Hi Dave,
On 29/08/2005, at 3:49 AM, Dave Feustel wrote:
On Sunday 28 August 2005 10:53, Stuart Henderson wrote:
--On 28 August 2005 10:22 -0500, Dave Feustel wrote:
A long time ago I added a little bios code to my pc
by programming and installing an eprom on a
post card. The code was executed at boot time before
most of the bios code was executed.
Is this still possible with current desktops?
Yes, it's how things like RAID cards and PXE-capable network cards
work. With some boards, you can also add modules to the file that is
flashed onto the BIOS EEPROM on the motherboard (using cbrom from DOS
or a similar tool) so you don't need an extra card (sometimes done to
e.g. boot from a SCSI card which doesn't have it's own BIOS).
The kind of board you describe is just what I'm looking for if I
can't find a stand-alone pci card into which I could flash my
own code. What are some examples?
cbrom is used with AWARD Modular BIOS. I don't know if it works with any
other BIOS' or if any other BIOS has similar abilities. But with the
AWARD Modular BIOS boards which I used years ago (BX boards), I could
read out the BIOS to an image file, add a network boot ROM for my dc
cards, burn that modified image to the board and then choose to boot
from LAN or SCSI to get the netboot ROM booting.
You might find this page useful:
http://goe.net/anleitungen/award_board.html
Sometimes you would have to remove something from the BIOS to allow
your new code to fit. I'd remove built-in NCR SCSI firmware which seemed
to be included in motherboards even if they didn't have any on-board
SCSI. I never noticed any side-effects of this.
AOpen AX6B worked fine for me. An old board designed for PII's.
Shane
