[ale] Sunday 05-22-05 6PM RUN-AS-ROOT CHALLENGE

[Geoffrey]

Jim Popovitch wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-05-19 at 15:46 -0400, Geoffrey wrote:
> 
>>>>Re-flashing the BIOS is minor to rebuilding past work.
>>>
>>How do you flash the bios to start with?  You must boot the machine, 
>>usually from a floppy.  Before you get there, the bios has to run.
> 
> 
> You pull the chip out and put in a new one.  One hour tops if you
> _don't_ know what you are doing and have the new chip in hand.
> Seriously, you are trying to make this a bigger thing than it is.

Not all bios chips are removeable.  How many folks have identical 
pre-coded bios chips?  Raise your hands?  As I thought.  So, unless you 
have an identical motherboard with the same bios chip. You're looking at 
much more then an hour.

>>If you reload the bios with your a piece of code that does not look at 
>>the floppy to boot, or anything else for that matter, tell me how you 
>>plan to flash the bios?
> 
> 
> Personally I would just call IBM and have them do it under warranty
> (they do that as a standard service).  If you wanted to do it yourself
> there are a TON of bios providers that will fedex you a replacement bios
> overnight.

Ah, now we've gone from 1 hour to 12 or more hours....

>>If the bios chip is removable, you can pull it and reprogram it with a 
>>stand alone bios flasher, but how many people have one?  (I do)
> 
> 
> I don't, nor do I rebuild my carburetor, fix my TV, etc.
> 
> 
>>Have you ever burned a rom or eprom?  Have you written assembler?  
> 
> 
> Yes, exactly 20 years ago on CPM based systems no less.
> 
> 
>>Then you should know that you can write more then just vendor bios code to 
>>the chip.
>>
>>If the chip is not removable, there is the slight possibility you can 
>>wire directly to the mb and flash it, but again, you need a device to do 
>>that.
>>
>>How do you get the computer to flash itself when you never get out of 
>>the bios and the bios does not see any boot devices?
> 
> 
> :rolleyes:

Good answer..

-- 
Until later, Geoffrey