Intel says the PC BIOS will be replaced with 'EFI'

Tom Buskey tom at buskey.name
Fri Feb 21 16:46:08 EST 2003


pll at lanminds.com said:
>
>In a message dated: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 11:13:09 EST
>bscott at ntisys.com said:
>
>>http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2130826,00.html
>>
>>  Comments?
>
>About Fsck'ing time :)
>

>
>These types of things, along with native net-boot capability made 
>things like Solaris' JumpStart really nice to work with.
>
>PC's just aren't there now.  PXE is a start, but that's not standard 
>across machines, and is NIC dependant.  Additionally, you still need 
>to muck with the BIOS to make sure it supports net-boots, and you 
>need to then separately configure the NIC(s) to boot.  It's mess and 
>it's long past time they fix it :)
>

If Intel (and probably MS too) isn't behind it, it won't fly.  Sun, 
Dec and Apple could dictate the hardware/software interface.  Sun and 
Dec had a server and service mentality.  Apple?  Maybe because of the 
IBM involvement with PPC and the original spec for other companies 
making PPC macs?  And it's cool to do.

There is incentive for PC servers to do this, but I don't see it for 
desktops as much.  I bet there are more sites out there that don't see 
the need for this then those that do.  And if adding this to the PC 
adds $2 to the cost, that desktop will miss the $499 price ceiling 
dictated by marketing.

We can hope they do it widely enough to be useful and well enough to 
satisfy the ISP type market (remote jumpstarts?  With some security ala 
SSH?)

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>
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Tom Buskey





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