On Dec 1, 2006, at 8:25 AM, J.C. Roberts wrote:
On Thursday 30 November 2006 15:34, Tasmanian Devil wrote:
Boot Camp: No, it's not required, it works fine with a usual
OpenBSD-only configured internal harddisk, at least with
Boot-ROM-Version MM11.0055.B05 and Boot-ROM-Version MM11.0055.B08. Of
course you can only upgrade if you install a minimal OS X... :-/
I don't have a mini (or any reasonably current Apple hardware) but the
issue you mentioned reminded me of this post by Brian Keefer:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=openbsd-sparc&m=116483175532387&w=2
It may be possible to do something similar with the mini?
Kind Regards,
JCR
I'm skeptical of that working on the MacIntels. Looking in
/Applications/Utilities/MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update.app/Contents/
Resources
I see the following interesting bits:
EFIUpdaterApp.efi
LOCKED_MBP11_0055_08B.fd
LOCKED_MBP12_0061_03B.fd
According to file(1) the first is a MSDOS executable, and the next
two are data files. I vaguely recollect from my DOS days that
flashing the BIOS on PC motherboards required a flash utility, and a
data file (unlike Sun, where you just boot the flash updater in place
of a kernel--in my weak understanding).
Now there is a "Firmware Restoration CD" available from Apple that
you can burn to a CD, but apparently this only works if:
1.) You have partially flashed the firmware and suffered a failure
and
2.) You have to play their "power button + flashing lights" game of
whack-a-mole.
I profess to know nothing about low-level workings of machinery, but
if these MacIntels have a somewhat PC-like boot process, perhaps you
could make a DOS boot CD with the three files above, boot while
holding down 'c', and run EFIUpdaterApp.efi from a DOS prompt? I'm
sure there are all kinds of good reasons why that's impossible, but
that's my wild-ass-guess.
In any case, I highly doubt you could do this with a net boot since
the firmware update does not appear to be a self-contained executable
and might need a command interpreter to work.
Brian Keefer
www.Tumbleweed.com
"The Experts in Secure Internet Communication"
