Dave Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> On Mon, Feb 18, 2002 at 12:12:22PM -0700, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> 
>  > Actually there is a dmi BIOS table that on machines in the last 3 or 4
>  > years reliably reports the mothberboard name.  I hadn't thought of
>  > that but that is definentily information we can use.
> 
>  It's ok in most cases, but I wouldn't call it reliable.

You are right reliable is a little strong but probably reliable
enough for our purposes...

That is it when it reports the information with other than a default
value the information is correct.  So using the non default values
to trigger extra functionally probably works.

> Eg:
> Handle 0x0001
>         DMI type 1, 8 bytes.
>         System Information Block
>                 Vendor:  
>                 Product:  
>                 Version:  
>                 Serial Number:  
> Handle 0x0002
>         DMI type 2, 8 bytes.
>         Board Information Block
>                 Vendor:  
>                 Product:  
>                 Version:  
>                 Serial Number: 
> 
> Seems quite a few motherboard vendors can't be bothered filling
> in the fields, and just leave them in the state defined in the
> code from Award/AMI/whoever. I've also seen examples where all
> the fields are xxxxxx 0123456789 etc..

Agreed.  In my limited skimming I haven't seen the board id come
back wrong.  But I have seen a lot of the other fields come
back nonsense.  My favorite was the report of sdram in a system
equipped with rimms.
 
> On newer systems some of the ACPI tables also contain board
> specific ID's iirc.  In the RSDT on this Athlon board for eg,
> it contains "ASUS K7V-RM". I've not seen any of these that
> have been incorrect yet, but I'll not put faith into a BIOS
> vendor not screwing up something this simple.
> (This table is easily parsable btw, no need for AML interpretors
>  and other ACPI evils)

Which table is easily parsable the newer ACPI stuff, or the DMI table?

Eric

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