Mailing List Archive: BIOS info: how to get it w/o rebooting the system ??

BIOS info: how to get it w/o rebooting the system ??

Jan 19, 1999, 11:53 AM

Post #1 of 3 (349 views)

Hi,
I just noticed one thing: I can't get my BIOS brand and revision without
having to reboot the system !!
I thought this was impossible for the kernel to provide, but ... Windows
NT does the trick (NT Diagnostics). Thus ... my question is: is there,
currently, a way to get this info from the kernel w/o rebooting the
system? If not, don't you guys think it's a useful implementation ??
I've found several problems related to BIOS versions and such, and having
access to this information w/o having to reboot is really helpful.
Later,
Ivan Passos
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Re: BIOS info: how to get it w/o rebooting the system ?? [ In reply to ]

pp at netppl

Jan 19, 1999, 4:18 PM

Post #2 of 3 (347 views)

Permalink

On Jan 19, 10:53am, Linux Lists wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I just noticed one thing: I can't get my BIOS brand and revision without
> having to reboot the system !!
Ok, so it's not pretty, but it does the job :)
connecting (root):/home/pp >strings /dev/mem | grep BIOS
ASUS P2L97-S ACPI BIOS Revision 1001
Award SoftwareIBM COMPATIBLE 486 BIOS COPYRIGHT Award Software Inc.oftware
Inc. Aw
Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG
twaNASUS P2L97-S ACPI BIOS Revision 1001
--
Pekka Pietikainen, Net People Ltd., Oulu, Finland
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Re: BIOS info: how to get it w/o rebooting the system ?? [ In reply to ]

ecki at lina

Jan 19, 1999, 5:13 PM

Post #3 of 3 (346 views)

Permalink

In article <Pine.LNX.3.96.990119104903.25288A-100000@main.cyclades.com> you wrote:
> I thought this was impossible for the kernel to provide, but ... Windows
> NT does the trick (NT Diagnostics). Thus ... my question is: is there,
> currently, a way to get this info from the kernel w/o rebooting the
> system? If not, don't you guys think it's a useful implementation ??
AFAIK te boot loader stores some BIOS information (like the harddisk table)
in memory before switching to the protected mode. I guess NT is doing the
same thing. But you are right BIOS and VGA Bios Strings are 'nice to
have[tm]' sometimes.
Not sure about the bios32 extensions. There have been kernel patches to get
to the realmode bios.
Greetings
Bernd
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