Phoenix to embed bootup ads in BIOS

quonsar writes "According to ZDNet, Phoenix today announced plans to embed bootup ads in BIOS by 4Q 1999. Take a look at the story: Phoenix to sell Windows launch ads. Phoenix has formed a subsidiary, ebetween,to sell the ads. "

Clearing up some BIOS misconceptions

Ok, it looks like I need to chime in here. For the record, I am a BIOS developer for Dell Computer. Here's how things work in the BIOS land:

A BIOS is specific to a particular motherboard. It's not possible to create a generic BIOS, because the job of the BIOS is primarily to initialize the motherboard hardware. Many of the chips on a modern motherboard are very compex, such as Rambus memory controllers and SuperIO IC's. These devices take thousands of lines of assembly code to initialize.

The OpenBIOS FAQ has some errors in it:

1. The FAQ says that the primary job is to boot the OS - this is false. Booting the OS is the last thing the BIOS does at startup, and this feature hasn't really changed in 15 years, with the exception the modern BIOS's can now boot CD-ROM drives and Zip drives. Only 1% of the BIOS code is allocated to this function.

2. The FAQ says that "proprietary BIOSes have usually been written with one operating system formost in mind." This is also false. For instance, when you shut down the computer, Windows will send a call to the BIOS to power down the machine. Windows itself can't do this, because each machine is different, but the BIOS provides an API which Windows can call. AFAIK, all of these specs are 100% open, so that any OS can call them. However, Windows is usually the first OS to use these API's as they come out, mostly because Microsoft cares a lot about this issue. I can tell you in at least one instance, an "enhancement" to the BIOS that Microsoft recommended was immediately dismissed because it would be incompatible with Linux.

In my opinion, OpenBIOS is doomed to failure. The rate at which new systems are created is way too rapid for any one team to keep up. There are only a handful of people with the skills necessary to write a BIOS, and none of them can afford (as individuals) the hardware necessary to debug their code - the ICE sitting next to me costs over $10K and it's the low-end model. Not only that, but most of the information needed is not publically available and would be impossible for me to get if I didn't work for a major OEM already. Look at the hardware that OpenBIOS currently supports: a 386 and a 486 system!! Talk about outdated!

Because the BIOS is specific to a motherboard, any OEM which makes its own motherboards (like Dell does for some of our systems) must have a customized BIOS. I can't speak for all Dell systems (I only work on the high-end desktop machines), but in our case we do our own customizations. The alternative is to ask the BIOS vendor (e.g. Phoeniz or AMI) to make the customizations. Your guess is as good as mine as to how often this happens.

--
Timur Tabi
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You need the SoftPaqs from Compaq to alter BIOS

Your friend's Compaq is completely useable as a Linux box, and you can add whatever hardware you want. Go to Compaq's support web site. I don't know where you are coming from, but the U.S. support site [compaq.com] might be a good choice.

You need to download the SoftPaq for your machine. Then run it, and it will make four floppies for you (you probably ought to have four good, formatted floppies ready to go, because if one step fails, you get to do the whole thing over again). When you get the disks done, boot from the first one.

Now here is where my memory fails me slightly. At some point, you'll have to do an inventory-ish thing. The choice should be obvious, but if not, see Compaq's site for a FAQ (they have it somewhere, but I don't ahve the URL bookmarked). The deal will run, and you'll throw another of the disks in. When it's finished, you'll have what amounts to a complete, editable "snapshot" of the system. From this snapshot, you can change whatever setting you want. You just select the hardware and choose the resources you want. You also get to see a list of what's free, so it's pretty easy.

I have an old Compaq Deskpro PPro 150 that I figured would make a good gateway machine. The only problem is that I needed to put in an additional NIC (incidentally, Bay/Netgear makes a 10/100 card called the FA310TX which has the Dec Tulip chipset; it's a great card, low CPU utilization, lot's of status indicators, and only costs about $25.00). The machine already has an onboard AMD ethernet interface, but both cards wanted IRQ 5. So I ran the SoftPaq, told it where to stick its IRQ, and everything is happy behind my gateway/firewall now. If I want to add more hardware, I just run the disks again.

I agree that the floppies are a pain, and aren't as handy as a plain ROM BIOS in some cases (my battery goes dead and I'm covered). But that doesn't mean that the old Compaq sitting in the corner is useless.

Now, booting from a floppy I don't know about. I've never bothered with that before. I'm sure it's doable, but I don't recall the SoftPaq's screen menus/features that well. It's been a while.

-B

Let 'em know how you feel

Contact the jerks to let 'em know what you think:

Company Contact
Toni Goodrich
Phoenix Technologies Ltd.
[phone]
[e-mail] [mailto]

Public Relations
Kristin Jones
Walt & Company Communications
[phone]
[e-mail] [mailto]

Be nice, but let 'em know how you feel about this BS.

Finally!

Proof that Capitalism is the ultimate evil. Maybe next I can get advertisments on my car's odometer and possibly on toilet paper!! Joy!

Lawyer: odd implications for MS's legal position

While I am a lawyer this is not legal advice. If you need advice on this matter, see a lawyer in your own jurisdiction.

The repercussions from this could be interesting . . .

MS has made a habit of pulling licenses for windows from companies that modify the windows startup screens, taking the (peculiar?) position that the companies are distributors for microsoft.

