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Bios? old pc user?
Authored by: ghay on Dec 06, '05 07:57:02AM

BIOS?

Mac's have open firmware, but not a BIOS.

The usual way to get a region free drive is to make it RPC-1 by flashing THE DEVICE'S firmware, not the computers.

This is only complicated as most of the firmware flashers are os9 based, and that's now legacy - well that and the drives Apple use now are hard to get the firmware off to patch to make RPC-1



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Bios? old pc user?
Authored by: Egrefen on Dec 06, '05 09:24:23AM

Sheesh. I'm slightly tired of mr. Know-it-alls hammering this line.

Let's see what Open Firmware does:
Interfaces components of the computer with one another, and the user.
Boots everything.
Basically handles Basic Input and Output, as a System.

Why, you might as well make an acronym out of that. Something like... BIOS! That's right, it's the same fsckinging thing. In fact, another word for BIOS is, as you'd expect it, "firmware".

Same
Fscking
Thing.

Sheesh, some morons...



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Bios? old pc user?
Authored by: bailey_ca on Dec 06, '05 08:58:20PM

That's it! If you kids don't stop arguing, I will turn this iMac around. We will go right back to PPCland, and you will NOT get to see IntelWorld. Do you want that?!

Stop the fussing. Mr. Know-it-all is just arguing semantics. OpenFirmware is indeed a BIOS by definition.

However, in popular language, OpenFirmware is the Mac BIOS, and "BIOS" is the PC screen you can only get to by hitting Del at startup. Or F1. Or Enter. Or whatever the manufacturer chooses.

Now sit down. We've got another seven hours until we get to the hotel, and I am NOT stopping at another rest area!



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Bios? old pc user?
Authored by: ghay on Dec 07, '05 05:02:59AM

Just going by the definition of firmware in the wikipedia!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmware

but hey - you obv. know better than the thousands of authors of the wikepedia.

signed

mr. know-nothing



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Bios? old pc user?
Authored by: neuroklinik on Dec 06, '05 09:28:20AM
Technically, Open Firmware is a type of BIOS. It's a "Basic Input Output System". See this link for more details: http://www.openfirmware.org/

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Bios? old pc user?
Authored by: rhowell on Dec 06, '05 10:58:22AM

From Wikipedia:

"BIOS, in computing, stands for basic input/output system. BIOS refers to the software code run by a computer when first powered on. The primary function of BIOS is to prepare the machine so other software programs stored on various media (such as hard drives, floppies, and CDs) can load, execute, and assume control of the computer....BIOS is sometimes called firmware because it is an integral part of the system hardware....In addition, plug-in adapter cards such as SCSI, RAID, Network interface cards, and video boards often include their own BIOS, complementing or replacing the system BIOS code for the given component."



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Bios? old pc user?
Authored by: Azumanga on Dec 07, '05 07:56:51AM

When I said reflash the BIOS, I meant the BIOS of the CD-ROM drive, although I'll admit that firmware is the more usual name... however, regardless of what we call it, we can (I believe) all agree it's hard, and getting harder, to do in Mac OS X (I spent quite a while trying to find a way of fiddling this in hardware on my ibook, and couldn't ever find something to do it which I trusted enough to install..)



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