an EXE which will flash, if you don't
already have one, and then disassemble that eXE.

Jeff