This won't work with the bios for a couple of reasons. The first is the lack of a contractual relationship with microsoft--microsoft doesn't have any threats to make, or contracts to claim it will enforce. The more interesting variation is that it puts microsoft in the same position w.r.t. Phoenix as Compaq was in with regard to microsoft--if the MS arguments are accepted, windows cannot tamper with the bios ads.

curioser & curioser . . .

hawk, esq.

Re:Clearing up some BIOS misconceptions

The real reason that an OpenBIOS can't work IS because all of the proprietary features that are kept top secret.

Unfortunately, that's not enough. There are literally thousands of combinations. In addition, many motherboards ship with revisions of particular chips that have bugs in them, and there's often no way to tell through software alone whether a particular chip has a particular bug. But since the OEM's BIOS is hard-coded to a particular motherboard, it's not a problem for the OEM, since a simple #ifdef can enable to disable the software work-around.

Trust me on this - even with all the specs open, a generic BIOS is just never going to happen.

--
Timur Tabi
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An ad I'd like to see.

131072kb OK

Hard drive detection
[80] MXT-10000 10.2GB
[83] ATAPI CD-ROM

Still booting Windows ???
Get a REAL Operating System!
Linux. It's free. What are you waiting for?

Starting MS-DOS ...
- - -

Generic computers using Phoenix?

The article states that they are targeting the "white box" computers (the ones you and I build, and the ones that the small retail outlets build), instead of the big OEMs (Dell, Compaq, etc).

I've been out of the building biz for a little while now, but last I recall, nearly every white box MB used an AMD or Award BIOS. I generally only see Phoenix on the big OEMs.

What's up with this?

--
Fourth law of programming: Anything that can go wrong wi

Ugh, there are much better uses for that space

Maybe I'm the only one here, but I'd like to see a REAL help system in a BIOS. Every BIOS I've seen that has a help feature just gives you a list of the possible options for a feature. What I want is a short descripion of what a feature is and what reason a person would have to enable or disable it. It is just not very helpful to get to an option menu on a BIOS and find something like PMAS and a "help menu" of "Yes/No".

Of course that is just one example, there are gobs of things you could do with that extra space besides putting in Windows specific advertising (modifiying the filesystem from the BIOS?!? Yuck!).

Wondering about that

Technically, I'm curious how they will pull off a working signup icon in the BIOS. A splash screen is one thing, but something that actually interacts with the OS?

I wonder if the "icon" would kick in before the operating system. In order to work like this, the code for initializing the modem, dialing, connecting, etc. would have to be in the BIOS as well. I don't see that happening.

Alternatively, forcibly putting an icon on the desktop in Windows requires specific Win32 calls. Putting that in the BIOS sounds like quite a task. Not to mention you run the risk of shipping computers that won't boot unless Windows is installed.

I could be wrong, but I think the article may have taken some liberty with the notion of a working AOL Signup icon in the BIOS. I'm not saying it CAN'T be done, but that idea just sounds like a tremendous pain.

See the OpenBIOS project

Don't know about a web page, but there's an active mailing list full of people working to write a free BIOS for most PC like motherboards. You can subscribe to this mailing list by sending the word "subscribe openbios" in the body of a mail message to:

[e-mail]

This is a worthy project. Please don't subscribe and immediately start asking stupid questions, just sit back and watch the flow. I've never posted a message there because I'm not a BIOS hacker... if you're not a BIOS hacker either, but are curious, you're probably welcome as a lurker. Serious BIOS hackers are probably most welcome contributors. Either way, please respect the users' of this list by helping to keep their S/N ratio down!

inevitable, but hackable

Store-bought cases and keyboards are already littered with stickers advertising websites, online services, and all sorts of assorted crap. With the margins on PCs being what they are, it's inevitable that someone is going to try and squeeze every last ounce of advertising space out of every new computer in order to make a buck.

But I expect we'll find hacks to replace such images within a week of their appearance. Windows users will be paying $10 for shareware programs to flash the BIOS with their favorite picture, Word macro viruses will try to install offensive imagery in peoples' BIOSes, Linux users will see Tux at startup, BSD folks will be seeing the daemon, etc. etc.

Welcome to the future :)

It's openbios.org, go figure

They seem to be moving from
http://www.freiburg.linux.de/OpenBIOS/ [linux.de] to
http://openbios.org/ [openbios.org].

Re:GPL'ed BIOS?

Most BIOSes have ROM backup on the motherboard. You can reset it by setting a jumper or flipping a dip switch if something goes wrong, so you won't necessarily be hosed if your BIOS gets destroyed. However, there is a caveat: a hosed BIOS can do destructive things to your HD, fortunatly it is unlikely.

Re:You need the SoftPaqs from Compaq to alter BIOS

Since you have on-board AMD ethernet, I'm guessing that you have a Deskpro XL, which is an EISA machine. Most EISA computers have the "four floppies" (aka the EISA Config program) on a small partition at the beginning of the disk. Just press F10 on a Compaq when the cursor flashes in the upper left corner.

While you're at it, you might want to upgrade your BIOS. Newer EISA BIOSes allow you to config plug-n-play ISA cards right in the Config program.

Some non-EISA Compaqs also have a 'system partition' which runs a different config program. Others run from the ROM in the traditional fashion. Either way, on a correctly set up Compaq, F10 is your friend.
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